Company Designs "Big Brother Chip"

Taco Cowboy writes "Here comes a chip that can pinpoint you in-door and out, it can even tell others on which floor of a building you are located. It's the Broadcom 4752 chip. It takes signals from global navigation satellites, cell phone towers, and Wi-Fi hot spots, coupled with input from gyroscopes, accelerometers, step counters, and altimeters The company calls abilities like this 'ubiquitous navigation,' and the idea is that it will enable a new kind of e-commerce predicated on the fact that shopkeepers will know the moment you walk by their front door, or when you are looking at a particular product, and can offer you coupons at that instant."

Comments

Potato, potato

[samazon]

When you say "coupons" I hear "pushy advertisements."

Re:Potato, potato

[s0nicfreak]

Many reasons, including but not limited to: If you like the product, you may buy another when you don't have a coupon. You may recommend it to friends, who may buy it without the coupon. Many people think they are too cool to use coupons, and will purposely forgo the coupons.

Re:Get ready for it, Slashtards.

[burne]

Time for tinfoil overalls.

At least it will be a shiny future.

Not exactly a new threat, but...

[Jawnn]

The "one-stop-shopping" nature of the chip is chilling. Consider, Broadcom has seen enough of a market to warrant developing a sophisticated device, the stated purpose of which is to determine it's position and "phone home" with that information. Worse yet, it will also phone in all the personal details about you that it has access to, so that those "coupons" can be quickly crafted. If that's not scary enough, consider that also available to any given "shop keeper", is a list of all the other shops you've visited, and when. Still not bugged enough? Think about this technology in the hands of entities far more dangerous than merchants; law enforcement, for example.

Re:Not exactly a new threat, but...

[AmiMoJo]

TFS is highly misleading. The chip doesn't "phone home" or give data to marketers. It is just an integration of existing phone tech to reduce cost and power consumption. Just like current phones any snooping will be software controlled by the vendor.

!new

[AmiMoJo]

Japanese mobile phones have had this for a while. Personal navigation apps that can guide you through underground stations and inside buildings using wifi and accelerometers when GPS is unavailable.

Engineering oppression

[DigiShaman]

Growing up in the 80s, living through the boom times of the 90s, and looking back today. What I used to think was was a path to freedom and salvation of the intellectual variety, I now see as our oppression. Slavery of a new type. Step by step we are sealing our own doom while at the same time handing over the keys to a new elite. The social consolidation is giving rise to the new aristocrats.

I really hope I'm wrong.

Re:Engineering oppression

[Opportunist]

Well, from my history book I learned what happens after they piss off the peasants too much.

circumvention

[mug funky]

wet a towel and wrap it round your head.

then get your ass to Mars.

The pitch for his product is wrong.

[Karmashock]

They're saying it would be great for merchants to know where you are but I'd actually have to carry it and keep it charged for it to work. So it has to offer me a benefit and instant coupons or getting bombarded by ads isn't a good selling point.

A better application for this would be urban GPS. A big problem with current GPS is that it doesn't work in dense urban cities. Try to use GPS in New York... it's almost useless. First off, you're underground half the time. Second, even when you're above ground you tend to be amongst big buildings that obscure the sky. However, I get great cellphone reception pretty much anywhere in New York and wifi hotspots are pretty ubiquitous even if they're mostly locked. If your mobile navigation could make use of other static radio signals for navigation then GPS would work deep within the urban jungle. And THAT is valuable.

The pitch of "oh merchants can predict your location" is asinine. if you wanted to sell the tracking feature then I suppose this would work for tracking boxes. After all, existing tracking technology that relies on GPS won't work in warehouses, underground, or even inside of industrial shipping containers. But something that could triangulate cell towers should work just about damn near anywhere there is "civilization"...

All and all, a neat little chip and I wish it well. Whoever is coming up with the applications for it needs to be smacked around a little with a frozen trout.

Let's think this through

[kenh]

OK, so I've got a device in my pocket - a cellphone, call it a tablet, whatever - and as I walk through the mall it vibrates with special offers from each retailer I pass in front of - how long do I leave this "feature" enabled? Two, three stores? The fact that the device is "smart" and will deduce from my facebook status of "single" and that I'm male that I'm not interested in offers from Yankee Candle, Bed, Bath and Beyond or Victoria's Secret doesn't really help much...

It will be the most disabled "feature" on personal devices, and will sink any product where the device is subsidised by the alerts.

I see a great market in the "I've fallen and I can't get up" device market - concerned children will buy them for their elderly parents who are still living independently, and let's not forget the "where's my kid" market segment, but this location-based direct marketing is a dumb idea. period.

No 911 gps support = carriers will disconnect you

[Anonymous Coward]

Your 6150 can't provide the FCC-mandated support for 911 geolocation so any US carrier detecting it in their network will ban its IMEI to avoid being fined by the FCC.

Funny how they "can't" ban stolen phones to protect their customers but they can do it to protect their own pocketbook...