Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
Being an unfortunate resident of Maryland I do know that they tried to set up speed cameras; however, from my understanding that idea failed. In fact, Lockheed Martin was the company in charge of developing the cameras and when the controversy started, they let another company take over that. LM didn't want the heat apparently. They had a couple for "testing" purposes on the beltway around DC, it caught me once, but they were only sending out warnings since it wasn't "legal" yet to ticket speeders.
There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling! -- CBG, "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes"
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
Well, after clicking through some links it seems this is the FIFTH /. story about the same thing.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/ 01/159241&tid=193 7 &tid=215&tid=126 4 7&mode=thread&tid=126 2 9&mode=thread&tid=100
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/07621
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/30/12432
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/13/04282