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MIT Researches Map Cell Phone Usage
stlhawkeye writes "MIT researchers with the Mobile Landscape Projects have mapped a city based on cell phone usage. The article includes a map of Graz, Austria with a color-coded overlay indicating cell phone usage in various parts of the city. Using call origin and destination data, they are able to not only reverse-engineer a topographic map of the geography and landscape, but one of phone usage as well. The implications of the research have practical applications in law enforcement, emergency management, and traffic management. There are also, of course, privacy implications."
Is anyone checking to ensure that the MIT engineers are not eavesdropping on your cell-phone telephone calls?
MIT researches why slashdot editors can't correct obvious spelling error. (Two verbs in a row? come on!)
Maybe this can be used to carriers a general idea of where there reception is good and bad. Maybe then they'll believe me when I complain that they need more antennas.
The correct address for MIT's "Mobile Landscape" project can be found here.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
http://cms.graztourismus.at/cms/beitrag/10004630/4 7303/
The red peak must be a girls college...
I think the question on all of our minds right now is...
/chose the wrong school
//no wait, there are hot girls here
What the hell are MIT researchers doing at Austria?!?
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
I have a need to display similar images for a presentation - any pointers in the software that made their pretty pictures would be appreciated.
In the figure in the original link, the big peak at the right rear is the location of the technical university. So, it shows that college students use cell phones heavily, which could never have been discovered otherwise. ; )>
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
What are the privacy implications if the study only uses anonymized location data, i.e. "in this field of 100m x 100m", there is a cell phone which now moves to this field etc.?
I think there are none. At least not any new ones than those implications by using cell phones at all.
The data about who uses which cell when does exist already and it needs to exist, in the current state, at all times in the phone system (how would you route calls without this information?)
Privacy concerns can surely be raised about storing such tracking profiles attached to particular persons. But just anonymized usage patterns?
The same sort of thing is also being done to map the usage of library books.
The problem with a cell phone usage map of a tech city, let's say Seattle, is that some neighborhoods have evolved beyond cell phones - and even watches.
I live in Fremont, Center of the Universe [or so our neighborhood is claimed as in many public artworks], which is a neighborhood in Seattle, one of the most heavily wired and unwired neighborhoods with DSL and Cable modem and Gigapops galore. Many of us have ditched our electronic cell phone tethers and gone phoneless - because we don't want to be bothered.
We already have wireless on our blackberry's and/or laptops, or might have a pager at most (which includes a handy digital clock so no watch needed).
But on a map like this we won't be shining brightly even tho we're more wired than the rest of Seattle, just because we can't be bothered by crufty cell phones.
So, realize it's only a map of old-world cell technology and not a map of tech centers, since some ultra-techs are not bothering with clunky cell phones.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Slashdot has editors?
I am amazed! What do they do?
speaking of cell phone 'usage', you should not own a cell phone because the are potential tracking devices.
Why are these people reinventing the wheel?
We plot phone traffic patterns as a function of geography on a daily basis so we can make sure we have capacity where we need it. Hell, I could go to a plotter 25 yards from my desk and plot out a map very similar to the one in the article.
Honestly, sometimes I chuckle at what academics think is cutting edge. Years ago a friend of mine from school was discussing "new" compensation algorithms for telescopes which were in fact over 20 years old to the people who've been working in satellite recon.
Interestingly enough the mapping of the number of reported cases of brain tumour results in he same graph.
What are the privacy implications if the study only uses anonymized location data, i.e. "in this field of 100m x 100m", there is a cell phone which now moves to this field etc.?
...) and initiate action - like a search to find out more.
There are considerable privacy implications.
For example: Law enforcement might notice cellphone activity in an area where none is expected - and go see what's going on there. Result: The uncover SOMEthing (a rave, a tresspass, a hermit, a criminal enterpirse, a fugitive, a meeting of political dissenters,
Search without probable cause. Tainted.
Search based on telephone call traffic analysis. (In the US, at least, law enforcement is NOT supposed to have any call connection information unless they have obtained it pursuant to a limited-time authorization which must be obtained only when there is probable cause to believe a crime is committed BEFORE the information is released to the police.
Annoyance - or even busting - of innocents. (I.e. somebody out camping uses his cellphone a lot - like he's verbose or is reading email - and the cops are looking for drug farmers in that park and come by to search his campsite. And perhaps looking bad because they've now done this twenty times without finding anything and/or because the guy "looks guilty" they decide to plant something on him. Or the poor sap happened to set up camp twenty feet from a pot grower's garden...)
The very existance of that map may be an invasion of the privacy of the cellphone users in the area.
Another poster asked: "What the hell are MIT researchers doing at Austria?!?" Perhaps they were there because they couldn't get the data HERE due to our privacy laws.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So how long until we can get an overlay for Google Earth?
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Could someone tell me why this is supposed to be such a break-through?
AFAIK, every GSM network provider has a database of what network-cell their users are in at a given time, and when they make a call, so all these guys did was to map that info onto a map of a city? Doesn't sound THAT innovative.
On a related note: does anybody know of a J2ME program that reads out where the cell-phone it's running on is located at the moment? i once heard something about a "locationAPI' or something like that, but couldn't find a demo program or more info on that.
What's the intellectual contribution of this research? Mapping data onto city maps is standard GIS usage. It's the kind of information companies use for deciding where to locate cell phone towers, where there are coverage problems, and where there are capacity problems.
...Oh wait
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/15/121 2240&tid=111&tid=218
...Oh wait
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/15/121 2240&tid=111&tid=218
I'm thinking about reading the article.
The important thing to remember is that these "copy and paste monkeys" are VERY highly paid. In fact, according to IRS records for tax year 2004, the LOWEST PAID EDITOR (you can probably guess who that was) took home $221,427.83. If this outrages you, just remember that every time you visit this site or post a comment, you're putting that money in their pockets while you're at your $37,800 per year job doing quality work. Toodles!
That map looks like something out of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Meet new people, and kill them.
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Non contorque sub ubi voster. (Don't get your knickers in a twist).
Really? Who'd have thunk it? Outstanding deduction there.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I seem to recall reading that most improvised explosive devices used by the Syrian/Saudi/Iranian terrorists deployed in Iraq use cell phone triggers. And I suspect the London bombs were triggered via cell phone, too.
I dearly hope that cell phone usage provide a window into this kind of activity. If the "privacy concerns" of this sort of cell-phone mapping are real, then the US military could exploit this in some kind of Able Danger style data-mining operation that might save some American soldiers' and Iraqi civilians' lives.
I am in two minds when someone cites privacy concerns. Part of me thinks, "it's bad for the government discover info that might falsely cast suspicion upon an innocent party." Another part of me thinks, "it's bad for the government to avert its eyes from information that could thwart an attempt to nuke New York City."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As someone who lives in Graz, this map is very interesting.
The large red peak is, not surprisingly, the Technical University in Town.
The smaller peaks in the centre of the map seem to be the Hauptplatz, the schlossberg, and the new art museum - so people phoning to meet friends etc. This area is also the old town of Graz, and is thick with bars, clubs, and resturants.
The peaks to the top left are residental areas, but there is also a Technical college in this area as well, but this area is also rife for traffic jams, so it could be people phoning home to say they'll be late.
The area at the bottom left of the map is industrial.
Interestingly the area at the bottom of the map, to the left of the large peak, is the red light district, but doesn't have any mobile activity. I guess it was the wrong time of day!
I suspect the point of the article was that it can now be done in realtime. The journalist may not have picked up that plotting traffic patterns was old hat but I'm sure the MIT researchers knew. Realtime traffic patterns would have many more uses than daily plots of the traffic patterns particularly in responding to emergencies.
The article uses the words "regular intervals" which doesn't really give us much idea of how often this is but "realtime" suggests that it's somewhere in the realm of every minute or several times a minute.
I like to think that researchers at MIT working on something that journalists report as "cutting edge" probably is cutting edge, however it may not be that the aspect of it the gets all the emphasis is actually the cutting edge part.
Sig matters not. Judge me by my sig, do you?
What's that big red blob on the map?
Oh that? That's the movie theater.
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