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Tracking Cell Phones for Real-Time Traffic Data
stillgoogling writes to tell us the Associated Press is reporting that the Missouri Department of Transportation is stepping up a project to track the mass movements of cellular phones. This project is designed to use the movements of cell phones to map real-time traffic conditions statewide on more than 5,500 miles of road. From the article: "Officials say there's no Big Brother agenda in the Missouri project -- the data will remain anonymous, leaving no possibility to track specific people from their driveway to their destination."
Here you go. I particularly like the phrase "Even though its anonymous, it's still ominous". Try saying that 20 times after a couple of beers.
It seems that INRETS (= National Institute for Transport and Safety Research) teamed up with SFR (one of the mobile operators) to do just that.
...
I can't find any direct link to the paper, altough somebody with an IEEE account could probably find some. It is also cited on University of Virginia Center for Transportation studies.
If somebody can link to more info
#include "coucou.h"
This was done in Finland a long time ago. Even made it to slashdot.
I don't think that the state will invest money only for traffic control purposes. Traffic was also the excuse for installing cameras on roads during the 2004 olympic games in Athens but were used to track people during demonstrations...
"Officials say there's no Big Brother agenda in the Missouri project (outside of the obvious)-- the data will remain anonymous (Unless we want to watch a specific person), leaving no possibility to track specific people from their driveway to their destination (without a reason, though any reason at all will do)."
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Our company has been experimenting with this idea since a year or two, to measure the traffic on smaller "B" roads, that unlike highways do not have traffic measuring equiment built into the asphalt. Here is a short article (In Dutch, use Babelfish), and the site with the traffic information (Type in the 6 digit number shown into the "log in" box). They obtain phone location data from one or more GSM providers. The data has been filtered so they only get generic location data; no phone numbers or other identifiers are provided.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have a theory which states that traffic, when essentially quantized (grouped into bunches of vehicles moving between traffic lights), exhibits several quantum mechanisms.
For example, whether or not a quantum of traffic (bunch of cars) reaches their intended destinations, the affects on the traffic of that area are the same as if they really did reach their intended destinations. This is essentially because people generally choose routes which they think will be the fastest or easiset, and people think "Oh it's Friday afternoon on the start of a long weekend, lots of people will be going out of the city for holidays down highway X, I'll go a different way." Hence whether or not a quantum of traffic is going somewhere, people avoid them just the same.
This can be simulated by a computer in a combination with this kind of system, to very accurately time traffic light sequences so as to reduce the average waiting time per vehicle across a large area. In theory it is possible to quantize traffic (eg, stop/allow single cars until they end up in a bigger group) and time traffic lights so that almost no waiting at traffic lights is needed. As long as you travel within one of the quanta you would have green lights all the way.
"Officials say there's no Big Brother agenda in the Missouri project -- the data will remain anonymous, leaving no possibility to track specific people from their driveway to their destination." Maybe for the trial run & to get approval it will remain anonymous - but just like the video cameras put up on american taxpayer paid roads and intersections "for traffic purposes", it won't take long before this technology, pitched as one thing, will be used for another. Coming from a friend in law enforcement - those video cameras are used for whatever they want.
Simple solution is to power off the cell phone; some newer models are rumored to never truly power off - simple work-around if unsure / paranoid is to then place the phone into a shielded bag similar to what is provided to folks who use EZPass.
Cell phone tracking is already so prevalent that use for traffic monitoring is merely another extension of the extensive data collection that's already being going on for quite some time from cell phone users, including actual data, such as text messages sent/received.
On an aside, most folks have no real need to always have their cell phone on when driving - let the voice mail take calls and help keep the roads safer; due to lawsuits some companies forbid use of cell phones while driving, so why even leave the phone on...
Ron Bennett
Write, e-mail, or call the Missouri Department of Transportation & tell them what you think.
Missouri Department of Transportation
105 W. Capitol Ave.
Jefferson City, MO 65102-0270
Phone: 573-751-2551
Fax: 573-751-6555
Toll Free: 888-275-6636
http://www.modot.state.mo.us/
a Wired article appears...
Virgin Radio
But you forget -- in some regions, traffic is a major issue. (eg, the Washington, DC metro area) -- if legislators can get get traffic issues cleaned up in an area that has major problems, it could mean an easy re-election for them.
If they're actually thinking about the general population, and not themselves, they'd be looking at the other benefits that something like this could provide --
Yes, there are potentially less-than-ethical reasons for wanting a system like this, but there are pleny of reasons why something like this is a benefit for the general population -- now, is the money for this project worthwhile? For all we know, it's being done because one of the politicians is getting kickbacks, and they're spending too much, as compared to other, more worthwhile projects for their state (in terms of Benefit/Cost Ratio or some other measure used to determine project viability)
(I didn't read the orginal article, so some of this may have already been covered. Of course, there wasn't a link to it, so everyone has an excuse this time. This might also show how much work some of the editors do to look at articles being linked to ... as opposed to looking for articles that are controversial and/or don't hold up, to result in 'animated discussion')
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
When an editor decides to rewrite the copy, it helps to make sure the meat is still there -- in this case, the actual link to the article.
So that other people don't have to waste time like I did, here are a few assorted articles on the topic (some are marked as specifically from the AP):
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Just count the fucking CARS!!!
The latest Slashdot meme.
Paper (pdf warning).
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
So what happens when someone forgets to turn off their phone on an airplane?
"Wow, traffic is really flying on the I-95 corridor"
and there's a fork in the road. If they see that 99% of people go left and 1% goes right then they'll know 99% chance I'll go left.
.... I'm confused.
So. Then I think they think I'll go left, so I'll go right.
But they think that I think that they think I'll go left to go right so they go left.
But I think they think that I think that they think
This approach has been patented long ago. The latest US Patent on is 6,577,946 which has references to all the olds one covering basically the same stuff.
The next invasion of privacy will be requiring every automobile to be registered with the government. Armed law enforcement agents will compel any vehicle not displaying its government id to stop.
Oh, wait a minute...
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
The perfect state job:
"seven hundred thirty two thousand three hundred fifty two"
"seven hundred thirty two thousand three hundred fifty three"
"seven hundred thirty two thousand ummm.... ah shit!"
"one"
"two"
"three"...
Motorola did a lot of work with UK company Trafficmaster on their Smartnav product, where most of the traffic data comes in realtime from roadside cameras and sensors on Motorway bridges covering 9,000 miles of UK roads. When you push the button on the unit, the mobile phone rings into a call centre with the current GPS position encoded in the Caller ID of the phone call (3 bytes), you tell them the destination, and they send the turn-by-turn instructions back into the unit. If a jam shows up on your route before you get to your destination, the central servers ring the units and offer (with an estimate of the delay if you do nothing), then download, a route around the jam (if indeed one is available). Works really well.
Getting a GPS signal communicated back and forth in real time is the only way this hack will work - at least until the cell sizes get to 3G pico sizes.
There have been experiments with floating vehicle sensors, but most companies that say they use these for real time data collection do so as a PR stunt - the number of vehicles that need to be equipped and the economics of getting the data back in real time don't make business sense today, from either an accuracy or cost standpoint. Most instead download history at the end of the day, and just pick up details of roadworks and accidents from "journalistic" sources - whether there's a jam present or not.
Until we get GPS in most handsets (and if operators allow the caller IDs to be sent through with GPS data on board, but the call terminated at either end without any money changing hands), the use of mobile phones for spotting jams, or indeed navigating around them, will be very limited.
Ian W.
i submitted this 2 weeks ago but i didn't use "stillgoogling" as my name....
I don't know what you're complaining about. The Slashdot editors' random submission selection system is totally and completely unbiased.
May the Maths Be with you!
After some thought, most reasonable people conclude that the current method of taxing gasoline works better. It's anonymous. It's cheap and easy because prices must be computed per gallon when you sell gasoline anyway. It taxes you for how much you drive and imposes no burden on those who don't use the roads.
Why do some government officials love the Big Brother way? The greedy ones realize you can squeeze much more out of people if you charge them differential rates they are unaware of. I'll bet most of you pay more for telco than you do for gasoline and roads, yet roads are more expensive to maintain than coper wires or fibers. The invasive ones realize they can track their perceived enemies. Both of these principles are in full swing in the UK, where the camera networks track people and charge those who drive downtown at the right time of day or speed. The camera networks were built to, yes you guessed it, "fight terrorism" and have manifestly failed at that. To get their wishes, they are willing to create a whole new infrastructure - the black boxes mentioned in the above link. The trade magazines were full of shine on about revenue maximization that hinted at tracking abilities.
The wired article points to some of the privacy concerns and shows that public officials are now aware of the issue and have to lie around it. The fact of the matter is that your cell phone can already be used to track you and that our sorry laws let that happen without much trouble or notice. Better laws would require the destruction of all data not required for billing, the destruction of that after payment and all the usual constitutional requirements to obtain so much as that. Individual tracking tools are too abusive to be allowed for people who are not convicted fellons.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The fact of the matter is, THEY can track you by your phone if THEY want to. THEY have been able to track you a bunch of other ways before this, if THEY wanted to. Maybe not your exact location right now, but close enough to go get you if THEY wanted to.
Then again, is it worth all the time worrying about THEM tracking you when most of the time THEY dont give a good goddamn if you're even alive, much less where you are at any given point in time, so long as you don't do anything horribly wrong.
I really can't see why people worry about this so much
<ramblin>
Things THEY could do to use the cell phone system more:
THEY could even use it to tell the highway partol where to put the speed traps now and start giving out a grip of speeding tickets. This would give an economic boost via court fees and fines, not to mention generating income for traffic court lawyers, whoc would then kick that back into the economy in the form of buying luxury items. Then we get a surplus of money in the government coffers, and they kick it back to the population of their respective states as a rebate every year, redistributing wealth from the people who can't seem to follow traffic laws to everyone else. (What? Have to speed to get where you're going? Sorry. Allow yourself more time to get where you;re goinig. Live closer to where you work. Your choice.)
Get stopped for doing something wrong and give the cops some fake id... lets check that against your cell phone, just for fun. "Sir, not to racially profile, but your cell phone says youre Eunice Witherspoon. You sure don't LOOK like a Eunice Witherspoon, being a man and all."
Or, like it has beeen said a million times already - you don't HAVE to have a cell phone. Carry a bunch of quarters and some disenfectant on you and use payphone!
</ramblin>
(hey, new submission posting form!)
s'wut i sed.
I guess that would be the only way to go. Pay cash for a prepaid phone.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation has real-time traffic tracking capabilities (http://www.dot.state.mn.us/tmc/trafficinfo/map/re freshmap.html) in the Minneapolis-St.Paul metropolitian area that are completely anonymous. Mn/DOT embeds detectors in the pavement down the center of each lane of the freeway and on every entrance ramp to measure volume, occupancy, speed, and flow. They use this information to control the freeway entrance meters. We are one of the few metro areas in the U.S. that effectively uses on-ramp meters to assist in controlling traffic flow during the dreaded rush hours.
This seems like a much better way to gather really useful traffic information than tracking cellular phone movements, especially with how spotty cellular tower coverage can be.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."