Time to get off the politics and lighten up a bit. Here's a fun little web site I found out about recently:
likebetter.com
It's very simple: it just just keeps showing you pairs of pictures and you click on the one you prefer. For whatever reason - content, aesthetics, whatever. No need to explain, just click. Simple and quite addictive.

If you register then other people can compare their preferences with yours like this:
Are you like Trevor?
So far so much mindless fun. Here comes the really clever bit:

After you've made a number of selections the brain graphic will turn pink. At this point the system will make statements that it believes apply to you based purely on your choice of pictures. It's not perfect but is uncannily accurate.

Some of the statements are pretty vague, such as "you live in a rural area". However it also managed to correctly deduce that I'm a liberal atheist who reads a lot and doesn't like mornings! As far as I could see there was nothing in the pictures to directly give that information.

I assume that behind the scenes is a clever neural network. It "learns" the associations between picture preferences and character traits without making any attempt to analyse or "understand" them. If any correlations exist, however subtle, it'll find them eventually. The more people that use the site the more accurate it gets. It's a neat idea that works really well.

The likebetter site is a perfect example of the surprisingly large amount that can be deduced about someone from seemingly trivial pieces of data; if there is enough of that data and a large enough sample to compare it against. It is in essence a form of profiling - using many trivial facts to build up a larger picture.

It demonstrates clearly how a large number of seemingly irrelevant pieces of data can be mined to accurately discover some very personal facts. It shows how apparently harmless data collection can in fact result in a massive invasion of privacy. likebetter is - as far as I know - a harmless bit of fun. Other applications of this technology might be less benign.

A simple web site can work out this much about you from mere picture preferences. Think how much more other people can today deduce from your shopping habits (credit and loyalty cards), travel history (transport smartcards), calling circle (phone/email records) etc.

And think how much more people will be able to deduce if everyone is issued an ID Card. A card which contains your unique, lifelong National Identity Register Number. A card which you are asked to show many times a day and which links to a central National Identity Register (NIR) recording every time the card is checked.

The likebetter people now know I'm a liberal, morning hating atheist. That will be nothing compared with the amount the government will know about our private lives once ID Cards are introduced.

ID cards NIR privacy UK politics ukpolitics