another side is, its both good and bad. You can see patterns and alert to changes. You could also use it to prove someone wasn't where others claim and so on. If your really creative you can mine it and try to figure out why so many students are making trips that take time and minimize it to put more time to learning than traveling. Like we route packages in shipping companies, load the truck properly for the route, get students into a route that minimizes travel from class to class
Isn't that where security compliance programs come into play? I think someone doing their due diligence in asking, "What is the business justification for storing building access logs indefinitely" would have been able to create a procedure for addressing the storage of these types of things.
True, but like collecting, it's easy.
I hope you're seeing how this isn't very relevant however to the question whether we want this kind of monitoring.
I also don't see how your anecdote in any way is a long story for 'it doesn't hurt to keep that kind of data'. It's a story for how 'it can be helpful to keep that data as shown by one particular anecdote'. That's not really the point, I think we all agree we could find a useful application with data, the point is that we may not want these things to be monitored for opposite reasons.
Yes, they have this potential benefit, but no, they should not be reviewed solely in that context.
As for Shipman, wasn't it precisely because of anomalies in data collected about him that he was caught? And do you agree that collecting clinical data about doctor's use of drugs, and their outcomes vs. statistical norms might be reasonably exempted from the kind of personal data logging that many people find objectionable [me!]
It seems totally unnecessary to indefinitely store every door swipe. Sure, store the swipes used to access the rare book room or the chemistry lab for 6 months or a year, but there’s no reason for every swipe into a dorm or dining hall to be permanently recorded. Some amount of time between a few days and a few weeks should be entirely sufficient for every reasonable purpose.
I imagine if the systems that store all the ID swipe data got hacked, it would be possible to learn all kinds of things about students, including embarrassing secrets or enough info about movement patterns to ambush someone.
[I guess this seems like a minor thing compared to records of people’s cell phone movements, internet traffic history, etc., but I think those should be deleted within a few days to a few weeks too.]