[RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm]

The ticket is digital-only (smartphone or smartcard), there is no paper version, and it's coupled to your personal identity (name etc.).

So some people have voiced concerns about that being used to profile the movement of Germany's citizens.

IIRC the tracking is being justified by the government "to gather statistics so we can improve the service", or something like that.

Disclaimer: I don't live there, I don't know the details.

[usrusr]

Before that ticket, everybody who isn't a full time paranoiac was digitally buying identity bound tickets for specific routes. Known to the selling entity even when the ticket wasn't checked at all. Now that same entity will only see a random location sample the moment the ticket happens to get checked, and zero information about the actual route end points. And paranoiacs can still skip the offer and get a paper ticket just like before (and like everybody who doesn't travel by train very often).

Those concerns simply don't add up: if it was a ploy by a surveillance operation hidden in the train org, they'd have just spent billions on blinding themselves. There so much less data now than there was before.

[londons_explore]

Most (all?) german train stations don't have barriers. So even though the ticket has a barcode on, there is a good chance that many journeys that barcode will never be scanned by anyone and there will be no central record you ever got on that train.

[lispm]

> So some people have voiced concerns about that being used to profile the movement of Germany's citizens.

How would you do that? For example my local traffic system here in Hamburg for roughly 4 million people has almost no ticket checks: there are no barriers and no other regular ticket checks. One just boards the train/bus/ferry and travel.

For example I was going from Hamburg to Stade and back, using my 49€ ticket. There was no ticket check.

If that was an evil plan to track German citizens's travel behavior, that plan was not well thought out.

[Slippery_John]

It's not digital only, I have a physical version. Whether or not you can get a card depends on your locality. Nevertheless, I don't understand why it's so much more inconvenient to understand and purchase compared to the 9 euro ticket. With that you could get a paper ticket or buy on app and the rules for what it did were consistent everywhere.

[RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm]

The physical card has a chip, which is digital.

The point is that the ticket has a unique ID which is tied to the owner.

Normal non-digital paper train tickets just indicate "someone paid this" but aren't tied to a unique personal identifier.

[dathinab]

But that id doesn't get transmitted anywhere as long as you are not checked for a ticket, which is rare. (And that's not saying that when you get checked it will collect personal non-ananomized data points, it doesn't.)

[dathinab]

> Disclaimer: I don't live there, I don't know the details.

exactly

it's digital available in a app _or chip card_

in both cases it's not tracking where you go, you don't check-in/out when you enter leafe a train, their are no "gates" in (most?all?) of Germans public transportation systems. Instead it's a trust based system where sporadically randomly personal will check if passengers have valid tickets. At which point you have to show your ID and card, but that's it. And that you where checked also doesn't get recorded. But even if they would this checks tend to be somewhat rare to a point that some people decided it (was) cheaper to not buy a ticket but pay the fine from time to time.

[pdoub]

While I'm also unhappy it's not being offered as a physical ticket, I can say from roughly 10 trips between 200 and 500km and a lot of local metro/bus riding that the frequency with which your ticket is actually checked shouldn't be enough to provide enough data for sophisticated tracking (esp. in comparison to "the normal amount" of GPS/tracking/movement data that smartphones already produce throughout the various apps we all have installed and that are being used on during trainrides)

[aleph_minus_one]

> (esp. in comparison to "the normal amount" of GPS/tracking/movement data that smartphones already produce throughout the various apps we all have installed and that are being used on during trainrides)

Many people who are skeptical of tracking don't own a smartphone. Those who nevertheless own one (say, because otherwise their job would become more complicated) often only very selectively switch it on.

[RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm]

Well, having a smartphone is still optional in most countries, I suppose in Germany as well.

Movement on the other hand is a mandatory thing for many people unless you want to sit at home all day...

[_Microft]

We don‘t need to wave the ticket at a card reader to use the bus. We just board and mayyybe, like just once a month, there‘s someone on the bus checking the validity of tickets and fining people if they don‘t have one.

What‘s your point exactly? Your concerns seem to be of very theoretical nature tbh.

[MaKey]

It can't be used to track citizens as there is no need scan the ticket when boarding a bus / train / light rail / underground and it rarely is checked manually by a ticket inspector.

[fathyb]

This is the case for all digital travel tickets though, no?

[fsh]

It's even the case for paper tickets, unless you pay with cash.

[WFHRenaissance]

At least they do it openly in Europe XD

[dathinab]

there is not relevant tracking there, there is no system of checking-in/out of a train

you can always just board the train without anyone checking your ticket, you are _trusted_ to have a valid ticket

then because people can not always be trusted from time to time some personal will check tickets for validity, potentially

but in practice most people get checked like once a month or so at most, it's semi-random so some are probably unlucky

Furthermore any statistic data collected from this checks is anonymized they don't remember that _you_ where checked there (if you ticked was valid).

Additionally checking costs money (personal cost) so the less likely you are to find a trespasser the less checking is done, i.e. with the 49€ ticket probably less checking will be done long term.

For longer reginal trips you are more like to be checked, but in practice this new tickets will give _less_ information to the DB and similar organziations. Because before for most regional ticket you brought either had already been explicit person bound or implicit throught he payment system with a specific start or end place listed on them. The ability to buy regional tickets with cash has been becoming increasingly more limited (e.g. because of nonsense like people trying to steal that cash by blowing up the ticket automata, creating a huge cost for a minimal profit).

[WFHRenaissance]

I was surprised how often my ticket was checked in Switzerland tbh