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This is why we need an ID database as well The Castrol oil company (a subsidiary of BP) is about the run an advertising campaign that does the following:
At certain intersections, they will be erecting electronic billboards combined with cameras. Cameras will photograph registration plates of oncoming vehicles. Using the registration data, the make and model of car will be pulled from a database that has been helpfully sold to Castrol by the DVLA (ie the government body that handles vehicle registrations in most of the UK). The billboard will then displace to the motorist recommending which particular type of oil should be used in his car.
No registration data will be stored for later use. I guess that makes it all right then.
Someone please tell me that this is an April Fools joke. Yes, I know it is September.
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Another example of how big business is only too happy to grease the palms of government agencies when required, and fuck the consequences. There is now a vast amount of this stuff going on: in my own area of financial services, there is an unhealthily close relationship between the HM Revenue & Customs and the big accounting firms such as Ernst & Young, etc.
Just another brick in the corporo-fascistic walls being built in our respective countries.
But which came first – the interventionist State or businesses using it for their own ends? Personally I think there were plenty of businesses in on the ground floor helping ramp up Big Government, and many learned to that if you can’t beat’em, join’em. Now the leaders of Big Business, if they are going to make it in that environment, are fully fledged Statists who think “properly”. But I think the lions share of the blame behind our corporo-fascistic amalgams has been driven by the inherent desires of interventionists who seek Power. Jefferson understood that every State is going to fail over time at is it infested by those who will seek Power to bring their Order, and that resets were necessary routinely to root them out. It is just scary how certain checks and balances were in place between the Government and most businesses. Now the relationship is nearly fully grafted together. The masters of the productive resources and the masters of political power are quickly becoming one in the same.
Boycott Castrol.
This creeping to the government has been rife for some time, supermarkets are full of, “eat five portions a day”, “don’t use plastic bags” and so on. It did weel for Sainsbury, gor a good job and plenty of planning permission for his stores. I really wish that CEOs would stop being “yes men” and do their job, which isn’t toadying to bent politicians.
Corporations, especially large ones, have seldom been known as defenders of small government, individual liberties or the free market. So I’ve never understood the surprise some express when we hear of yet another case of collusion between government and business.
The only way to prevent this sort of thing from happening is to keep government as small as possible, both in size and reach, and to fight with the utmost ferocity to limit the personal data that governments are allowed to collect on us. Because no government should be seen as a trustworthy holder of your personal data.
Darren: Sadly, however appalled I am by this, I am not remotely surprised.
Amongst other things, this is a consequence of government bodies being told (by management consultants and the like as well as politicians) to be more “market focused” and “self-funding” and other things like that. Therefore, they set themselves up as “selling solutions” and things like that as well as simply regulating whatever it was they were set up to do. Therefore, we have the DVLA selling information was forced from people as the price of owning a car and which should be private being sold to anyone who is willing to pay for it. Plans for the ID card and have this sort of thing built into them from day one. Scarily, this is the sort of thing that many of the enemy class think of when you say “capitalism”, and it is of course a horrible perversion of both business and government.
Well, I’ll agree that it’s a “horrible perversion” of government, but it’s pretty much the norm for business. Businessmen/craftsmen/merchants have always tried to gain advantage over their competetitors. Trade guilds predate the interventionist state by centuries, after all. In 1776 Adam Smith famously wrote “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” The era of Big Government has given them a very potent new tool, so no one should be surprised when they wield it.
The key, as Darren stated, is to keep government so small that its ability to distort markets is severely limited.
See, while I think it’s an abuse of government here, I can’t get upset about what Castrol is doing.
They’re … telling you what kind of oil might work for your car.
There’s no more privacy issue here than in them having the database and not having the billboard.
And if all the database has is license plate, make, and model there’s no privacy issue that I can see (since all of the above are plainly visible to everyone on the road*) – though given the competence and usual mode of operation of States, it probably has more information in it and this is an issue.
(* Would there be a problem with a camera and computer that looked at your car and recognised the model optically? If so, why? If not, how’s it different from a hypothetical database stripped of personal identifiers?)
If I’m going to be advertised to, I’d far prefer useful and customised advertisement. Not that I’m going to buy Castrol anyway; their oil isn’t very good.
I don’t quite see what the problem is. When I recently bought a car I found it extremely useful to be able to type a car’s number plate into the computer and find out its original specification, recorded mileage, number of owners and, in one case, that it had been an insurance write off.
The information had been made available in exactly the same way it was made available to Castrol.
I mean if the government is going to have all this information what’s better that it keeps it all to itself or that the rest of us get to have a look?
OK, so one day there won’t be a government and all roads will be privately owned. But aren’t you still going to have number plates or some electronic equivalent? What road owner is not going to want to have information on who is using his road?
And if that information is useful to buyers won’t honest sellers want to make that information available? I know I would.
Not a joke. See:
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/939651/Castrol-cameras-digital-billboards-talk-directly-motorists/
There is also this service, available in various forms and advertised on TV:
http://www.50connect.co.uk/motoring/motoring_news/how_much_is_that_motor
Useful to car thieves, no doubt.
Sigivald writes:
It is an abuse of the privacy of car owners. They are obliged to allow and help the government to maintain a database of car registrations: to trace those committing illegal acts (such as leaving the scene of a car crash one is involved in without contact details). It is a breach of trust and of privacy to use for additional purposes, data supplied for ‘good’ reason, whether it is provided under threat of government force or is provided voluntarily. If the government makes money from it, I want that very amount deducted from my road tax.
They are flashing signs at me while I am busy driving, and so increasing the risk of me having an accident through distraction, to say nothing of irritating me.
Yes there is: they are showing the data on the billboard to anyone who is looking, thus extending the invasion of privacy. What about all those people who leave off their cars (at extra expense, like the tailor’s sleeveless jacket) information showing just how valuable the car is, when that information is not otherwise (easily) available to a viewer.
The database has much more information. The date of first registration is given without check, even for personalised numberplates: this affects the attractiveness of a car for theft. Given that this information is available in aggregated form (ie in bulk), it facilitates organised crime. Address information is easily obtainable under the current system; though perhaps Castrol/BP are not getting it, they are getting, effectively, the car value. Knowing the owner of a very expensive motor car is not at home, and knowing the address (and also by observation which ‘family members are absent – the male – both adults), again facilitates crime: this time targetted housebreaking. Every leakage of data (including voluntary distribution, and whether by government or big industry such as mobile telephone companies) makes protecting the private data more difficult, and makes organised crime easier.
If ‘they’ can do that, why do they need the government database. Well, it’s because doing that is more difficult (too difficult), so paying the government to breach trust and privacy makes the advertising cheaper.
I hate being advertised at, especially using private information and at times I do not chose: receiving advertising should be a personal choice; it should not be forced upon one by personal targetting and/or flashing signs. I am registered with the Telephone Preference Service and the Fax Preference Service; my details are excluded from the version of the electoral register that is sold to marketing companies: why cannot the same choice be given to me WRT information in the DVLA database.
Best regards
Patrick Crozier writes:
It’s fine with me, as owner of the vehicle, to provide you with that information, if and only if I am selling the car, and you seem like a bona fide potential purchaser and we have got the the stage in negotiations that make it appropriate. Otherwise, I view all that information as my private information.
A bit more detail on that would be useful. Are you saying Castrol/BP get the registered keeper’s name and address? Are you saying someone other than government has a complete copy of DVLC’s vehicle database, and gave/sold you full vehicle records (including the address of the registered keeper) without the authority and knowledge of the registered keeper AND without the authority of DVLC?
I’ve just looked on the DVLC website, and discovered I can get some limited information on a vehicle (my car in this case) by knowing its registration number and make. The date of first registration was available, as was the engine capacity and various vehicle and engine details (which I think all are information too far, without specific authority). However, mileage (and DVLC do have some information on that for my car) and the registered keeper’s address were not given.
Does that apply to your income tax records too? And your NHS records? And your children’s school records?
As always was the case, and is under the current system, with good enough reason (like being involved in a crash with someone who failed to stop, concerning illegal parking on your property, etc), the information can be made available. This is surely very different from making the information on every vehicle available to just about anyone (who will pay). And I manage to use toll roads and bridges quite well currently, and don’t believe the owners need such access to my vehicle details, just to the appropriate amount of my money.
Yes, but only to real buyers: and the information is there available to the current registered keeper of the vehicle, on the V5C. All that the buyer needs is adequate legal comeback if the registered keeper feeds him false information (for our discussion, particularly of the sort held by DVLC): that does not require anyone and everyone to have unfettered access to that information.
Best regards
IG Farben would have loved working with NuLabor.