Covert monitoring system raises privacy issues- Signals can be used to track mobile phone users
[guardian.co.uk] Tens of thousands of Britons are being covertly tracked without
their consent in a technology experiment which has installed scanners
at secret locations in offices, campuses, streets and pubs to pinpoint
people’s whereabouts.
The scanners, the first 10 of which were
installed in Bath three years ago, are capturing Bluetooth radio
signals transmitted from devices such as mobile phones, laptops and
digital cameras, and using the data to follow unwitting targets without
their permission.
The data is being used in a project called
Cityware to study how people move around cities. But pedestrians are
not being told that the devices they carry around in their pockets and
handbags could be providing a permanent record of their journeys, which
is then stored on a central database.
The Bath University
researchers behind the project claim their scanners do not have access
to the identity of the people tracked.
Eamonn O’Neill,
Cityware’s director, said: "The objective is not to track individuals,
whether by Bluetooth or any other means. We are interested in the
aggregate behaviour of city dwellers as a whole. The notion that any
agency would seriously consider Bluetooth scanning as a surveillance
technique is ludicrous."
But privacy experts disagree, pointing
out that Bluetooth signals are assigned code names that can, to varying
degrees, indicate a person’s identity.
Many people use
pseudonyms, nicknames, initials, or abbreviations to identify their
Bluetooth signals. Cityware’s scanners are also picking up signals that
are listed using people’s full name, email address and telephone
numbers.
Contacted about the Cityware project, the office of the
information commissioner said in a statement that the public should
"think carefully" before switching on their Bluetooth signals. A
spokesman said the government watchdog would "monitor" the experiment.
"This
is yet another example of moronic use of technology," said Simon
Davies, director of Privacy International, an independent campaigning
group defending personal privacy. "For Bath University to assert that
there aren’t privacy implications demonstrates an astonishing disregard
for consumer rights. If the technology is as safe as they claim, then
all the technical specifications should be published and people should
be informed when they are being tracked."
He added: "This
technology could well become the CCTV of the mobile industry. It would
not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous surveillance
infrastructure over which we have no control."
Although initially
confined to Bath, Cityware has spread across the planet after the
software was made freely available on the internet sites Facebook and
Second Life. Thousands of people downloaded the software to equip their
home and office computers with Cityware scanners.
More than 1,000
scanners across the world at any time detect passing Bluetooth signals
and send the data to Cityware’s central database. Those with access to
the database admit they do not know precisely how many scanners have
been created, but there are known to be scanners in San Diego, Hong
Kong, Australia, Singapore, Toronto and Berlin.
In Bath alone
scanners are tracking as many as 3,000 Bluetooth devices every weekend.
One recent study used the scanners to monitor the movements of 10,000
people in the city.
About 250,000 owners of Bluetooth devices, mostly mobile phones, have been spotted by Cityware scanners worldwide.
O’Neill,
who described his project as "public observation" rather than
surveillance, said the data would improve scientific understanding of
the privacy and security threats posed by Bluetooth technology. A
"potentially immensely valuable side-effect", he added, was that data
about people’s movements could help research into the spread of
biological epidemics.
"Just as we continue to research forms of
defence against other more traditional threats, we must research forms
of defence against new digital threats," he said, adding that the
database eventually would be destroyed.
However Vassilis
Kostakos, a former member of Cityware who now does Bluetooth
experiments on buses in Portugal for the University of Madeira,
accepted such tracking was a problem.
"We are actually trying to
fix this," Kostakos said. "If a person’s phone is talking to a scanner,
then they should be told about it. Any technology can have good and bad
consequences. In many ways, I think the role of a scientist is to point
out both. I agree this is complex and I agree there are harmful
scenarios."
The technique has echoes of the thriller Enemy of the
State in which the character played by Will Smith is followed by
satellite surveillance.
Kostakos said he could foresee complex
ways in which criminals could exploit the technology, adding: "I
recently tried to look at people’s travel patterns across the world,
and we [saw] how a unique device which showed up in San Francisco
turned up in Caracas and then Paris."
Bluetooth tracking
technology is already being used to aim advertisements at people, for
example as they walk past shops or billboards.
Bluetoothtracking.org,
a website based in the Netherlands, is using the same technology to
publish live data about people’s movements across the town of
Apeldoorn. The facility allows people to search the whereabouts of
friends and associates without them knowing about it.
Some
scientists using the technology describe a future scenario in which
homes and cars adapt services to suit their owners, automatically
dimming lights, preparing food and selecting preferred television
channels.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
