Bluetooth Big Brother uses mobiles and laptops to track thousands of Britons (without their consent)

The Evening Standard (U.K.) ^ | July 21, 2008

[Stoat]

Bluetooth Big Brother uses mobiles and laptops to track thousands of Britons

Last updated at 12:04pm on 21.07.08

 
 

Thousands of people in Bath are unaware their movements may have been tracked through their bluetooth mobiles

Thousands of Britons' movements have been covertly tracked by scanners placed in streets, pubs and offices for a technology experiment.
 

The Cityware project run by the University of Bath has secretly placed scanners around the Somerset city, with the first 10 installed 2006. The scanners pick up bluetooth radio signals transmitted from mobile phones and laptops. 

In a scene reminiscent of the Will Smith thriller Enemy of the State, it has allowed researchers to map the journeys of individuals without their knowledge or consent.
 

The data is being used in a project called 'Radio City' to survey the 'mobile computing landscape'. The researchers hope it will help them understand how and why people move around urban environments.

As many as 3,000 Bluetooth devices are tracked every weekend and one recent study monitored the movements of 10,000 people around Bath.
 

On the Cityware website, the researchers said the survey would cover 'all phenomena associated with the carrying and use of mobile devices.'
 

This includes where and why users make mobile phone calls and even how people orientate their laptops in cafes.
 

The leaders of the £1.6million initiative claim their study looks at the city as a whole and the scanners do not have access to the identities of those they track.

'The notion that an agency would seriously consider Bluetooth scanning as a surveillance technique is ludicrous,' Cityware director Eamonn O'Neill told The Guardian.

 

Privacy campaigners fear the scanners have echoes of the Will Smith thriller Enemy of the State

However, pedestrians are not being told their mobiles and laptops could be creating a permanent record that will be stored on a central database.

Privacy campaigners have attacked the project as a 'moronic use of technology'.

[Stoat]

Cityware - Urban Design and Pervasive Systems - Radio City

Radio City

The aim of this project is to survey the "mobile computing landscape" in Bath, by which we mean (1) the disposition of wireless communications signals in the city, and (2) the human behaviours associated with the presence of those radio signals. The aim is to complement knowledge of the physical landscape and of the flows of people through it, and to investigate links between them. The survey will cover:

 

(a) The disposition of radio. This includes mapping the presence of WiFi, cellular and Bluetooth. The first two mainly derive from fixed infrastructure, whereas Bluetooth will mainly come from devices carried by people.

(b) How users behave with their mobile wireless devices. This includes all phenomena associated with the carrying and use of mobile devices. For example, where do users make mobile telephone calls, and why? How do people physically orient their laptops in cafes, and what wireless activities do they feel safe with?

(c) 'Attacks' mounted against exposed devices. We will leave electronically (but not physically) exposed phones and laptops in public places, in order to understand what attacks are made against them.

 

The knowledge we gain will feed into Cityware in two main ways. One is part of the total task of "instrumenting the city" in order to design electronic services and applications within it. For example, it will be useful to understand the density of Bluetooth-visible phones on the street if we are to design peer-to-peer applications using them. The second contribution will be to feed into our threat and trust analyses.

 

Finally, in this project we are not only gathering data, but understanding how to gather the data reroducibly, so that we can chart changes over time.

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Related article from The Guardian (my apologies, Guardian articles cannot be posted at Free Republic so here's the link)

Bluetooth is watching secret study gives Bath a flavour of Big Brother UK news The Guardian

[Always Right]

Well it seems technically possible for California to just start issuing tickets to anyone who they think were driving and using their cell phones. Just think of all the revenues that could be raised.

[Dasaji]

Skynet. . .it’s coming.

[weegee]

"Welcome to the Village, #6."

[Stoat]

Well it seems technically possible for California to just start issuing tickets to anyone who they think were driving and using their cell phones. Just think of all the revenues that could be raised.

And if they can't get a Bluetooth signal lock when you're in your car, they can always fall back on other technologies to do the same thing:

Great Britain New super-cameras will mean no hiding place for drivers who smoke, eat or use a phone

Great Britain CCTV cameras to be used to issue parking tickets

[Centurion2000]

Some tech is just disgusting.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Here in the SF Bay Area, bridge toll transponders are used to track where (and when) any given individual car has been on the freeways. It’s for similar “benign” purposes.

[Scythian]

My turns on she says? "Being tracked ..."

[antiRepublicrat]

I only have one question. How can I track her?

[Stoat]

Skynet. . .it’s coming.

Indeed....let's hope that the allure of baubles will not be our undoing, although it usually is.

[Stoat]

"Welcome to the Village, #6."

One significant difference is that the modern "Prisoner" isn't aware (and oftentimes doesn't care) that he is in fact a prisoner.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

"You will be deleted. Delete, delete, delete!"

[Stoat]

Here in the SF Bay Area, bridge toll transponders are used to track where (and when) any given individual car has been on the freeways. It’s for similar “benign” purposes.

And given the inevitable incrementalism it will soon be used to track and locate stolen cars (who could object to that?) and then it will be IRS tax cheats.

So when the transponder detects someone who has been verbally accused of a violent act and the automated barriers in the Golden Gate bridge pop up and stop all traffic in order to assist authorities in apprehending the accused, remain calm for the four hours it takes them to find the person, tow the car and reset the barriers as it's all for the common good.

[Stoat]

Some tech is just disgusting.

But when it's packaged in an appealing way it will be eagerly embraced en masse.

 

[Just another Joe]

My turns on she says? "Being tracked ..."

I have no idea what you just said but I understand the sentiment!

AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

[untrained skeptic]

Well it seems technically possible for California to just start issuing tickets to anyone who they think were driving and using their cell phones. Just think of all the revenues that could be raised.

Actually, if people have bluetooth turned on, it would make more sense that they were using a bluetooth headset rather than holding their phone in their hand.

Are you suggesting that if they could determine there was an actively used cellphone in the car, but no bluetooth, they could ticket that person?

That doesn't work either, because a passenger could be the one talking on the phone rather than the driver.

When I visited Chicago last summer I also noticed that all the cab drivers used wired headsets. You can't use a cell phone in your hand in Chicago either. I assumed they used the lower tech wired version because the battery on the bluetooth headsets probably wouldn't last an entire shift, and they'd be dealing with a dead wireless headset too often.

[weegee]

If you do these things in the private sector, you are called a “stalker”. If you do these things for the State you are called a public servant.