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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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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,
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.
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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.
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..."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.
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?
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.
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
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.
Are you suggesting that people are going to start snapping these puppies off to steal the wireless routers
No, when a car hits them (which happens on a semi-frequent basis in any major metropolitan area). They're made to snap off to decrease the damage done to the car and occupants. They're also easier to repair if they snap completely off then if they would just bend when hit.
Next time you walk by one, take a little bit closer look at it. They're typically connected to the base by 4 large bolts usually with some type of cushioning, semi-plyable material in between. When a car hits it the four bolts snap and the pole falls over, typically breaking just the bolts and the light and causing minimal damage to the vehicle. To repair it they simply replace the light and the four bolts.
Plus only the antenna would need to be on the streetlight itself, the rest could be buried underground.
That wouldn't make too much sense and would be much more expensive/time consuming to install and repair. You don't see a lot of burried phone boxes. But who knows, this is the government.
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> 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
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.
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!