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How I Went Dark in Australia's Surveillance State for 2 Years

posted by martyb on Friday March 30 2018, @10:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the OpSec-is-hard dept.

canopic jug writes:

Claire Reilly writes about her commutes and other travels in Sydney, Australia while trying to avoid the excessive surveillance that arrived with the abolition of paper tickets. Australia passed invasive surveillance laws that also affect travel. It eventually emerged that authorities could search commuter card data tied to individual users, including all movement and payments.

I'm all for escaping the Orwellian nightmare of the modern surveillance state. But when you rage against the machine, you still have to associate with the bulls on parade.

All the top-up machines at train stations, light rail stops and ferry terminals were card-only affairs. One tap on that baby and you were back in the system.

So, if I was busing downtown for a work meeting, I'd have to factor in extra time to get to an ATM, get cash out and then find somewhere to top up my card. Running for the train with friends, I was the one who had to divert three blocks, change jackets, burn off my fingerprints and find a nondescript corner store to top up.

Here's what I learned.

She gave a good effort at traveling in traditional, anonymous style. Eventually, a shortfall of 9 cents made all the difference.

From CNet : How I went dark in Australia's surveillance state for 2 years

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday March 30 2018, @02:24PM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday March 30 2018, @02:24PM (#660372) Journal

    If they wanted to ID her so badly they would just use the massive camera surveillance infrastructure associated with most public transport systems to catch her when she swiped her card.

    No need to do that. Just correlate her phone movement data (which is tied to her identity) with the card movement data.

    And yes, her phone was tied to her identity, burner phone or not. From TFA, emphasis by me:

    With one trip, my years of off-grid living were undone. (And yes, it was two years, not three. My how time flies when you're madly tweeting like a paranoid vagrant at the airport.)

    So she was tweeting from her phone. That linked her phone to her Twitter account. Which has her real identity. [twitter.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday March 30 2018, @02:31PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Friday March 30 2018, @02:31PM (#660375) Journal

    Yup: I went dark by going to the same ice cream shop I always go to (they know me well there) and I bought CHERRY instead of my usual CHOCOLATE! That fooled EVERYONE!

    Darkish is right.

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