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Wireless Street Lamps for Traffic Monitoring
RMH101 writes "The Register has a story about a UK initiative to create a country-wide wireless data network using street lamps. It's come to pass through a government initiative to monitor all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere. The company involved, Last Mile, are proposing an intelligent mesh of smart street lamps embedded with storage and wireless networking to create 200MBit network access across the UK, including remote areas not reachable by conventional broadband. Work is due to start this year."
... someone hacks in the system and makes the local police think that you are doing 150 mph with your 2 CV?
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Just wait until criminals and/or bored kids know where these things are embedded... the metal box they're going to need to protect it from damage is probably going to block any chance of a wireless signal from coming out ;-)
While this sounds like a cool idea, I see too much room for abuse... Besides, they're using it to track all this traffic activity... do you want to use the government's internet connection so they can track that part of your life, too?
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Gods and fishes! Somebody get me some aspirin!
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Is there anything left in the UK that isn't being monitored? Cameras on all the streets, in the stores and now wireless monitoring your speed. Bye bye 2004, hello 1984.
I'm sure all the cars going the wrong way would easily crash the software.
As member of a rural area desperatly waiting for broadband, I see one big problem with the plan; most rural areas don't have streetlights!
This is a privacy issue, not a technology issue. This would allow the police to track your car all over the country.
Trolling is a art,
in streetlights? Does that make any sense to anyone? Considering that most street lights are meant to snap off their bases if enough force is applied to them, it just doesn't seem like the ideal location for that type of hardware.
But man, talk about scary big brother tactics: "a government initiative to monitor all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere"
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I'm guessing that war driving will get *really* easy after this... It will probably increase the number of "war walkers" as well, and I'd bet we'd even start to see "war sitters" on the curbs! ;)
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All brit's posting to slashdot have officially lost the right to make references to the U.S. being an orwellian, facist state in comparison to their own.
You guys seem to have so many cameras and tracking systems going in that country of yours you probably enjoy the privacy offered by Las Vegas casinos.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Only 20 years later.
Do people really put up with this? If this were implemented in the US, it would be 5 seconds flat til that network was cut into 500 million pieces.
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Yes a wi-fi network would be nice, but hardly essential. Lets face it , as they say the real use is for car control, which as we know is a
euphamism for population control. Obviously the powers that be have decided that controlling a car is too dangerous a task for adults to be left with and must be relegated to a computer controlled government
network. Well no thank you! If I wanted to live in this sort of country I'd have gone to live in the old East Germany which modern britain is fast beginning to resemble. how long before we have
government schemes for informants?
Tracking vehicles is a great way to detect traffic jams. If the vehicles moving past one sensor do not reach the next sensor in a reasonable amount of time, you know you have a problem. The linked research suggests that tracking vehicles through the network enables a faster detection time for problems (faster than waiting for the traffic to clog and backup to where the sensor is located.)
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
holy christ i hope this never happens in the united states. RFID tags on license plates, convicted felon tracking, always-on monitoring. feh. oh boy, wireless everywhere. but the price is just too awful to consider.
"It's OK, my sheet's got a hole in it!"
..."professional women" with wirless enabled PDAs? Possible slogan: "The newest technology for the world's oldest profession." ;)
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the metal box they're going to need to protect it from damage is probably going to block any chance of a wireless signal from coming out
:) Not the easiest place to gain access too.
That's why you put the antenna on the outside...
Street lights are what, 15-20 feet tall? (5-6 meters for our European friends
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The phone boxes and transformers hanging on poles havent become targets yet and they have been readily available for quite a few decades.
Now of course those arent being used to track movements and issue speeding tickets but I wonder how many criminals will even pay attention to them after 5-10 years. How often do you notice the telephone boxes sitting out in plain site that you could hack/crack/vandalize?
True. But they do not harm people. The traffic cameras/CCD cameras that do harm people are attacked/damaged quite often.
monitor all cars' speed and location, all the time, everywhere
The UK gov has an obsession with monitoring it's citizens. London already has more CCTV than any other capital. On average you're court on camera 300 times a day.
I expect their excuse is to improve road safety. The real reason is so they can issue more speeding tickets and increase the number of tolls.
The UK Motorist already pays 3 taxes to use the roads. Duty at the gas pump, Road Tax and tolls to use public roads in the form of the London congestion charge.
It's really not - the UK has the highest incidence of CCTV cameras in the world.
1: Goverment masturbate over new interconnected data paradigm that can enable key economic resource in an efficient manner.
2: Project is funded.
3: Press release about how the government is promoting small business.
4: Funding is approved.
5: Press release about how great the goverment is.
6: Work starts.
7: Press release about how the government gets things done!
8: BT and NTL realise how much money this will lose them, hands cash in brown envelopes to MPs.
9: Press release about our existing world-class interenet infrastructure that was pushed through by government.
10: Project cancelled.
11: Profit! (For existing telcos, the bastards.)
For pessamists, no ??? is required. We know that step, and it's bloody awful.
Beep beep.
In a previous life tempest emmisions were old news and shielding buildings and equipment was commonplace.
;-)
So I start a website selling nice decorative or transparent license plate borders that could shield or obfuscate and RFID signal and make $ of poor brits yearning to be free?.. I love being american
But seriously, I see a need for people to start developing counter-measures for consumers. Anyone have ideas?
There was a report recently that stated that something like 1 in 5 miles of road in the UK was in such a poor state that it was unfit to drive on. How about they drop this idea for the moment and fill some potholes instead?
Some councils actually spend more money setting compensation claims from car owners who have had accidents due to poor roads than they do actually maintaining them.
Anyway, with a decent network in place, perhaps we'd need to use them less anyway!
You fool! You've given cheese to a lactose intolerant volcano god! Do you know what that means?
To followup my own posting, here is a newspaper article describing the public surveillance situation in Britain as it stands.
But the constant monitoring by the streetlamps is for our own safety, lest we succumb to breaking the law.
All brit's posting to slashdot have officially lost the right to make references to the U.S. being an orwellian, facist state in comparison to their own.
Surely, brother, we shouldn't make such references to our beloved state. The principles of INGSOC must be upheld in all aspects of life.
To do otherwise is CRIMETHINK. Please report to room 101 for re-education.
Initially, this could be implemented as a stipulation for your car to pass its MOT (MOT is the UK roadworthiness annual).
Then the police could check for the presence and operation of the device during road-side checks.
*So* Here's the trick - find its frequency and build yourself a nice little signal generator/transmitter to put out static at a higher power than the government device. (Duh, that was easy).
The thing that really upsets me about this is that you can almost guarantee the government will require car-owners to buy these units out of their own pockets.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
People said that about all our speed cameras (they'd get torn down, or vandalised, etc). Most of 'em still stand though, happily snapping at the passing motorists.
Craig
This is the UK: they don't have transformers hanging on poles outside their homes like in N. America. Most cables are buried. N. American streets seem very cluttered to the eyes of a Briton due to the number of poles and cables everywhere, especially in more urban areas (like the street I live on in Toronto). I do remember seeing British Telecom boxes around, and hearing stories of phreakers taking advantage of them.
The UK seems to be filled with obnoxious youths intent on damaging everything. Get a new car: expect somebody to run their key along it. Put something nice outside your house: expect it to be stolen, vandalised, or pissed on. I remember being an arsehole at the age of 18: running pissed through people's daffodils kicking them everywhere, or running car dealerships over each car to set the alarm off. We used to come out of the pub and have pissing competitions on the windows of the glass office block (Equitable Life headquaters) across the road. And I wasn't a real arsehole compared with a lot of people I knew or saw.
Most of this behaviour just doesn't seem to happen in N. America, or at least here in Canada. Thank goodness.
When people drive they accept the laws of the road. Why are they always so upset every time there's an initiative to stop people speeding?
So I'm a biased pedestrian, but it does seem to me that given the hundreds of car fatalities that occur *every day*, monitoring what people do so that the drivers who "get away" with dangerous driving are caught is a good thing.
You might get away with dangerous driving. But the longer you do, the more dangerous you'll get. And then you're putting people's lives at risk.
Maybe you can justify breaking the law when it comes to software. I'm sorry, you can't justify driving dangerously.
Ever.
Wireless connection on major highways... a great innovation. However, it worries me. Ever been in the fast-lane following some dunce going 50mph because she's chatting on her cell phone and has forgotten where she is? Now we'll have people playing Solitaire, checking email, and God Forbid... posting to SlashDot. Is the world ready for this?
Adelaide, Australia is already using its' street light infrastructure to support a municipal wireless network ("citilan") in the central business district:
Community Broadband Networks:
"City of Adelaide to offer wireless broadband downtown"
MuniWireless.com:
"Adelaide hotzone is up and running"
Al Bonnyman
Community Broadband Networks
> Street lights are what, 15-20 feet tall? (5-6 meters for our European friends
Ha! I see where people have left their tennis shoes up there all the time.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
street lamps ... or, "telephone poles" as we know them here in the US.
Well, whats the point of creating a wireless network using telephone poles, when the fucking telephone poles already carry wires.
"Well Bob, you see, there are these things called 'wires' that run between the street lamps."
"Ok Bill, can we do stuff with these 'wires'?"
"I don't know Bob. We might have to go wireless."
Scratch your head and run, it's safer that way.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
I wish that were true, but some people just haven't figured out it's a bad idea yet.
However, it is correct that cameras garner far more hatred. Also, some more amusing moments.
I remember when CC cameras were introduced to the UK and laughed thinking that it would never happen here in the US. Then after 9/11, my fellow citizens were screaming for more "security" and government was more than happy to oblige. Give it 5 years and you will see this crap in the US, for our "safety" of course.
THIS is the reason I own firearms, THIS is the same reason our Founding Fathers owned firearms - to hold off a tyrannical government. Unfortunately, the British people have given up their rights to defense.
Only 7% of accidents have anything at all to do with speeding. It's a damned near insignificant number.
The other *93%* of accidents are caused by shit driving which can't be monitored by speed cameras or wireless street lights.
The accident rate in the UK was falling steadily *until* the police and local government started installing thousands of speed cameras everywhere. It is no longer falling because now shit driving is OK as long as you don't go 5mph over the bloody limit.
I break the speed limit *every* single day but I don't drive dangerously. Speeding and dangerous driving are *not* the same thing.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Maybe there is a correlation betwixt a government that wants to do everything from wipe your ass to be your mommy that is causing such problems. The government of GB gives me the willies looking out for its' citizens rights even beyond what they want. Big brother is alive and well in the British Isles and sprouting in America as well :(
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
You'd be suprised - the current speed camera's are about 3m tall and I've seen films of people deliberately smashing them with their (presumably stolen) vehicles. I've even seen someone rip the camera off the pole with a JCB.
I've seen a few people paintballing the lenses too. I guess a nice thick metal box with a solid antenna on top will survive, but anything less is doomed from the start.
19.99 a month for 256k 59.99 for 2Mb
if you have SkyTV it won't cost you the 200 ish installation for a SkyDish
I'm told the latency is quite high so don't expect to play quake
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There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
UK drivers!
If you want sheer speed then spend your holidays in Germany. Autobahn network is still there, with no speed limit at all in many places (and still they have better safety record than other EU nations when it comes to accidents on highways).
If you want a different type of thrill go to Eastern Europe. They don't have road network in the modern sense of the word, but you can speed on most small roads. And if you happen to get caught by a radar equipped policeman (happens on main roads) just give him a 20 Euro banknote and drive on.
This creeping spelling fascism really has to stop - damn it, if I want to misspell stuff, then I damned well ought to be able to.
Next thing you know, they'll ban waving your willy in public.
Bastards.
If you don't believe me, look here for Googles jackbooted response to my exercising my freedom of speach.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!