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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?
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!
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.
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?
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.
I think that your conclusion -- that there might be some significant privacy applications here -- is correct, but your examples are weak.
I see no reason why aggregate, anonymized call origination data couldn't be used by police. In particular the example about police noticing an inordinate amount of calls from a location where there normally aren't any. I don't see any privacy violation in this.
Imagine that instead of looking for cell phone calls, which are electromagnetic waves being blasted into the ether, the cops were looking for visible light. They drive by a big abandoned farmhouse and notice lots of lights on. This doesn't give them probable cause to search, but it does give them a reason to knock on the door and ask for permission to search. And if, like many abandoned buildings, the property owner has previously informed the police that the building is posted against trespassing and unoccupied, they may be within their rights to walk right in unannounced, depending on the local laws.
This is no different from the cell phone case. Only in one situation they're seeing visible light, in the other it's electromagnetic radiation produced by two-way radios (that's what your cell phone is, after all). They can't enter and search a house based ONLY on this, obviously, just like they couldn't if it was just light emanating from the building. If they then went to investigate though, and found probable cause, or were given permission to search, any resulting arrests would not be "tainted."
The only way the privacy violation would come into play would be if the police, without a warrant or wiretap order, used the unique identification number of your phone plus the network's location data to put you at a certain location at a certain time. That, I think, would be obviously inadmissible, unless the records were kept by the carrier as a matter of course and obtained by a legitimate subpoena after the fact.
The difference, imo, is when an individual is being singled out for close observation and monitoring, versus when the data is being used anonymously and in aggregate. To come back to the original example of the rave/clandestine meeting/meth lab in the abandoned building, if the police saw that suddently there were 20 active cellphones where for the last year there have been zero, and decided to drive by and check it out, that's perfectly fine. But if they come and arrest you for trespassing because YOUR cellphone was operating from within said property at 2:43 AM last night, when there wasn't a warrant or wiretap order from a judge outstanding already, that's clearly not.
I am, of course, a nobody, so there's no reason my opinion counts for anything. However based on previous rulings concerning things like infrared observation from aircraft (to look for buildings that are being used as industrial marijuana growing operations), I wouldn't be surprised if what I just outlined is how things eventually work out.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Nobody cares where you go. Nobody cares where you are. Nobody cares about you. You crazy paranoid megalomaniac, they're not after you. They only care about important people. like me :)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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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