London Bans Recycling Bins That Track Phones

judgecorp writes "In a swift response to a media storm, the City of London has closed down a trial of recycling bins which track the phones of pedestrians. Renew provides recycling bins funded by digital advertising, and has been told to stop a trial where bins tracked phones. Although the CEO of Renew claims there was no intention to breach privacy, his own marketing material says otherwise."

Comments

Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[sinij]

Removing bins will not fix underlying protocol implementation problem. This has to be treated as any other vulnerability and patched, so it is not possible.

Re:Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[ackthpt]

It is astonishing how few people seem to understand that.

Rather like war-driving in reverse. How times change.

Re:Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[ericloewe]

Here's the problem:

If the user doesn't say "I want to connect to 'Trash can Wi-Fi'", why should the phone decide on its own to connect to 'Trash can Wi-Fi' without asking?

If the phone doesn't (stupidly) try to connect to any open network it sees, it doesn't broadcast its MAC address whenever some dubious access point asks for it.

Who thought this was a good idea to begin with?

[s.petry]

Subject says it all. How was this allowed to happen? Garbage bins don't need to other people, they need to track when they are full and need to be emptied. I'm sure that this stems from a Government funding program in a black budget that the people of London (and other areas of the UK) have no idea they are paying for.

I do realize that the US probably has similar or worse programs that we are not yet aware of. I know they have been working on billboard advertising to track people and believe it has been implemented in NYC to some extent. We, all of the free people, need to put an end to this! Nothing good can come from this level of tracking people!