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UCSD Students Tracking Their Friends' Locations

Posted by timothy on from the after-my-own-heart dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "The location-tracking software, developed by a 15-year-old student at the university, draws upon triangulation technology. The PDAs figure out their locations by comparing the strength levels of signals traveling from the devices to various Wi-Fi antennas. No GPS Required. Article from Salon here..."

10 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. ummm... by Xaoswolf · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Maybe students aren't out of the closet and don't want people to know they're going to the Gay & Lesbian Resource Center. Maybe you're cheating on your girlfriend and you don't want her to know you're in somebody else's dorm room. It's creepy Big Brother."

    Gee, instead of leaving this tracking device in my desk, I'll take it with me when I decide to do something wrong.

    If you wind up getting caught because you have one of these on you, then its you're own fault. Unless it's actually wired to you, then just leave it at home. This isn't big brother stuff, more like his little cousin's.

    --
    Xaotik Designs
    1. Re:ummm... by dryueh · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Gee, instead of leaving this tracking device in my desk, I'll take it with me when I decide to do something wrong.

      Of course, nothing would stop me from taking my free tracking device, planting it in my friend's backpack, and seeing if they really are going out to that gay-club...or to my girlfriend's dormroom, or whatever.

      You don't need to let anyone track your device if you don't want them to, but now everyone has immediate access to a moblie, and plantable, tracking device.

      ..ah.. I yearn for the yesteryears of SpyTech

    2. Re:ummm... by psaltes · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > now everyone has immediate access to a moblie, and plantable, tracking device.

      These are $550 PDAs, not $1 tiny spy bugs! I think most people aren't going to carelessly toss them in their friend's bags just for fun. Especially not now that everyone's seen this article.

  3. Pretty pointless by Sanity · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The official goal of the PDA project is to test whether location trackers will encourage students to find each other more easily on a sprawling and rapidly growing campus.
    That is the dumbest justification I have ever heard. Cell phones are infinitely cheaper (at retail price), many many students have them, and allow you to phone the friend you want to find - they can then, if they want to, not only tell you where they are, but tell you what their movement plans are.

    There is nothing technically innovative about triangulating a radio signal, and as compared to cell-phones, it is a terrible way to try to meet up with friends.

    Basically, the most valuable thing about this is as a publicity tool for HP and UCSD.

  4. Use it like an IM service by umrgregg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If this project is developed further on the sofware side, it would be interesting to be able to have a "friends" list of people who are able to track you. You could also be able to 'go offline' if you wanted to use your PDA without your stalker knowing where you are. Or a hardware on/off from turning on or off the wi-fi. Integrate this with existing IM's and this could be a really great campus tool.... Especially for finding elusive professors.

    I'd like to see something like this on our campus, it'd make a great addition to our file sharing project.

    --
    NMG
  5. The Buddy List, false. by imta11 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They say that you can omit yourself from view using a buddy-list like hide. That is bullshit, and will only protect you from the application layer. Any time the thing transmits a packet it has the MAC address of the wireless card attached. A knowledgable person could "war walk" with custom software and snoop other peoples wireless packets. Finding the hot blonde from math class got a whole lot easier.

  6. University Propganda by Saoshyant · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They've got this fifteen year old student who has a neat idea, so they implement it to feed off the publicity generated by the issue of privacy.

    "Look at us, we've got fifteen year old students building contrversial technology. Give us money."

    The justification they give of helping students find each other is a crock.

  7. 15-year-old at the University? by AndrewCox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A 15-year-old student at the University? Man, it kills me to hear stuff like that. That poor kid probably thinks he's tough stuff now, but I'm betting he'll regret his lack of a social life later on. There are more important things in life than advancing quickly.

    There are probably tons of people here that could've skipped grades at a time, but wouldn't you at least want to be in your sexual prime when you went to college?

    Somebody needs to watch American Beauty again - you gotta stop and smell the roses.

    --
    The Red Pill ... all I'm o
  8. Re:35-year-olds by LinuxHam · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, he knew what he was saying. When parents see what their teenagers are doing with tech, they often say, "Cool! Can I do that with mine?" They take it to work, show a couple of coworkers, and voila, it catches on with the 35 year olds. Think about how long MP3's were popular in universities before they clogged up corporate servers.

    --
    Intelligent Life on Earth