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Tracking Your Cell Phone for Traffic Reports
BostonBTS writes "IntelliOne Technologies has just launched a real-world test of Need4Speed, a real-time traffic-monitoring system that tracks drivers' cell phones. From their website: 'Unlike any other solution available today, the IntelliOne Roadway Speed Measurement System produces live roadway speeds for all highways and surface streets where mobile phone coverage exists, accurate to within three miles per hour.'
Of course, any compulsory phone-tracking system raises privacy concerns. According to an article on LiveScience, 'the personal identification data of users will be stripped from cell phone signals before they are processed by IntelliOne's software.' The cell phone companies have this data, but IntelliOne says they won't be keeping their copy."
Yes... and only their 10 digit user id/phone number will be left behind.. no names...
Oh wait... sorry... wrong company
They need maping software and route planning software that will give you a nifty detour around the latest car wreck. This has been discussed in other Slashdot conversations anyway.
God spoke to me.
And of course, AOL won't be releasing your search terms, the NSA won't be listening to your phone conversations or tracking your surfing habits, private companies won't be stockpiling huge warehouses of data to give to the government and you can trust a president who choked and fell while eating a pretzel to check and balance himself.
they say they won't keep it, but come on, they will still have all the numbers cataloged somewhere.
Who needs Soviet-style internal passports when they can not only GPS-track your cell phone, but can also track how fast you are moving. Here comes version 2.0: it automatically calls the police and tells them approximately where they will need to be to catch you based on your current speed and direction!
There's an interesting project called Place Lab that is building a database of, among other things, cell tower ID to physical location mappings. Their goal is to allow you to "[provide] low-cost, easy-to-use device positioning for location-enhanced computing applications."
Now, they don't have all the data that these guys have, since they just sample the tower that your phone currently happens to be talking to, so you may not be able to get accurate short-term speed readings, but I bet a lot of you could think of fun things to do with it!
Disclaimer: I'm not in any way associated with Place Lab, but I'm considering using it for some LBS experiments and would love to see as many people contributing to their database as possible. :)
This is why I always keep my cell phone in a lead box.
My bet is that they will find that they have a systematic error in the traffic speed. The cell phone users are driving more slowly than the rest of the cars. Might help to predict accidents, though.
If this is really accurate to 3mph I can imagine police in the future just mailing tickets to people based on cellphone data. It's annoying enough as some places are installing cameras/radar sensors to just mail you speeding tickets.
Can you imagine if anytime you happen to go above the speedlimit in cell range you get a ticket? Everyone will be driving 5 miles under the speed limit all the time to "protect" themselves. I can also see this being used by insurance companies to increase rates on people who tend to speed.
On the plus side there might be some advantage to driving with the cell off with this technology. It might become the only way to get away with speeding. At least some people will get off the phone and pay attention while driving.
I'm utterly appalled at the way you make fun of America's growing surveillance system. What's wrong with sacrificing privacy for safety? Your opposition to the free market usage of your personal information smacks of Godless communism. What do you have to hide? Aren't you aware that surveillance is needed to defend our constitution from our enemies? And please stop making fun of the good people at the NSA, they only have your best interests at heart.
[end neo con parody]
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
This shouldn't work on single occupant vehicles, since drivers should have their phones turned off at all times on the road for safety.
But I'm sure it will work anyway because enough drivers will ignore safety concerns and leave their phones turned on to allow good coverage.
The rest of the cars? Here in Greece, at least, everyone has at least one cellphone. I literally do not know anyone over 15 years old that doesn't have a cellphone. Except grandpa.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
The other huge boon to this is for the state. Imagine if you could see traffic trends by the minute covering trends over months. You could quickly identify dangerous traffic areas, distractions, traffic quirks, and all sorts of oddities that could be engineered around to reduce injuries, fatalities, and expenses.
Well that's the best case, but I'd find it much more likely that the state would look for stretches of road where the average speed exceeds the speed limit, aka "areas of potential revenue and quota filling."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
What if we took matters into our own hands by all getting HAM radio sets and patching through an encrypted stream? It could be like, the geek's anonymous communication system for the postmodern world.
The only way to track you would be to visually notice the HAM Radio license plates and two-meter antenna stuck to your hatchback. What could be less suspicious!
A bit off-topic, but have you heard they're going to be tracking cell-phone signals to monitor traffic patterns? It's amazing! Why doesn't slashdot ever accept a story on the subject?
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You can read more here:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/14324
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/07452
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/01/15924
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
There, that's better. Hopefully, one day they'll come to their senses, and post a story or two on the subject.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I have access to my own phone's location data, and I (apart from doing all sort of other funky stuff with it) set up a system to measure my speed.
It didn't work well.
First, I could only poll it every 15 minutes. Secondly, cells overlap. Thirdly, it just gives you a triangulation based on which towers you can see.
So basically, on a drive to London along the M4, I stuck at exactly 70mph for the test, and it showed me doing everything from 59 to about 84, with one sector at 97. It's not accurate enough. Until the 3G phones come along.
And you can see where I am (or rather where my work phone is (which is on the desk next to me)) now on my homepage....
Get your own free personal location tracker