Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
I should think that this is really just GCHQ exercising it's exclusive sovereign right to track everyone, everywhere, all the time.
The American way is more efficient: let business collect the data and then the government can demand to share it.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Why no criminal investigation, or at least massive fine under Data Protection laws?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is why I keep wi-fi disabled on my mobile devices unless I need it.
I've found I don't particularly want my device to be phoning home to people when I'm not looking, and I've also found leaving wi-fi on absolutely impacts my battery life.
Stuff like this is only going to get worse as various advertisers decide they're entitled to more information than we're willing to give them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There's a difference between being tracked by a random company and a government body. At least the latter operates under the scrutiny of elected representatives.
Say what?!
Here is what they want:
Unlike in Orwell's day, they have the means to track everyone, everywhere (at least in densely-populated areas). They have only to generate the will to do so and it will become a reality.
Scream "terrorist" enough times and that will generate the will.
Bins tracking phones tracking bins tracking phones tracking bins....when will it all end?
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!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
London, the city with more closed circuit cameras than anywhere else on Earth, wants to ban spying on pedestrians? Or is it only a concern when someone other than the government has control over the information?
Perhaps the spec could be augmented by allowing a randomized MAC address that is not tied to the device. Define the first octet so manufacturers don't assign anything to it, and leave the remaining bits as completely random. Make the next part of the packet the public half of a key pair that the device expects responses to come back to. Allow the same random MAC address scheme to be used by either side of the connection. Only accept packets that can be properly decoded with the private key of the key pair, which eliminates the problem of random MAC address collisions. As a part of negotiating the secured connection, when exchanging the private key also exchange the real MAC address only after the secured connection is complete. Or, never use the real MAC address and retain the random MAC address for the duration of the connection.