Lucy D'Orsi, chief constable of the British Transport Police, says her force wants access to data from passengers' mobile phones and bank cards so that it can track us around the network. At the moment, you can get on a train from Wolverhampton to London
with a paper ticket and leave little trace. The ticket itself can be tracked if it's put through the ticket barriers at a station that has them, but no rail company nor the British Transport Police can have any real idea who is travelling on that ticket,
especially if it was bought with cash. D'Orsi was quite open about the possibilities that would arise. She quoted the example of someone who was spotted by an algorithm travelling on the Tube for six hours and who, she suggested,
might be a pickpocket or a predatory sex offender. She also quoted the example of someone who caught a train from London to Liverpool and then caught one back straight away. That's not normal, she said. That's not what people do. So why is someone doing
that? In future, she suggested, British Transport Police would be able to pick them up as a suspected drug-dealer. We are supposed to think, of course, that only criminals will be stopped. Except that there are very good reasons
why we all sometimes find ourselves making unusual journeys. Next winter, I confidently predict, D'Orsi and her colleagues will find themselves feeling the collar of large numbers of poor people who are travelling the Tube to keep warm and save heating
bills at home -- henceforth they are could be suspected pickpockets or predatory sex offenders. As for who would want to travel to Liverpool and straight back again, I can think of numerous reasons: a parent dropping off their children with grandparents
or an ex-partner for the week; someone who started a journey to attend a business meeting only to receive a call en-route that it had been cancelled; someone meeting family or friends from abroad and is going with them for the journey. All these people
are, apparently, in the eyes of British Transport Police, criminal suspects, designated as such by an algorithm.
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