I would have imagined that someone from QLD would know better.[1] The abuses of the 1970's in QLD are surreal, but they are only a few short decades away; that's to say nothing of One Nation. But, to pause the banana-bashing for a moment, there are also regular abuses of the police databases in other states.

And all this for what supposed gain? I can't see the exact benefit this will bring as opposed to keeping things as they are. And it always starts off with a voluntary anonymous option, then all you need is one murder/kidnap/rape vaguely connected to the anonymous option in some way and that will be removed in a shower of tabloid hysteria.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh_Bjelke-Petersen#Civil_liber...

If the data didn't exist to begin with there wouldn't be a need for a warrant. As the data will now exist, they will be able to justify the need to access it on demand.[1]

What's the difference between this program or one that pushes "Everyone is now required to keep a device on them that records everything they say. The purpose of this device is to improve the quality of X, Y and Z services based on real-world conversational feedback."

The data was then also accessible to the Government, with a warrant, when needed.

I don't believe you can justify uninvited invasion of privacy to improve a service when the data collected can also be used against you.

[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10451518-38.html

I think your example is a bit of a straw man. Yes, they should limit the data they need to keep, but if you are really concerned about your privacy (and I wish more people were!), you can choose not to use the card. Pay for your privacy with a bit of inconvenience.

Well, that's an interesting comment because last time I was in London I noticed they've really jacked up the cash price of single tickets on the tube, to the point where you'd be an idiot not to get an Oyster card because using one makes multiple trips much cheaper. Differential pricing like this could be used to effectively buy people's location information.

An alternative strategy to limiting data is to obfuscate it at the source. If a small group of people use from a set of cards and each person pick one at random whenever they need to use it, the cards become little more than dumb tokens that cut the cost of a single trip and just happen to store trip data in the process. A single person's travel habits aren't decipherable unless every card in the set is scraped for data and the results are combined.

Of course, this is effective only if all the cards stay unregistered, and if there isn't a significant monthly (or other periodic) fee per card, unless I'm looking at this situation rather naively. (I live in a rural area without access to mass transportation systems, so I'm not speaking from any kind of personal experience.)