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Shopping Centers Track Customers Via Cell Phone Signals
oschobero writes "According an article from the Times, customers in shopping centers are having their every move tracked. Using cellphone signals, the system can tell when people enter the center, how long they stay in a particular shop, and what route each customer takes. The system works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation." The particular tracking device described by the article is made by an English company called Path Intelligence.
Whenever I read big-brother type stuff like this, I'm reminded of one of the best lectures I received regarding the direction of IT (and this was years ago)
In speaking about GIS he outlined some items that seemed very spooky and seemingly improbable things that would happen - then he discussed the results of those things occurring as if they were a given. I was skeptical that they'd even happen, but they are beginning to... stuff like this article mentions, how it will be very close to impossible to travel without a cell phone, and how that would essentially mark you (not in the crazy 666 sense) for all kinds of crap people want to sell to you.
At the end, his point was that these types of things will be reviled in name only, but once people receive the benefits of the technology, they'll love it. We're headed down this path whether we like it or not; privacy will become a very relative thing in the next couple decades. We will need to rely exclusively on the good faith of the companies that guard our information.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
There's no need to use a signal jammer. It's your very own phone. Maybe you've never heard of that concept, but mobile phones tend to have an option which has about the same effect on your own phone phone as a jammer, but without disturbing other people's phones: Just switch your phone off! As an added bonus, you'll also increase the battery life of your phone.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Other things these systems could do include correlating phone IDs with missing big-ticket merchandise to identify possible shoplifters, or look for suspicious activity like repeated visits to rest rooms or other semi-private places by the same set of IDs. Combine it with video records and credit card records and you can get a fair amount of visitor identification without going to the phone company for tracing. Not enough to act, but enough to be useful to security personnel.
It's another step towards Brin's transparent society.
I don't have objections to it being done correctly. By correctly I would want the following issues to be addressed. 1. No attempts to find out who the cell phone belongs to. (No personally identifiable information). 2. The id number that the cell phone transmits is never stored in any way. The use of an internal identifying number would be acceptable as long as no link was made between the actual cell phone identification number and the internal id number is stored. 3. Every time you visit the mall you get a new internal id number. This would prevent getting information about repeat visits to the mall. My concerns about storing personally identifiable information stems from the government. The government would subpoena for the mall owners cell phone information and all sorts of fun would begin. Even if only a cell phone id number is stored it would be enough for the government to use as a starting point.