On 4 Feb, 13:01, David Cantrell wrote:

On Tue, Feb 03, 2009 at 06:15:12AM -0800, Martin Petrov wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ter-card-trans...

Reduces dwell times for buses (massively)

No it doesn't. *It's requiring that everyone have a ticket before they
get on the bus that does that. *Doesn't matter whether it's Oyster, a
paper travelcard, or a ticket bought at a roadside ticket machine.

Wrong - apart from bendy buses and the central London pay-before-you-
board area, you are *not* required to have a ticket before you board a
London bus - fact. But Oyster has *massively* increased the number of
people who have a ticket before they board - true, this has been done
in part through the carrot and stick of differential prices between
cash fares and Oyster PAYG fares, but it has also worked - the number
of people paying cash for a bus fare these days is pretty minimal and
I find it out of the ordinary when someone does.


drivers to pocket cash

See above.

Again, wrong - though there are other methods in place to minimise the
possibility of this happening.


* * * * * * * * * * * *stops you needing to fumble for change at
the ticket machine

No, instead you have to hunt high and low for somewhere to sell you the
damned thing in the first place, and then fight the TfL bureaucracy and
their expensive phone lines to get your refunds when they screw up - if
you realise that you were ripped off in the first place.

There has been a great increase lately in the number of shops that
sell and top-up Oyster cards. You can also order them online, and set
then up for auto-topup.

Issues with Oyster overcharging through no fault of the user are rare.


But no, you think you're being watched by MI5. (like they've nothing
better to do.)

I'm not worried about MI5 so much as I am by bent coppers and bent TfL
employees who have access to the database and sell info to, eg, private
dicks, divorce lawyers, and other organised criminals. *Bent coppers do
that all the time with the supposedly secure police national computer.


The police do not have direct access to the Oyster database - they
need to specifically send a request to TfL for that. This is what TfL
says about the process:

---quote---
TfL's disclosure of personal information is carried out in accordance
with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998 and assessed on
a case by case basis. All police requests must be submitted in
accordance with guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers
and are coordinated by TfL's Information Access and Compliance Team.
---/quote---

And this is what TfL say regarding who has access to the database:

---quote---
Please note that a limited number of authorised individuals within TfL
can access Oyster card data and no external organisations have direct
access to the data. There are no bulk disclosures of personal data to
any public sector or commercial organisations.
---/quote---


Both those quotes are taken from the response to a letter sent to
Oyster customer services by 'Coofer Cat' aka a gent called Richard
Bolton. TfL dealt with the request under the Freedom of Information
Act - the questions and responses can be read on his webpage he
http://www.coofercat.com/wiki/OysterCardRFI

I absolutely agree that it is right to be vigilant about these matters
- as you say, both the PNC and also the DVLA database have a history
of being rather leaky, as do the databases of telecoms companies and
other utilities. This is something that interests me - thus far I
haven't seen, read or heard of anything that I consider a cause for
alarm in this regard.

Might MI5 or GCHQ have a back-door into the system, or perhaps just an
insider? I guess it's possible. However one might imagine that those
with serious mischief in mind would likely avoid using an Oyster card
anyway.