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Project Turns GPS Phones Into Traffic Reporters
narramissic writes "Starting on Monday, researchers from Nokia and UC Berkeley will kick off the Mobile Millennium project. The researchers hope that thousands of volunteers will download a free Java program that figures out by their movement and location when they are driving, and then transmits that information to the project's servers, which then crunch it into a Bay Area traffic map. 'The whole concept here is that if everyone shares just a little bit of what they're seeing ... then everyone can benefit by seeing the conditions ahead of them,' said Quinn Jacobson, a research leader with Nokia in Palo Alto."
This is so stupid, they're blindly assuming that everybody has good intentions.
It's like posting signs in an amusement park that say "your teeth will rot out by eating too much sugar" at the entrance and next to the cotton candy booths.
The point is, is that by having that extra amount of time, drug dealers, people seeking revenge and other criminals will likely take advantage of the system. This is going to help change things and make life better how?
We have a case on the news of some local woman who killed her toddler. This has made national news, the grandma thought the mother's car trunk smelled like death, then claimed it was a bad pizza, kid's still missing, etc. The cops are organizing a big body hunt out in the woods because they were able to localize her cell phone there at the time the child went missing.
WTF?!
This can only mean that the mobile companies are already keeping detailed logs of your movement and the Feds can track you whenever they want. Warrants? Where we're going, we don't need warrants. Cell phones will be our personal minder bracelets. It'll be a crime to allow your battery to die since the Feds can't track you then.
I don't like this, not one bit.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Right. Not to mention that you personally don't break the law and therefore have nothing to hide. Anyone that is against this idea probably should have an ankle tracking bracelet applied in the first place.
I think this idea just scratches the surface. Why not collect anonymous stats on everyone. You could still do powerful pattern recognition without knowing the individual identity of the subject.
Perhaps an anonymous person leaves his anonymous significant others (SO) house. He goes to the bar, then he goes to WalMart (which probably should be a crime in and of itself.) The computer checks and sees that someone buys .357 ammo during the same time that anonymous person is shopping. Anonymous person #1 drives around stopping at various liquor stores. Then anonymous driver parks down the street from SO house and just sits. Based on the previous behavior of this anonymous subject the computer is 99.8% certain that a crime is in progress. The police are summoned and a judge signs a warrant withing the 72 hours allowed by the Homeland Traffic and Safety Improvement Act.
What could possibly go wrong?