Slashdot Mirror
Connecting To Unsecured Bluetooth Car Systems To Monitor Traffic Flow
New submitter TheTerseOne writes "The Columbian, the local newspaper of Vancouver (not BC), Washington (not DC) is reporting that local county traffic officials plan on spending $540k of government money to monitor traffic by connecting to vehicles' Bluetooth systems (whose owners/drivers have left them discoverable). The county claims that, although this sounds 'creepy' and 'like Big Brother,' there is no cause for concern. The specific brand of the system is not mentioned, but similar systems have already been the subject of security alerts."
County officials note that they are stripping out part of the MAC, and the system is intentionally designed not to be useful for law enforcement to locate specific devices.
Halifax just did the same thing (though only spent 43k). Only release was the tender process, and no acknowledgement after repeated requests for information.
County officials note that they are stripping out part of the MAC (of course they will), and the system is intentionally designed not to be useful for law enforcement to locate specific devices (of course it won't).
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Connecting to a computer system without the consent of the owner is still a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a felony the last time I checked.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Systems that broadcast to people nearby can be a lot of fun and useful. Game consoles "social" apps, WiFi, safety applications or just allowing passengers to pair to stereo with least amount of effort.
That is until some asshole tries inevitably tries to collect and aggregate everything. I don't care if it is useful or insecure or you take x measures to prevent y value judgment... you are still an asshole.
If you don't want to be discovered with Bluetooth, don't leave your devices in discoverable mode!
It should be noted that they are not "connecting" to these devices, just cataloging the ones which announce their own presence. It's pretty fricking passive.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Won't this introduce sampling bias, as non-Bluetooth cars are excluded from traffic monitoring? Highways with richer travelers will get more funding than the poor parts of town.
while many people will neither know nor care about the effort to smooth out traffic, Vancouver may be mistaken in their zeal. While my old 2001 crown victoria does not include bluetooth, the wireless laptop inside is programmed to dump millions of MAC's per second once a bluetooth connection is solicited, many of them malformed with negative integers, spaces and special characters...
Sometimes I collect the macs of vehicles in around me, and much like the towers of hanoi spoof them as i pass the readers on the highway to reduce traffic automagically shift the speed of traffic..
other times I collect the mac addresses of the scanners, and feed them to other scanners in a circular fashion.
Good people go to bed earlier.
on the other hand, reading the daily newspapers, maybe it's about time.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
yes but for example on a 6 lane N/S Road, with lots of traffic northbound in the morning and lots of traffic southbound in the evening (rush hour), can be changed from 3/3 lanes both directions to 4/2 n/s morning and 2/4 n/s evening. should there be traffic at different times of the day, at say 6-8 PM and 10-12 PM, (say a hockey games traffic) it can automatically adjust the lanes depending on the amount of traffic. heck it could even go to 5/1 or 1/5 depending on volume at the time.
How this is better than the current axle counters they have I don't know, in fact I see it as probably worse. since it's not quite as accurate. maybe easier to plug into the traffic control systems.
it's probably to ease traffic to and from Canucks games.
It seems like the phrase "government money" is dropped in here just to bait arguments. Was there any doubt it was government money? If it were private money, would that be a problem? Wouldn't it be a different problem? Wouldn't "public funds" or "a state/federal grant" have been the same or more accurate?
From TFA: "The program is being funded primarily through a $540,000 federal grant, with a small match from the local governments." TFA actually has a lot of other good 'geeky' detail, like "3-5% of traffic [is already] broadcasting in discoverable mode".
I feel like someone is trying to raise the "oh, the waste!" card.
I thought they were already doing this in Boston, maybe not... In any case I always assumed this was a way for the states to make money. They own the highways, therefore the exclusive rights to put these sensors up, and therefore exclusive access to hyper-accurate realtime traffic data that they can license out to the likes of google and apple for their map applications. I suppose it could simply be used to provide information for the "X minutes to airport" signs they have on most highways now.
All seems pretty harmless to me, they could just as easily hire human beings to stand along the highways with walkie talkies and monitor average traffic speeds, would people throw a shit fit then?
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
This data, in aggregate, gets monitored in real time by DOT employees (some of which are engineers) at a centralized traffic management center. They can use it to:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This seems really complicated. Why not just track the RFID signature generated by the various parts of the car which are tagged? Tires, replacement parts, items in the trunk, ID badges on the passengers....
Axle counters can tell you the volume of traffic, but don't really tell you the speed of the traffic (does a count of zero axles in 30 seconds mean no traffic, or traffic at a dead stop?) Volume of traffic is important for long-range planning (ie increase number of lanes, etc). Speed reporting is much more useful for adjusting things like traffic light timing in real time. If you know traffic is moving at 40MPH and there is are 2 traffic lights x distance apart you can time the lights so the traffic does not have to stop. Of course, eventually you must stop the traffic (or there would be no point in having the lights). Now, when traffic restarts, it will of course be moving slower, so the lights should have a different timing.
They'll be howling for government and law enforcement to have access to that information to catch bogeymen and child molesters and other big scary people in the name of their little snowflakes.
I mean... legally speaking you can't for example connect to someone's open wi-fi and use it. Look at the shit Google got into with their mapping car...
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Great. Install it in every politician's car.
No need for concern, right? Or... got anything to hide?
Personally, every time someone comes up with some "no need for concern" bull, I say let the politicians in charge be the first to use it. No need to be concerned about the power plant? Great, have the town council move in next to it. No need to be concerned about food? Great, put it on the menu for them. No need to be concerned about surveillance? Great, move politicians to the front row to be under scrutiny.
If it was required to be used on them first, I'm pretty sure we'd have a lot fewer things not to be concerned about.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's not how bluetooth works.
It's worse, but cheaper. I don't know about the relative accuracy for reporting speeds, but it has the substantial disadvantage of not being able to report vehicle counts (since you don't know how many vehicles are traveling without using Bluetooth).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Axle counters (and magnetic field loop detection and computer-vision-based detection, both of which are more common for the application we're talking about) do tell you the speed of the vehicles in every situation except for a major accident with all lanes blocked. And you can tell when that happens because the map turned from green to yellow to red before the data stopped.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Why is not knowing vehicle counts a 'substantial disadvantage'? If the purpose of the information (as it says in TFA) is to adjust traffic signals based on the speed of the traffic, then the volume doesn't matter.
Since it seems to meet the criteria of RCW 9A.52.110, I'd say every attempt to connect is a Class C Felony. However, at the very least, it's a misdemeanor.
RCW 9A.52.110
Computer trespass in the first degree.
(1) A person is guilty of computer trespass in the first degree if the person, without authorization, intentionally gains access to a computer system or electronic database of another; and
(a) The access is made with the intent to commit another crime; or
(b) The violation involves a computer or database maintained by a government agency.
(2) Computer trespass in the first degree is a class C felony.
[1984 c 273 1.]
*****************
RCW 9A.52.120
Computer trespass in the second degree.
(1) A person is guilty of computer trespass in the second degree if the person, without authorization, intentionally gains access to a computer system or electronic database of another under circumstances not constituting the offense in the first degree.
(2) Computer trespass in the second degree is a gross misdemeanor.
[1984 c 273 2.]
******************
RCW 9A.52.120
Computer trespass in the second degree.
(1) A person is guilty of computer trespass in the second degree if the person, without authorization, intentionally gains access to a computer system or electronic database of another under circumstances not constituting the offense in the first degree.
(2) Computer trespass in the second degree is a gross misdemeanor.
[1984 c 273 2.]
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Vehicle counts start to matter as soon as you want to do any kind of deeper engineering analysis or design. For example, you might want to be able to answer questions like "how do speeds correlate with volume -- do they drop linearly, or suddenly at some 'critical' volume?" or "how much excess capacity does my road have?" or "did this change I made to the road actually increase capacity, or did speeds just seem to improve because fewer people happen to be driving on it this week?"
In general, it's a lot more fun (as a traffic engineer) to have real-time data than it is to send somebody out in the field count data for one day out of a year (especially when, for all you know, that one day might be an outlier).
Not to mention, asking a traffic engineer to do anything without knowing vehicle counts is kind of like asking an electrical engineer to design a device without knowing how many amps it uses.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Your vehicle already had a big bright license plates, in the front and the back, advertising your license plate number to anyone who cares to look. People, cameras etc. etc. And yes we have had automated readers of license plates for quite some time. What sort of *new* privacy concerns does the bluetooth device introduce?
Using the Satanic extraterrestrial technology recovered at Roswell, track him via the fillings in his teeth powered by the fluoride in the water and do so while facing towards Washington, D.C. with your human disguise off, lizard hands raised high all while praising the Jesus-hating future fuhrer Obama.
That or read his grandmother's email. It's better than reality television. You better do so quick too, because the death panels are going to get her and then AOL may close her account.
Oddly enough, nobody made a claim that vehicle counts never matter. What I said (I thought rather clearly) was that IF the purpose is to adjust traffic signals based on the speed of traffic THEN vehicle counts do not matter.
Obviously things like axle counters and induction loops have been around for decades. Yet for all those decades we (as drivers) still have precious little information to use on traffic conditions. Most traffic lights still seem to be either pure timers or change based on the fact that someone is waiting. If things like using BT ids can help fix that situation, I say do it. The 'best' solution is not the one that can theoretically provide the most information, it is the one that can practically provide the most useful information. That is engineering.
FTS: The county claims that, although this sounds 'creepy' and 'like Big Brother,' there is no cause for concern.
Irrespective of what the county claims:
[1] this is creepy;
[2] this is Big Brotherish;
[3] there is cause for concern.
Citizens should always be concerned when any government has their hand in your pocket or, especially, when they say "there is no cause for concern." Consider our loss of rights and privacy due to the current and prior Federal administrations.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
...Bill Gates lives in Medina. Do the math.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Oh. Sorry, in that case the answer was "I don't really care what the purpose as expressed in TFA is, I care about what vehicle detection systems are good for in general."
Besides, "mak[ing] traffic signal settings based on (the information)" as the article talks about is a flexible enough idea that it could encompass ad-hoc manual adjustments where speed-only data would be useful (although you'd still want to look at the cameras while you're doing it) as well as longer term design-and-engineer-a-better-default-timing kind of adjustments, where having the counts would be very helpful (particularly if you wanted to make them the input to a real-time signal adjustment algorithm -- in fact, in that case what I'd really want would be intersection movement counts, not just segment directional counts).
Long term, I'd suggest that the best plan would be to take the induction loops (which you need anyway for actuated signal timing) and hook them up to the traffic management software.
But then that makes me think... if he can already control the signals remotely, then the induction loop data should already be available too. I guess they haven't hooked the systems together yet (which was also the case where I worked: I could operate cameras and changeable message signs using the main application, but I had to fire up something else if I wanted to mess with a ramp meter).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz