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Cell Phones to Monitor Traffic Flow
PCOL writes "The Baltimore Sun reports that Delcan technology will soon begin fullscale deployment of a system in Maryland that will mine cellphone data to determine traffic conditions such as jams and slowdowns. As long as a user's phone is turned on, the cellphone network notes the time of handoffs from cell to cell to calculate the location and speed of vehicles. Researchers say the program will reduce congestion by quickly delivering alerts on road conditions to drivers. The company says they will not track the movement of individual drivers. However, a staff attorney for the EFF says that tracking might violate federal law and 'increases the chances that information will be used for more invasive purposes in the future.'"
*Ahem*
/ 01/159241&tid=193
DUPE!
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
You don't have to do any tracking of handsets to estimate how busy the roads are - just count the number of handoffs coming in going out (per cell per handset). The quicker they are, the faster the cars are moving.
Can this technology also be used to monitor dupes?
It's just a few small steps from this measure to MIND CONTROL CHIPS EMBEDDED IN OUR BRAINS!!!111
Introduced to provide traffic speed info (provided you subscribe - about $50 per month).
Now beiing used to find stolen cars, terrorists (recently anyone who disagrees with a government minister) and people who owe parking tickets - who have their car clamped until they pay.
George Orwell was only 20 years too early - he got most of the rest right.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Yes the top posting in the duped story is saying how that story is a duped story :)
Can you hear me now? Are we there yet? Can you hear me now? Are we there yet? etc.
;)
I'm not looking forward to this
Don't want to be tracked? Just switch your phone off while you are driving.. safer for everyone on the road anyway..
I'm so glad that monitoring cellphones for traffic data will protect my rights as I surf the 'Net.
When they get this working, the next thing will be that they think of ...*poof* now why don't we use this system to automatically detect drivers who is speeding.
Of course, it can't track you if your number starts with $sys$...
With National Security letters blowing like leaves in the wind, that will be about 15 minutes after it's activated.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I don't have a problem with this as long as the users being tracked "opt in" and are being paid in exchange for the intrusion. Why should industry get a free ride out of this?
I've seen a demo by the Maryland Highway Department personel involved with this technology. Each cell phone is given a random ID by the cell phone provider, so that the phones that are being tracked cannot be associated with an individual. All they know is that phone xyz is taking so long to get from one cell to the next. There are no privacy issues here.
This is only the first step, a new technology referred to as telemeatics will soon replace any need to track your cell phone. Our cars are full of computers, just waiting to be wirelessly connected. Soon, such services will be able to:
- Detect vehicular crashes, alerting both the nearest emergency services, your family and your insurance company.
- Monitor your vehicle, suggesting maintenance.
- Allow your Insurance company to track the number of miles driven, your average speed, percentage of quick stops, etc...
- Learn about the road conditions from the vehicles in front of you.
And these are just some of the initial easy to reach applications.
The issue with this isn't the current implementation. Everything that's created to better mankind or to deliver a service starts off being utopian and pristine. It just takes time for people to start finding and using the more sinister applications of this or any other kind of service.
Examples: Email - Started off with being a convenient, quick and easy way to exchange information.. Now - Cialis and Viagra ads as far as the eye can see
Web surfing - Intended as a way to access massive amounts of information quickly and easily, basically sharing the worlds knowledgebase.. Now - Pop-up, Pop-over, Pop-under, and Glom-on ads everywhere.
So in conclusion this may provide a useful service for the first year or so, then once the government realizes they need to find a specific person, or the cell phone companies need to find out how many of their subscribers travel which roadways (to help drive advertising to non-subscribers) then it will like so many other cool ideas, just turn into a pain in the ass.
Unless I am confusing my web sites, this is the _third_ time this has been on /.
So if two is a dupe...
A third is a... tripe?
Like not track me in PUBLIC with my Cell phone BROADCASTING DATA ...
... they need to get their heads checked.
If people think this is a privacy violation
It's times like this I *know* activist groups need to get a hobby to carry them through the dry spells.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Your cell phone provider is collecting that data anyway -- maybe not storing it for extended period of time -- but the data is collected. You can do this kind of tracking in a two ways: the right and the wrong.
To do it right way, you use temporary identifiers (GSM network uses them anyway) that are anonymious and drop all routes that have too few mobile phones; like if you are living in a rural area and are the only one that takes specific route. After you have made analysis, you drop also temporary identifiers. This does not introduce any more privacy problems than normal operation of cell phone network.
You can get all the information you want to estimate traffic jams with this method.
Of course, you may want to do it wrong way and collect also phone numbers, called numbers and even record calls that are made. Very usefull, if driwing when talking is prohibited in your area. That is something a national security will need :-). Thus EFF should be worried about this.
I suppose there's something poetic, however, about duplicating a joke to complain about a duplicate story...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Triangulation...hand-offs....were'd you get this stuff? ...besides your imagination, I mean :)
The technology they (we) are using, as one example, includes multipath reflections (CDMA) and time-delay measurement. All that's needed is the location of one BTS, which is constantly updated using standard GPS. Spread spectrum usage has advanced significantly, and fine grain accuracy is sufficiently progressed to be able to pinpoint which user among hundreds you may want to id. Since it even works indoors, you can expect it to win out over simple GPS based locating technology.
I was thinking, "Well gee, all you have to to is... turn them off!" Then I realized that maybe that's what they are hoping. It's certainly what I hope this makes people do.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
I hope they remember to "flag" those guys flying into town with their cell phones switch on...
especially since the FCC decided to allow this...
Well, Orwell was no prophet. He was totally wrong. We live in a society in which governments have to go abroad to be militaristic and repressive, in which information about any kind of government abuse is splashed all over the Internet in minutes. Before the Internet, someone who shouted at Harold Wilson during a party conference could be sent to prison and nothing was said about it. Now, someone shouts at a minister, bouncers and police overreact, and damage is inflicted on the Labour Party within a few days. The risk to freedom is not so much from government as large corporations, and Orwell gets a score there because, as I noted above, 1984 is a satire on a corporation.
Can we add "or who mentions 1984" to the Internet law that the first side to mention the Nazis loses?
Pining for the fjords
So it is a trifecta of tripe.
We can use cell phones to monitor traffic flow!!!!!
A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.
Phredd - "I have found people tend to take you far less seriously once you start waving your genitals at them..."
It's also possible to be too paranoid about things to you own detriment !!
Right on! If someone is broadcasting a signal, I should have a right to track it or record it or whatever. If they care about their privacy, they shouldn't be broadcasting a beacon! Making it illegal to track signals from cell phones smacks as a DMCA-like restriction to protect bad technology by making scientific curiosity illegal.
Or this is like making it illegal to sniff packets just because people are too lazy to encrypt stuff.
Let the gubberment track cell phones! It could put a hell of a lot more drug dealers in jail. And they won't be able to track me, because I'll just turn off my phone or use alternative means of communication.
p.s. I'm not being sarcastic or trolling... I really think the right to receive radio signals is more important than the right to be lazy.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
What is the chance that the Police will use this system for speeders? I bet they would just love this new little trick. In fact, I don't think the true reason for this technology is for traffic management. The gains for running this project for traffic regulation benefits nobody's pocketbook. But, if law enforcement could use it as proof on speeders, then it all makes sense! They would know who you are, where you are going, where you were, how fast you were going at a specific time when no police were around... all without even being there. Heck, they can just mail you your ticket along with your cell phone bill!
...that I'm in my car? In Chicago, trains run down alongside the expressways, how can they tell the difference between the people on the train, people waiting at a train station, and the people actually driving?
Well the privacy problem remains even if this story has been posted already a zillion times.
We only need to convince ourself that the world can go fine even if we turn that cell phone offAs well as our life!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The totalitarian government described in Orwell's famous work is pretty much assumed to be world-wide - Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia all cooperating to wage perpetual war while switching allegiences every once in a while to keep the sides even. This allows each country to beseech it's citizens to sacrifice in the name of championing the state's cause (there's always a war on), an enemy to blame whenever things go wrong, and ally whose neediness may be used to appeal to the citizen's sense of charity...etc. By the way, if merely fleeing one country would have meant escape for the two protagonists of the story, they would have headed for the nearest border as soon as they consumated their first love. Now, you want the same kind of story *with* the extra ingredient of a place on the planet to escape to (oh ho ho ho ho! I won't spoil it!), check out Ira Levin's most under-appreciated novel, "This Perfect Day" (it's SCREAMING to be made into a movie!!! When will it be discovered? And when it becomes a movie, will they botch it up?)
PS to AC's: Don't cop literacy on me, Sonny. I've FORGOTTEN more books than you'll ever see in a lifetime!
I think it's about time to let Faraday out of his cage.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Read the history of Renaissance Italy and you will see that one the two themes you mention in 1984 has a long history. (The condottieri raised the use of continuous war with shifting allegiances intended to obtain and keep power to a fine art. ) The use of language to shape thought patterns and so control the populace also has a long history, with the British ruling classes consciously doing this through their education system and media since the middle of the nineteenth century.
Personally, despite or perhaps because I come from a British middle class background, I think Pohl and Kornbluth's The space merchants is a much more prophetic dystopia than 1984. P&K foresaw ever more intrusive advertising, the oppressive role of corporations, the development of addictive products to maintain corporate income, running out of oil, and the privatisation of governments. They missed the Internet, though they did get dynamically targetted advertising. The reason that Orwell is so famous is basically because he _was_ part of the upper middle class coterie that controlled post-war Britain and benefited from his connections in getting published and gaining publicity. (And, I suspect, because 1984 is a short,memorable title.)
Pining for the fjords
If this system follows the path of other surveillance systems implemented in the past few years, here is the likely sequence of events:
1. System is installed as they say, with each cell phone assigned a random number simply to keep track of the handoff. System works wonderfully, traffic is monitored at a fraction of the cost of installing cameras and road sensors. Government hails the effort as a success, touted as saving millions to taxpayers
2. Another "Beltway Sniper" or the like causes widespread panic and terror. The general public is stirred up by this.
3. A proposal is made by the government or contract to identify them by their cell phone. By identifying the cell phone ECNs that were present at each incident they hope to narrow to a suspect. As it happens, the system has been consistently undergoing upgrades in the background, with the ability to archive for the purpose of "studies" to improve the algorithms. The infrastructure is also in place to actually track individual ECNs, all that is needed is a software upgrade. The public is informed that the system will normally assign random identification numbers to all cell phones tracked, but for the purpose of law inforcement, there will be the ability to bypass this to obtain the real ECN. This feature will only be available to a few law enforcement officials.
4. Privacy advocates rail at this, among them the EFF and ACLU. They are vehemently dismissed as being on the side of terrorists and criminals.
5. The software is upgraded, and now the system can identify unique ECNs. The sniper/etc is caught, and the government hails it as a victory for the people. The public applauds the government for their ingenuity, and happily go about their lives with their cell phones tracked and uniquely linked to them. All naysayers are declared on the side of terrorism.
6. Being tracked like that is now the role of a good citizen. If you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't mind being tracked.
Once the system they propose is there, there's nothing to say it won't be upgraded over time so that it's a simple matter to track individuals through their cell phones. Then, it's just a matter of waiting for the right disaster to justify to the public that it's in their best interests to throw the switch.
THIS IS FUCKKING OUTRAGEOUS!!!!!!!!!! DOES THIS ZONK ASSHOLE EVER READ THE SITE?!? THIS IS THE LAST STRAW I WILL NOT READ /. AGAIN!
This site has really gone downhill the last couple of years. Seemslike every other post is a dupe. There has yet to be coverage of the very important blogger case of Elsebeth Baumgartner. It hasn't even been covered! It's time for everyone to get their news and discussion somewhere else.
What about these damn cameras on top of every traffic light?
,then you see them on streets that don't matter at all and never get any traffic. WTF????
"that information will be used for more invasive purposes in the future."
"it's just for monitoring traffic"
Where's the EFF on that one?
This is the third time this article has been presented in as many months. Yes, I can hear you now.
Funny enough, the word/image that I had to type in to get my article posted was "unneeded".