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Oyster is still anonymous, in the sense that no details are required to buy a card, and it can be topped up using cash. The cards can be returned or disposed of
by windowliker 1mo ago
Oyster is still anonymous, in the sense that no details are required to buy a card, and it can be topped up using cash. The cards can be returned or disposed of as necessary. But as you say, it knows your movements at least in so far as your entry and exit point in the system, with a timestamp, though you can use a separate card for each if you don't mind paying the full fare that gets charged when a journey is 'incomplete'. The barriers also still currently accept paper tickets, but for how long will be anyone's guess. I would assume that as Travelcards can be tied to paper National Rail tickets, it will still be some time until that goes away. I see a lot more people using eTickets these days, and trains even have adverts now reminding people to keep their phones charged to be able to show their ticket to inspectors.
I truly detest the self-checkout cameras. When first introduced it felt like such a blatant intrusion, and the way they have a screen to show you what is being captured is an extra humiliation. Nobody asked them to install self-checkout machines, and yet now we seem to be treated as suspect just for using them.
As for your overall point, yes we are utterly over-surveilled, and have been for decades. It will only get worse, in spite of the fact that there is no clear proof it has made Britain any safer. Most people seem oblivious to it. But then again, they have been finessed into carrying a tracking device with them at every waking moment of their day with little care for the implications, all in the name of safety and convenience, so why would it be any surprise. The default stance for most of the public seems to be 'I don't do anything wrong so why would I mind being watched'.
- bobthepanda 1mo agoyou don't even need all of that to track people. there was a bit of a kerfuffle where a dataset that literally only contained the start, end and time, and some deanonymized data of NYC taxi rides was successfully deanonymized and used to track celebrities. Most people have fairly sparse, unique travel patterns, and so armed with only a few known paparazzi photos you could accurately derive their whole travel history. https://www.fastcompany.com/3036573/nyc-taxi-data-blunder-reveals-which-celebs-dont-tip-and-who-frequents-strip-clubs https://www.fastcompany.com/3036573/nyc-taxi-data-blunder-re...
- windowliker 1mo agoYes, but as I said it is possible to use a separate ID for entry and exit, so unless they were willing to perform a CCTV trawl then your entire journey could not be assessed. The penalty for this kind of anonymity is paying top fare for entry and exit, so only a very rich tube user could bear the cost. The thing that got people to use Oyster in the first place was 'discounted' prices, as in they bumped the price for a paper ticket when Oyster cards were introduced and kept the old prices for Oyster only journeys. Make of that what you will. Paper tickets are still available as of 2026 last time I checked. There was a similar data trawl when Boris bikes were introduced, and some of the information gleaned from that was quite hilarious but I can't find a link because it was from the old world and now lost in enshitted search.
- bobthepanda 1mo agoIIRC the big push to contactless and Oyster before it is just reducing the cost of handling money. Transit agencies do not really want to be in the business of banking, and physically printing paper tickets and maintaining the machines to accept them properly is a lot more expensive than an RFID reader. In particular for paper and magnetic strip, you have to keep the reader clean enough to accept reads properly, and the machine also needs to not damage the ticket. This is a non issue with tapping.
- matwood 1mo agoYep. Much like shopper cards and browser fingerprinting, it doesn’t take much to de-anonymize the data using the intersection of items.
- SoftTalker 1mo agoIf people would not steal stuff from shops, the shops would not need cameras. We get the society our behavior creates.
- windowliker 1mo agoDo the cameras stop people stealing?
- criddell 1mo agoIsn't analytics the main reason for having cameras all over a store these days?
- stavros 1mo agoIf I wanted to steal something, surely I'd do it before getting to the self checkout counter.
- cannonpr 1mo agoPrimary theft at them is where you scan N cheap items and just bag Y expensive item without scan and walk out, plausible deniability/psychology at play, a lot less deniability if you shove a whisky bottle down your trousers.
- psd1 1mo agoIn Spanish supermarkets, it's tins of shellfish in the anti-theft boxes. In English ones, it's razor blades and menstrual pads. Spirits are often tagged in both countries, but not as consistently as the mejillones and the tampons.
- rozab 1mo agoI think the point with those supermarket cameras is to influence behaviour, not to surveil, I doubt they are even recording. When I was a kid (maybe in a worse area than you) there were CRT TVs by entrances of supermarkets showing a live feed of you walking in. People behave differently when they feel they are being watched, it's why they have creepy CCTV posters with big eyes on them. Probably the same reason for evil eye charms too.
- windowliker 1mo agoYes, this has been under consideration when thinking just how much raw footage would have to be stored for 4 or more self-checkout cameras for every shop. Probably multiple terabytes per day, per chain, just for London. There is also the classic 'plastic camera with blinking LED' CCTV installation, intended to deter theft in a more lo-fi manner. As an aside, the artist John Baldessari made an installation in the Tate Modern where you were filmed walking into a room and the image was projected on the wall, but with about a 10 second delay, so that the feedback loop between seeing yourself 'on screen' and being able to influence it was completely broken. It was quite interesting to experience.
- Normal_gaussian 1mo agoAbout 8 or 9 years ago I saw a self checkout pos provider demo a camera/screen system that would do basic images processing constantly to try and take pictures when people are clearly visible. A couple of low res, low colour palette, cropped images per user are much much easier to store. This was at a security conference.
- windowliker 1mo agoFair enough, sounds like a reasonable compromise, but I still question the entire premise of having these cameras in the first place, especially since they do not film the area where items are being handled. Tallying a loss of stock to a specific person would seem to be really quite difficult to do with only a set of photographs of the faces of everyone who utilised the self-checkouts within a certain period.
- WalterBright 1mo agoSelf-checkout at the grocery store is a major vector for shoplifting. That's why the cameras are there. If I was running such a store, I wouldn't want to spend the money on those cameras. But alas, the money is well spent in stopping thieves. I was talking to one of the staff in a grocery store a while ago. He said the corporate auditors came in one day and decided to review the security cams. The result was half the staff was fired for theft. It's just too bad that we live in a low trust society.
- Aeolun 1mo agoSo maybe the problem is that you shouldn’t have self checkout if you cannot do it without immediately being stolen from?
- WalterBright 1mo agoThe self-checkout is there because it is cheaper than a cashier.
- red_admiral 1mo agoEven after taking a higher percentage of shoplifting into account.
- ridgeguy 1mo agoThis is why I use the human-run checkout lines. I want to keep the humans employed.
- WalterBright 1mo agoOur high standard of living is due to machines doing the work rather than humans.
- bluefirebrand 1mo agoPart of our high standard of living relies on living in a high trust society, which self checkouts seem to erode.