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Free Municipal Wi-Fi May Be the Next Front In the War Against Privacy (theintercept.com)
TuballoyThunder writes: According to The Intercept, it appears that the LinkNYC free Wi-Fi might be designed to track users. This and other concerns were raised during a 2015 discussion on Slashdot. While many people are comfortable in trading their privacy for ostensibly free services, it is disheartening when municipalities collaborate with business to make it happen. "In May of this year, Charles Meyers, an undergraduate at New York City College of Technology, came across folders in LinkNYC's public library on GitHub, a platform for managing files and software, that appear to raise further questions about location tracking and the platform's protection of its users' data," reports The Intercept. "Meyers made copies of the codebases in question -- 'LinkNYC Mobile Observation' and 'RxLocation' -- and shared both folders with The Intercept."
Meyers says the "LinkNYC Mobile Observation" code collects the user's longitude and latitude, browser type, OS, device type, device identifiers, and full URL clickstreams (including data and time) and "aggregates this information into a database," the report says. Meyer's believes the company is interested in tracking the location of Wi-Fi users in real time. "If such code were run on a mobile app or kiosk, he said, the company would be able to make advertisements available in real time based on where and who someone was, and that this would constitute a potential violation of the company's privacy policy," reports The Intercept.
Following the revelations, LinkNYC said the code was never intended to be released and was part of a longer-term R&D process. "In this instance, David Mitchell, Intersection's CTO, told the Intercept in an email. "Intersection was prototyping and testing some ideas internally, using employee data only, and mistakenly made source code public on Github. This code is not in use on the LinkNYC network." [Intersection is the "key player" in CityBridge, "a chameleon-like consortium of private companies" that New York City contracted to turn the city's payphone booth network into Wi-Fi-enabled kiosks.]
Meyers says the "LinkNYC Mobile Observation" code collects the user's longitude and latitude, browser type, OS, device type, device identifiers, and full URL clickstreams (including data and time) and "aggregates this information into a database," the report says. Meyer's believes the company is interested in tracking the location of Wi-Fi users in real time. "If such code were run on a mobile app or kiosk, he said, the company would be able to make advertisements available in real time based on where and who someone was, and that this would constitute a potential violation of the company's privacy policy," reports The Intercept.
Following the revelations, LinkNYC said the code was never intended to be released and was part of a longer-term R&D process. "In this instance, David Mitchell, Intersection's CTO, told the Intercept in an email. "Intersection was prototyping and testing some ideas internally, using employee data only, and mistakenly made source code public on Github. This code is not in use on the LinkNYC network." [Intersection is the "key player" in CityBridge, "a chameleon-like consortium of private companies" that New York City contracted to turn the city's payphone booth network into Wi-Fi-enabled kiosks.]
the question has never been if your privacy is invaded. the question is only who do you prefer to invade your privacy
I am usually loath to spout off about future trends. Basically because it's so easy to get one thing wrong which causes the whole to be shot down.
But keep this in mind for the next decade or so, and when you see things turn out like this, remember you read it somewhere.
I see like never before in my lifetime or the recent past a concerted effort to push the world in a certain direction it would not be going otherwise. I fear that the end result of this is to create a world population that is grey and identityless and is simply a good source of taxes and labor, similar to how a flock of sheep is a good source of wool, and can be moved, sold, bred, and culled at the whim of the owner.
Tech being developed like ubiquitous surveillance, mammoth data centers, and application of AI, is starting to make the treating of the human population of Earth like large herds of chattel feasible.
All the different trends you've been seeing developing since 9/11 play into it: muslims against the west, China vs USA, religion vs secularism, feminists against males, the absolutely vileness that political debate has stooped to in the US and Europe (and elsewhere), forced immigration to and assimilation in Europe, racial division like never before, economic trends, rise of supernational governing bodies and regional blocks, change of politics to become more autocratic, the erosion of private ownership, free speech, and privacy itself. The ironic twist is that most of us stand one one side or the other on at least one of these issues, feeling extremely righteous and virtuous about it, having no compunction even wishing for, or calling for the death of, opposing sides.
Most will probably hail the new overlords that will put an end to this emerging chaos by application of autocratic force. But you or the next generation will probably be told what work to do and how much, what to be entertained by, where to live, what to wear, whom to breed with and how much, what language to speak, what to worship, when to die, etc. And take heart, it won't be that dystopic, most will even like it...