Social Control
Cashless Societies and Consumer Surveillance
Smartcards are considered to be the future for credit transactions in a cashless society. They form the basis of modern secure ID cards, because of their ability to store complex amounts of data, such as biometric readings. The ability to fit the smartcard to other devices means that they are really flexible in use. Wireless technology means that they can function from a distance, speeding up time for the fast pace of modern life.
Capitalism has created an environment that is ideal for mass surveillance. Profiling of consumer habits, location, credit transactions, voice and image recording, within expanding databases, means the individual consumer can be viewed as a point in a network where the relationships between people can be viewed, evaluated, traveled along. Profilers are able to survey the consumption patterns and habits of broad ranges of people, for the purpose of developing markets and understanding consumer opinion and anticipating losses. The State uses it to identify, investigate and consolidate control.
Phones with smartcards are used in Japan to pay for public transport and consumer items, many have the ability to take pictures, listen to mp3's, check GPS location and surf the net.
Police in London are increasingly turning to 'Oyster' travel cards to track criminals' movements. The 'Oyster' smartcards, each with a unique identification number, are used by five million Londoners and record details of each bus, subway or train journey made by the holder over the previous eight weeks. The Metropolitan Police said it was a "straightforward investigative tool". 229 of the 243 requests so far made by police to access records were granted, the figures disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act show.
Economic reports from last year suggested the amount spent on cards in the UK was about to outstrip cash, and some analysts assert that 'it is only a matter of time before notes and coins become redundant'. Hong Kong and Malaysia have a smartcard which can be used for travel, ID and other payments, and without resistance, this will become more common in the future. Smart card companies have been recent guests to meetings with the G8. The G8 consider this product essential for poverty struck Africa, in the lucrative privatization of the Africa’s health, welfare and social systems.
In March 06, the 'Oyster' smartcard travel system used on public transport in London, and which could soon be used to make payments, came crashing down for a few hours. Tens of thousands of pre-pay Oyster passengers in the capital had free journeys in the morning rush hour after a software glitch stopped the smartcard readers working. The fault occurred because the size of a computer file - sent every day with the latest information about which cards had been disabled - had caused the ‘Oyster’ readers to fail. With 2.3m cards in the system as with any new technology of that size, things will happen like this, there's no computer system in the world which has zero possibility of crashing.
Miniaturization and technological convergence are producing the latest 'must-have' items that perform many roles, and are fashioned for different consumers. As a society of cashless capitalism approaches, egged on by the dictates of multi-national business, transaction payments will force smaller retailers out of circulation, leading to greater market domination by a handful of companies who are well prepared for the end of paper money. The disappearance of capital into the information markets will be accompanied by re-composition of broad sections of the social machine, according to the desires of industry and government.
From strikes and riots to glitches, hacking, computer viruses and sabotage; the basis of the economy is always unstable. As computer systems increasingly mirror and organize physical worlds, social chaos is going to become more likely and widespread. The push for vast databases and mass profiling is only a beneftit for the rich, and for the machine. Human beings do not fit the dictates of machine management, and our communities are at odds with the computerisation of life and the systematic destruction of the environment which the information society requires. This lends us to tentatively see greater opportunities within society for breakdowns in the system, class conflicts and other uncontrollable incidents that lend themselves to anti-capitalist and anarchist intervention.
Destruction of the economic and technological apparatus of capital and industry is crucial in the disturbance of the reigning order and its downfall. When the system of capital disappears into the immateriality of the information economy, it will remain in a physical form - domination, but the possibility for its destruction remains.