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“Big Brother Is Watching You!” by Schöfer Christoph

27.09.00 / Seite 1 von 3

Smart cards, satellites in the service of position detection, the ”New York
Times” in your home by one click – Informationtechnology gets more and more
mundane, but we have to keep an eye on the effect of supervision,
because:

B i g B r o t h e r I s W a t c h i n g

Y o u !

In the next few minutes I want to tell you just the essential aspects of global
observation, how it happens, the advantages and the risks. And it’s a
phenomena of our century, which nobody can deny, that in future we won’t be
able to take one step without being watched.
Take the example of an usual supermarket bill. What we see is a list of all the
things we bought, useful to check out how much money we spent and for
what. But this information doesn’t exist just on this paper. Every sell is saved in
a computer and so the manager is able to notice what kind of article is sold
most, which special-price-offer comes best and who of his shop assistants is
the most productive. And that’s at the current market situation not unimportant.
Now you may say, ”Ok, I don’t mind! They do not know my name, so it’s
anonymous.” Yes, you’re right, it is.

But what about this (Page 3)?
There are quite a lot of so called ”Directmarketing – Companies”, which are
founded to create such customer profiles. You see the job, his turnover and a
lot of other personal things, and please mind, also his name. Such databases
are completely legal and it’s a clever way how they collect this information. For
example you are applying for ”Jeopardy”, then your address and name is
added in the database and maybe that you like playing games. Then after a
while you take part in a competition of a tennismatch. You know these games,
where you can win holidays and something. Now they know that you’re
interested in tennis. And so on... It’s a quite simple idea, but it works. Or every
time you order something by mail. In an indirect way you tell them your size,
hobbies, favourite colour, etc. So a so called ”lifetime value” is created.
Another nice example: A young family starts to buy babyclothes in pink. The
computer system knows immediately that probably a female baby is born. So
the family gets twice a year special offers, of course for the proper age. And
it’s clear that this technique doesn’t make a stop at the digital era. We know
that there is already a computer programme, which is used for recording
mailings if there are certain keywords. At the moment they are just used
against hackers, but it’s also possible to collect user specific information for
advertising.
The next thing I want to show you is used to help us. It’s a system called
”Falcon” and it’s made to avoid illegal transaction with credit cards. Every time
a credit card is used, and this happens quite a lot, ”Falcon” checks if this
transaction fits in the pattern of the real user. So if the system ‘thinks’ that this
can’t be the lawful user it asks the shop assistant to check the identity of the

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“Big Brother Is Watching You!” by Schöfer Christoph

27.09.00 / Seite 2 von 3

person who uses the card. And this really works, ”Eurocard” was able to
reduce the abuse to a minimum. This ingenious idea is originally invented by
the military. As another way of controlling, the GPS (”Global Positioning
System”). With the help of some satellites it’s able to locate every appliance
which is equipped with such a fistsized device. Needless to tell you what this
means to the possibility of controlling.

Video-observation is also a possible way of supervision. Especially at airports,
railroad stations, streets, tunnels, parking houses, banks and so on it’s very
useful to install cameras and so it’s possible to keep an eye on the citizens. A
Britain district started a trial run to find out, whether the number of violent acts
would change. So they mounted 115 cameras in the whole city and about 4
persons watched the streets all over the day. This idea works, the city became
a friendly place with hardly any crimes. The shady side was the effect of
voyeurism. After a while a video was released called ”Caught in the Act” and it
showed lovers in elevators and other private things.

And last but not least: Smartcards
The easiest way for ”Big brother” to watch us. The models with an integrated
chip are able to save our life onboard. New bus- and railroad tickets are
designed to summarise the distances you travelled and at the end of the
month you get your bill. It’s a nice method to make your life simpler, but it’s
logical that this information has to be saved. So there exists a database, which
knows where you’ve been and this information could be abused. Finally I want
to tell you the idea of the ”A-Card”. It’s another kind of a Smart-card that stores
all you medical data, your blood group, everything that might be interesting for
a doctor. Useful, but as we already heard there are certain risks. If someone
steals this card, he knows everything, every disease you ever suffered and
other information you won’t tell everybody.

Visionaries, as Bill Gates, want one card, or better one chip, which is the ID for
every person. And if possible putted inside our body, so we can’t lose it. This
chip records every movement and all our physical conditions, so it’s a
autobiography of our life.

At the moment it’s just a vision, but one thing is clear, with such a supervising
instrument life won’t be the same. Maybe it would improve our quality of living,
but it takes of lot of research till this is realisable. Not a research in the
technology of the chip, more in the safety of the personal data.
All the things I explained up to now are proven. So we are sure that this exist,
but we do not know what the military or other research centres are developing.
So if the police is knocking on your door tomorrow morning, maybe they know
something that they shouldn’t.

Now I reached the end of my talk but I hope the stuff I told made you think. I
never feared the negative effects but now I’m more sceptical. Maybe you
should think twice when you’re using your credit card next time.

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“Big Brother Is Watching You!” by Schöfer Christoph

27.09.00 / Seite 3 von 3

Customer Profile:

Name:

XYZ, Roger

Address:

Teststreet 0

Rank:

none

Age:

20

Sex:

male

Hobbies:

Sports, Internet, Family

Height:

1,85 m

Marital status:

married

Children:

2 (female, 5,7)

Job:

Assistant

Industrial sector:

Trading

Import:

Influencing

First contact:

IFABO 1998

Date of adding:

3.4.1998

Kind of Softwareuse:

Business

Last used Hardware:

Pentium 120

History of contact:

3.4.1998: IFABO,
10.8.1998 HIT ’98....

Number of received ads:22
Number of bought prod.:16
Turnover total:

4382,-

Average orderings:

876,-

Date of last buy:

21.9.98

Duration of advisory s.:

12 months

Number of Seminars:

2

Estimated Probability of Buying Software A:
16,45%