privacy, the cloud, and what really matters

I attended the Ethics and the Cloud workshop at the Royal Society yesterday, sponsored by the EPSRC under the digital economy programme,

was on twitter under #cloudmatters

anyhow, I was thinkin about privacy and psychology and wondering why people are so negative about some times of monitoring

1. monitoring car speed
i) we have averaging speed cameras (viz M1 right now)
ii) tomtom log speed/location over 3G from cars - why not put this data in a black box for analysis in the event of an accident too (instead of waiting for someone to subpoena tomtom's wenb service for the data) - liability would then be much easier to find evidence for
iii) if you run a phone with GPS (android, iphone etc) and latitude, then surely the data on google's service is also exactly such evidence anyhow? Could we ask to see how fast our MPs drive under an FOI? :-)

2. monitoring health
i) Tesco's keep our buying data as part of clubcard stuff for optimsising their profit and our basket - if this info went to our GP they might use it to warn us about our diet
ii) Nokia has sports phones that log heartbeat etc when you run/cycle (and upload to serice with map) - this too could go to GP as part of evidence based mediciine and prenvetive healthcare
iii) a micropayment system being used for bar bills (e.g. freedom phone style) could be used to interact with 1/ to tell you not to drive and 2/ to tell you to lay off the booze

why would people mind this?

answers on a postcard :-)

[The question above is rhetorical]