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Finns To Use Cell Phones To Monitor Traffic Jams
Okko writes "The Finnish Road Administration announced it is going to use cellphone location data to find out about traffic jams. They say they are using the location data available from the GSM base stations
to determine the locations and speeds of vehicles carrying mobile phones. The information will be used to inform people about traffic jams and peaks in traffic trough public FM radio stations. Until now, the information about traffic has been gathered using car sensors embedded in the roads.
The spokesperson of FRA, interviewed in the evening news of MTV3 Finland, seemed very pleased they can monitor cell phones even when no calls are made, it is enough the phone has power on.
They said they are about to use the information anonymously and thought people approve it as long as it is done in an anonymous and "everyone-wins" way.
It was told they do not currently tell the police about the data they discover as the current law forbids this. So, it is not, at least yet, possible to fine people carrying mobile phones in their cars too fast on public roads (exceeding the speed limit of the road).
Unfortunately, probably because of vacations,
FRA has not updated their website accordingly yet. There does exist an annoucement about testing the technology from the summer.
"
...anyone ?!?
Another slashdot story was flashed a while back (13/06/02), but that was pertaining to Scottish company.
At some point you've got to make the tradeoff between living free and suffering and living a tiny less free and being comfortable.
Hell, every time you choose to use cash instead of bartering you are making yourself traceable.
Instead of complaining about this kind of thing which anyone who had two synapses to rub together already realized was possible, you ought to be living in the tundra of Alaska where no one gives a damn where you are.
Fucking luddites. On Slashdot, no less.
I have been pwned because my
...I can see the day where an automated system can automatically flag and/or ticket you for exceeding the speed limit. Of course, they already have camera bases systems today, that photograph your license plate. And if the preponderance of technological competition in the radar-detector-detector-adnasuam world is any indication, there would soon enough be a market for phones that subtly altered the phase or seeming doppler profile of their signals to fool a single tower. Of course, if you show up at another tower 200Km away in 35 minutes, that would still be a little suspicious. ;)
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
After all, nobody is going to believe that speeding information won't be passed to the police, despite any laws currently in place, therefore, they may well switch off their bloody phones rather than weave randomly across lanes of traffic when making or answering a call the way they do at the moment.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The trouble with relying on laws to prevent government abuse, is that it's the government which has the power to change those laws. Give them the technical capability to violate your privacy, and sooner or later they will do so, possibly in ways not to your liking...eg., the Japanese Americans who trusted the legal safeguards on census data, then got rounded up during WWII.
There shouldn't be any problems as long as the system remains anonymous - hell, they may even be able to inform the police which areas and times have the highest incidence of speeding to improve their ability to ticket people - nothing a radar gun sitting on the side of the road can't do...
At any rate, I would keep an eye on the anonymity of the whole thing - I wouldn't want a ticket showing up form my highway driving.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
The DC area traffic authorities started playing with this some time ago.
One reference
This is yet another part of the system being built up around civilian populations in the West. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but lately (as in the last 5-10 years) new technologies have emergies which on their own might not seem to affect your privacy much. Things like credit cards, email, telephone banking, THE INTERNET, satellites, and more are all capable of spying on you. Sorry for sounding like such a paranoid person, but if all these devices were coordinated we could all be watched. The Big Brother is out there, and this is just another step in the wrong direction...Does anyone actually believe that this sort of information isn't being used (or can easily be used) against you?
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"Uhh your honor my girlfriend threw the phone out the window"
=If life was easy, i would be out of a job=
This is all very interesting, but as stated before, there is a privacy risk involved with this. Not only can you actually track where a user goes, you can also track who he is with.
Another point is, who knows how many cell phones are in 1 car ? If you have several cars with 4 people in it, all having there cell phone turned on, then it might look like a traffic jam, or at least very condensed traffic, but it might not be the case.
Or the opposite. If they take an average of 2 phones per car, and it's work time and there are like only people with 1 person in the car, it might look like fluid traffic where there is a jam.
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could it be?
MTV = No music, just fluff
MTV2 = Week-long rap marathons
MTV3 = Finn music?
There truly is nothing on.
This is not a dupe (hey, not yet ;) but a similar story was reported a while back. Here is the magic link.
The linked BBC article on the story is in English too.
What happens when everyone starts getting to work? Most buildings are within a few dozen feet of a road... will they be able to tell a building full of cellphones from a road full of cellphones?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I hear they are very warm and cosy at this time of year. Everything will be lovely and soft, no need to make any decisions or take responsibility for anything ever again.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
So what happens if there are several people in the car with cell phones? Or on a bus? Do they count them as separate vehicles?
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Next they'll require you to have one and only one cell phone in your vehicle and turn on at all times. Otherwise you fuck up their monitoring system.
I'll soon be taking a collection of peoples old unused cell phones. When I get a truckload I'll turn them all on and go for a drive. I'll be I can count as 379 vehicles. It will look like the RIAA were doing the counting. (See previous
We are drug testing people at work, to catch people committing illegal behaviour on their free time. But speeding is a crime too! In fact, it kills more people than drugs. So, why have we not installed a small sensor into every car? That way the employer could check that the employee has not driven too fast, the employer could check that no crime has been committed!
After all, would YOU trust a person who breaks the law to be a part of YOUR business!
They measure how long it takes for a random cell phone to get from point A to point B. So they don't actually measure the cell phone density, but what's the average speed of "cell phone mass". When traffic increases close to jam levels, speeds go down..
Presumably they're looking as much at the speed of the passers-by than at the density; four cellphones zipping past at 120 km/h certainly looks a lot different than four cellphones sitting still or crawling by along with 10,000 others. Four cellphones sitting still while 10,000 other zip by at 120 km/h also isn't going to look like a jam.
I imagine they've refined this technique a little bit so that it won't be confused by a few people stopped or going slower than average, etc. I remember a number of companies doing this, so I'm sure there's commercial software out there that's already been tested.
Any way you cut it, a traffic jam's going to look a lot different from a normal, free roadway. I don't imagine that it's terribly difficult to build a system that can differentiate between the two, although it's possible that there will be some unique situations in which confusion is possible.
You know what would be funny in that case ?
... ... That's about 10 just standing there ... That will influence the data ... :p
2 cars collide, but are able to get to the side (Let's say 6 cell phones with speed 0)
Then cops come (2 with speed 0), towing trucks (2 also)
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Will they be able to distinguish from cell phones in cars, multiple cell phones in cars, and cell phones not in cars? I wouldn't want the news to report that often the largest traffic jams occur in hotels and office buildings. However, my guess is that they'll see how fast the cell phone was ever moving, to see if it is inside a car or not.
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I wonder what the system says when every driver throws out the mobile on a specified route at mainly the same time....
Error: Route A34 slashdotted, traffic stopped completely
Here's my problem with this:
They say they'll use the info anonymously and not share it right?
Nothing actually holds them to their word on this. They can say they'll use the info anonmyously, and then change their mind later. Nothing's stopping them, or at least nothing stops gov't officials in the US from doing things like this. "No new taxes" anyone?
I would accept a system like this, if there was actually an assurance that they would hold to their word, say fines and jail time for anyone who shares the confidential info and maybe a contract where they have to trash the whole system if X amount of data gets comprimised.
And of course they would have to be audited, by auditors whose only business is auditing.
Life is too short to proofread.
This use of our cell phones might lead to some serious privacy issues. I dont know if you watched Minority Report. But one interesting aspect of the future in that movie was how pervasive the SYSTEM monitored you (using an iris scan to identify you). Using your cell phone to monitor traffic might seem like a small thing, but it might lead to some serious deteoration of your privacy. Say we have some serious criminal act, and we want to know who might have been near the area, these people could be suspects or witnesses. We could just check who had their cell phones on in the area. This might not seem bad, unless your labeled a "person of interest". I doubt youd like to be under that much scrutiny (sp?)
anyways, just a thought
epicstruggle
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
Honest officer.. I wasnt talking and driving at the same time.
I was detecting traffic jams.. Just doing my bit!
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Any sensible driver turns off his cell phone whilst driving.
David Duncan Ross Palmer, author of OverChat
Check out the date: 18.6.2002.
The press release talks about monitoring traffic jams on highways. Thus several phones in single car won't make a difference, since dozens of cars will pass checkpoints every minute.
Privacy isn't an issue here. Finland has very strict privacy laws and this system is designed with privacy in mind: System assing different (changing) codes to the each cell phone and it only tracks when code X pass through the checkpoints.
It is also illegal for operators to give information about calls to the police, unless owner is suspected of very severe crime.
You can't measure speed of GSM-phone accurately enough to convict people of speeding.
However you can measure approximate area where phone is located, thus you get an information about traffic jams.
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"Those who wait too long to get back into the market stand to lose out on potential profits in the end." Abbie Joseph Cohen, Goldman Sachs July 31, 2001
"Investors are once again overreacting to a natural slowing of economic growth." Al Goldman, AG Edwards March 1, 2001
"The bear is dead and we're transitioning into a bull market. There are better times ahead." Al Goldman, A.G. Edwards May 3, 2001
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"This is still a good rally." Al Goldman, chief market strategist, A.G. Edwards December 27, 2001
"2002 should be an up year. We will have more predictable forecasts and growing confidence that we are not going to fall into a deeper recession.'' Ned Riley, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors [Riley expects 10 percent gains for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 next year.] Dec 31, 2001
Anybody and everybody would ahve been better off reading and taking advice right here in the Hindenburg.
If we only lived harmoneously with nature, things like traffic jams would be unheard of.
I wonder how much of my life I have wasted sitting in the car, surrounded by idiots.
--------
Free your mind.
I seriously doubt that the information is accurate enough to convict a driver of speeding. The poster wrote that the intended use is monitoring traffic jams - this means using statistical methods that average out errors. Saying that the traffic is flowing at X km (miles) per hour is very different from saying that cellphone C is moving at speed Y.
As to privacy, the location of each cellphone is already available to law enforcement (even if powered off), so there's no real difference. If you really want to drive to your lover for an afternoon, be sure to remove the battery from your cellular...
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
If some one is a speed freak, then unplug the damn battery. to get an accurate measurement of traffic, you would have to actively monitor multiple signals and average it out. Plus, giving some one a ticket based on their cell phone wouldn't stand up in court. The prescence of the phone does not constitute the owner is speeding.
that some computers are "not working". who wants their kids to grow up to be Godless greed/fear based liesense peddlers?
Do excuse any typos / grammatical errors, I'm at work and supposed to do something meaningful instead, so no time to proof read now. :P
Tiehallinto (= FRA) has succesfully experimented the collection of traffic jam data via mobile phones in co-operation with Radiolinja. In the experiment, average travel durations are collected regularly to Tiehallinto's traffic central. Information about the duration of the traffic is relayed to the motorists via radio and other media. Information is collected from the mobile phones on the road, but the phone owner isn't identified, so there isn't any privacy issue.
In the future, motorists can get even more trustworthy and broader traffic jam information and predictions. You can plan your trips outside the worst traffic jams or to an alternative route. And you can at least predict when you'll be at your summer cottage to heat up the sauna or back at work.
The experiment started in Easter and ended in Midsummer, and it measured cars' travel times in Kehä 1 (a ring road around Helsinki) and on highway 4 between Lahti and Heinola. Already the experiment has proved its strength when compared to camera systems and road sensors. The traffic jam data is reliable information to relay for drivers. VTT evaluates the results of the experiment and checks for possible needs to improve the system for larger main roads.
In the data Radiolinja produces, there's no mention of who owns the located phones, because mobile phones are monitored with changing codes in a completely anonymous way at only certain points. The system follows when a code passes point A and when it will pass point B", product development manager Veli-Matti Kiviranta from Radiolinja's Telematiikka-liiketoimintayksikkö says. After calculating the travel time, the code is erased as useless. The system has also been evaluated by the road- and communications department's Personal Navigation Software's security experts.
In the system, all currently used GSM-phones can be measured, and phones or networks won't need any changes. It's enough that phones have their power on. Weather conditions don't affect the reliability of the measurement.
"Now the travel time measurement system offers a very promising alternative to follow traffic in [Finnish] roads on a wider scale," says traffic service lead Jorma Helin from Tiehallinto. The system is scalable without expemsive investments in the roads and is also more reliable than current systems. The product might have demand in countries which are regularly affected by traffic jams.
that's not funny?
of course it isn't. & it's only about as likely as it not happening. run for your options robbIE.
Too bad Hemos leaves the next story closed for replies! Someone take his access away! Mod him to oblivion.
There is little hope of changing speed limits. Over time, laws tend to accumulate and get more and more restrictive, IMHO. No politician will ever want to be associated with any campaign to raise speed limits - except in the unlikely event of suddenly realising that the majority are in favour and they can jump upon the bandwagon for more votes. More elderly people vote than the young, and elderly people are more afraid of the accelerator pedal than youngsters. If anything, speed limits will eventually reach pathetic limitations and there will be no point owning a decent car whatsoever. Bah! Or am I just bitter?!
I was encouraged in high school to use calculators since my H.S. was trying to go "high tech". In fact, we were REQUIRED to use them on tests .... if you didn't, you were going to fail due to a lack of time to complete the exam.
...
... English was another issue ... and why I didn't get into a good school), so this is a good example in my opinion.
... and I finished WAY before the other students in the course. HOWEVER, when I got my exam back, I got a 54%!!! Every answer was correct, but in big, red letters at the top of the paper, the prof wrote "This is what you get for looking at your calculator so much!" ... then he wrote "I need to see a few more steps and where you got some of these answers".
:)
... kids today need to learn to think for themselves BEFORE they begin to use technology as a crutch ....
.... but at the same time, we live in a technology laced society ... so which is more evil ... to force kids to learn, but not teach them technology, or to teach then technology, but make them helpless without it ....
....
... can't live with it, can't live without it ...
...
Then I got to college
Now keep in mind, I was a pretty good math student (scored perfect on the SATs in Math
I took my first college Calc II exam, and of course, used my calculator for it. In all fairness, it was a difficult exam, but a fair exam. I thought I would be "joe slick" and finish quickly by using the latest and greatest graphing calc. available
Needless to say, that was the last time I used that calculator for anything but to check answers (or to get answers and reverse engineer them)
My prof was right though
It is an evil world we live in
It looks like technology is like women
Just my 2 cents
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Yeah, dumbass, but wouldn't that make a traffic jam, the very thing they're trying to measure?
Did anyone else reading the title of the story post immediately think of the finliaths in Dark Age of Camelot, and was confused?
I used to work for a company called Mobility Technologies that owns the www.traffic.com website. They sell basic traffic collection data in several american cities but in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh they have what they call the "Digital Traffic Pulse" system. Basicly the highways in these two cities are dotted every few miles with poles carrying solar arrays and radar or accoustic speed detectors that monitor traffic speeds once a minute. This gives the same realtime speed data that tracking cellphones does, but with more privacy built in since they are just monitoring average speeds of annoymous cars. There is no way to tie the people averaging 85 MPH to specific cars or people.
Unfortunately they had some financial mismanagement (and possibly lost the politcal influence that allowed them to get started in those two cities) and were never able to expand the digital system outside of Pennsylvania. Atleast not yet. I've been using traffic.com for a year and a half (I live near Philly) and they haven't added any more cities in that time span. It took them only a year to get the 2 they currently have as digital.
US Wireless has been experimenting with this for a while now, helped out by a few Universities:
r 47 .htm
http://www.uswcorp.com/USWCMainPages/PressRel/p
but is disagree with the privacy issue, lets say that they can clock your phone and pass teh info along to the cops, but if you have a prepaid account, how do they know it's yours?
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
So, it is not, at least yet, possible to fine people carrying mobile phones in their cars too fast on public roads (exceeding the speed limit of the road)
Never will be - just switch your phone off if you intend to go above the posted speed limit. It's dangerous to use your mobile while driving anyway. (Much more dangerous than it is to go 20mph above the speed limit on a clear motorway at 1am).
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What? A Car?
They drive there? I thought they just ran Lapps.
Sorry for the joke, but I swear I am finnished...
Well I was lying but now I am definitely am...
--Joey
What's wrong with the way it is done now? Cameras, Choppers, and Callers all assist in reporting traffic jams.
I seriously doubt cellphone locations will work more accurately. Just seems like an excuse to track people.
will be used to calculate how many assholes are in a movie theatre at any given time.
What this is, is a way to query specific devices. Of COURSE they know who you are, and where you're going. And you can be damn sure they're going to use that information to increase their profit margins somehow. Knowing where people go and how they get there is one of the most valuable marketing demographics known to man, and I just cannot believe they won't use this for financial benefit.
Also yeah I know there are strict privacy laws in Finland, however the laws aren't so strict (or adhered to anymore) here in the states. This could definitely be construed as a "homeland (in)security" thing like the rest of the monitoring and wiretap allowances that are being made, but I guess it's unpatriotic of me to say that anymore.
Of course the only real alternative is to go move to some country so backwards on technology that they could not hope to monitor anything about you... Welcome to the new world. (Assuming we don't nuke ourselves into oblivion sometime soon, of course...)
However, in New Jersey (and possibly other states?), if you own a vehicle seen passing a stopped school bus, the bus driver can write down your license plate. The police then will send a ticket via mail to the owner of the vehicle.
In order to avoid prosecution (and a lot of points on your license), you must show that you were not the one driving. They then go ticket that person.
There was also a case in New York where a car was seized and sold off by New York City due to someone other than the owner driving it drunk. The owner of the car appealed, since she was not expecting the driver to be where he was, or him driving drunk at all (he had no history of alchol abuse). She still lost the court case, as well as the car.
Several states are considering and/or implementing similar laws.
If you don't like the laws, then use the appropriate paths (voting, lobbying, running for office) to get the laws fixed. Don't grouse because now all of a sudden you can be caught breaking the law. If the law seems inappropriate to you then get it fixed. Don't let bad laws sit and gain acceptance with age. There are a lot of silly/bad laws out there that only exist because people ignore them or go around them since "it's not a big deal." It's ridiculous. Don't ignore the law, change it!
I don't mean to get OT, but where the hell are you living? It takes several years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to reverse goverment policies, as well as many other intolerable laws and restrictions.
I don't know about the Finnish goverment, but in the U.S. I can say quite comfortably that YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
That is a major problem in America today. Common man no longer makes the laws, the people who can afford it do. Does anyone else see this trend besides me???
There are so many laws and taxes that violate our constitutional rights, yet there is seriously nothing you can do about it. If there is, PLEASE LET ME KNOW so I can begin to correct all the horrible mistakes the U.S. goverment is making.
I have been trying to get involved in more political issues, and this right here is the only way I know to do it. Speaking my mind and getting my point across whereever possible. Voting for Mr. Gore or Mr. Bush really doesn't change anything.
There is a conceptually similar system in use today in Atlanta. The system consists of a number of RF readers stationed around the city. These readers are compatible with the Georgia 400 Tollway's "Cruise Card" transponders, used for electronic toll collection. The system reads the transponders in vehicles and uses the data to determine overall traffic speed. Obviously, not everyone in the city has these transponders, but enough vehicles carry them to generate plenty of useful data.
I believe Houston has a similar system in place, since the Sam Houston Tollway uses the same equipment.
People will predictably shout about privacy issues, but it is illegal for this information to be used to enforce speed limits, and the information is not permanently recorded anywhere.
You can read a bit more about this setup at the transponder manufacturer's site among other places.
However, in New Jersey (and possibly other states?), if you own a vehicle seen passing a stopped school bus, the bus driver can write down your license plate. The police then will send a ticket via mail to the owner of the vehicle.
There is a big difference between loaning some your cell phone and loaning someone your car.
Finally they have figured out a way to prevent the driver (if he is alone) from using a cellphone while driving.
As Click and Clack say, "Drive now, talk later."
My mom doesn't understand this. She almost backed into a non-moving car last week.
Perhaps having one's speed measured while their cell phone is on will compell them to shut that damn thing off while they are driving.
If you're afraid of Big Brother or whatever, they
monitor phone calls anyway, not sure about the Netherlands though.
Finns are quite precise about their privacy issues. Finnish media reacts very aggressievly to any insult of privacy, was it about snail-mail, telecommonucation or e-mail. A firm can ruin its reputation very badly, if someone finds out any interfering of privacy.
For example there is one major legal case underway, where Finland's biggest telecommunication company's head was arrested, including the former president of the company. The case is about tracing mobile phones to reveal people who are leaking sensitive information about the company to media.
So in the first place the article attached to this story trys to settle the concerned citizen by proving that the system is truly anonymous (temporary, non-personal and untraceable keys for following all those faceless mobile phones) and the police authorities have no access to it. I see no reason to doubt their honesty because the Road Administraion (which will use the system) is governmental bureau and lying might lead to yet-another privacy scandal in Finland.
Even if it was accurate, how do they prove you were the one driving? What if you were the passenger? What if you were riding the bus, taxi, etc etc....
Maybe people in Finland should play Hot-Potato with their phones to pass time in the traffic jam. That would really screw with those boys trying to understand the traffic patterns!
Finnish Traffic Jam: 5 or more cars coming within 1 mile of each other
US Traffic Jam: 5 or more hours to move 1 mile
It would probably be reported as a 30,000 car pile up.
Using a cellphone without hands-free equipment in a car is illegal in Finland nowadays (1.1.2003->).
Is there an English translation available?
"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." --Abraham Lincoln
http://www.tiehallinto.fi/alk/english/frames/kelik amerat-frame.html
Here in India we usually sms the local fm station in case there is a traffic jam anywhere, sounds more simpler to me and cost effective.
reSisTanCe iS fUtILe
>I can see the day where an automated system can automatically flag and/or ticket you for exceeding the speed limit
How will they prove that you were the driver and not a passenger?
How will they prove that you were in the possession of the cell phone at the time?
"I lent the phone to my son who does not drive, so he must have hitched a ride with one of the neighbours"
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