Marc Rotenberg was on Sunday Morning on CBS talking about video surveillance. Rotenberg says the feds probably can use the Tripp tapes. Even though they were illegally recording off Tripps answering machine recorder. These tapes raise unsettling questions for all of us.

Danielle Gallo: I attended the lunch breakout session on video surveillance, "Is Big Brother Watching You?" The answer is yes. Donald Haines of the ACLU addressed the rise in usage of surveillance equipment due to decreases in cost. An example is the ITS, or Intelligent Transportation System. The ITS is designed for traffic analysis and management, yet it is commonly used to facilitate the mass and routine surveillance of crowds. Another example is E-Z Pass, a toll collecting service used in New Jersey and New York. When a driver passes through the gate, his account number is scanned and posted on a screen. Haines suggests that any particular car can be monitored each day based on the account any particular car can be monitored each day based on the account number scanned when the driver passes though. Time lapses between measurements can be used to observe the driver's speed and possibly result in a speeding ticket. Hashing the account number so it was not available at the second monitoring position would give the driver anonymity. Haines concluded with an emphatic need to increase the amount of privacy protection. He referred attendees to the Electronic Privacy Information Center http://www.epic.org -- an interesting but unrelated paper on this site is http://www.epic.org/Reports/surfer-appendix.html