Barcodes for Homeless People

The number of homeless people in Oxford has increased enormously in the last few years for various reasons that I detail in the background links below. It's very sad to see so many people sitting on street corners and sleeping in shop doorways in the city centre. The University has come up with an idea to help them. All homeless people in the city will be registered on an electronic database and will be issued with an identity card displaying QR-tags, a form of barcode. Then when a passer-by wants to give them some money they can do it using their mobile phone. They scan the barcode and send the person some funds which will be put into an account controlled by the person's case worker who makes sure it is spent on food, rent, passport fees or utility bills and not drugs or alcohol etc. The donor will be able to access the database of the person they've just donated to and learn all about him or her (usually him), how they became homeless, what their last job was etc. Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/08/homeless-people-wearing-barcodes-new-project-increase-donations/. This sounds benevolent at first glance; however there are major problems with it. It means that to be homeless means living in a miniature cashless society. This could be a trial run to expand the scheme into other areas, including people who are not homeless; such as the unemployed, immigrants, probationers, drug addicts, the mentally ill etc. After that, why not just say: "What the hell, let's just put everybody on the scheme and be done with it?" This is not the first time that homeless people have been used in pilot schemes for Orwellian social systems. In fact in the United States a local authority offered to insert microchips into the bodies of homeless people. This was said to be for their own good. It would allow shelter workers to scan the people and know about the care they had received; when they had last slept in a shelter, been given a meal, been given medical or dental checkups etc, see: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/01/under-the-skin-how-insertable-microchips-could-unlock-the-future. I know that there are good intentions behind these ideas, but when it comes to Big Brother we have to deal with capabilities, not professed intents. We must ask ourselves how this technology could be abused or weaponized. As for the homeless in Oxford; why don't the University simply pay to give them a bed for the night? It's something they could easily afford... many time over.

See here for background: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2018/03/fines-for-being-homeless.html.

And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2014/06/anti-homeless-spikes.html.

And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2017/03/debit-cards-on-st-helena.html.

And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2015/07/big-brother-at-download.html.