Skygazer: "Sounds like a WIN to me."I would mark bad data as "ignore", but that's because I'm used to doing stuff like traffic data where you assume that nobody (or at least extremely few people) are trying to pollute the data, but there's a very much higher probability of simply getting bad GPS data.
(Consumers can opt out by turning off their phones.)
they can also opt out by not going to those malls
Consumers can opt out by not consuming.There a few things that come to mind here.
I'm not a big fan of malls, but I find this kind of sentiment to be unnecessarily condescending.I certainly take that onboard and did wish for an edit button (mathowie) immediately after posting.
rusty: "All true, but by implication you're saying those people are wrong -- that we shouldn't regard the large parts of our lives that we live in public as public information. I don't really understand this. It seems endemic to technology professionals to believe that privacy is paramount in all times and places -- that everything is, and should be, private by default."I don't (much) mind other people knowing what I'm doing in public; heck, I don't even have curtains in my bathroom. I have a problem with corporations knowing what I and thousands of other people are doing in public.
yoink: "If you owned a store and you noticed that some item you stocked seemed to be selling less well than you thought it ought to would you consider it improper to observe if your customers were visiting that part of the store less frequently than other parts of the store? Would you consider it a violation of their privacy to try reorganizing your store and observing if traffic patterns changed in response?"Direct observation for a specific purpose, no, I don't have a problem with that. But unlike your strawman here, we are talking about mass surveillance of every person with a mobile phone (that means some 90 percent of the population). This data will almost certainly - despite all assurances - find its way legally or by theft to other companies and be used for applications you didn't expect. And it isn't being collected in response to a specific problem, rather, it is surveillance for surveillance's sake and then let's see what we can use it for afterwards.
FootPath™ works by detecting a randomly generated, frequently changing signal from your mobile phone. This random signal is detected by a number of our units within the premises.Bluetooth uses Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum, that sounds exactly what they're describing, GSM/CDMA frequencies aren't exactly random. They probably have devices that do polling of bluetooth devices. You can do this for crazy cheap, build an Arduino board with bluetooth and wifi, you can build hundreds of these for tens of thousands of dollars easy. Most bluetooth devices broadcast their MAC address when polled, so you have a unique identifier.
yoink: Oh look. Some is thinking of the children. Sigh.Pardon me, but one of the defenses was that is was opt-in. I am curious to know how minors can enter this contract. But thanks for just hand-waving that away condescendingly instead of answering the question, it sure makes me feel better about this technology.
No, we're talking about observing traffic patterns in a couple of malls. That's actually not the same thing as "mass surveillance of every person with a mobile phone." "Surveillance" implies that individual users can be tracked and their data tied to a specific person's identity. That, certainly, would be objectionable. That is not what is being proposed here.If you think this will be limited to malls, I have an Eiffel tower I'd like to sell to you.
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posted by vacapinta at 5:19 AM on November 23, 2011