Where is this gonna end...Short Pump to track shoppers by cell phone

Started by peternap, November 23, 2011, 09:04:00 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

peternap

http://www.nbc12.com/story/16106721/short-pump-to-track-shoppers-by-cell-phone

RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) – If you're planning on doing your holiday shopping at Short Pump Town Center, you might consider turning off your cell phone. Does that sound like odd advice? From Black Friday through New Year's Day, the mall will use your phone to track your movements.

Short Pump will be using signals from every shopper's cell phone to track where he or she goes in the mall. The company said the technology is for research purposes. The Town Center is one of only two shopping centers in the entire country using it.

"Attention shoppers: we now know where you're going in Short Pump Town Center. In fact, we'll be tracking your movement from store to store through your cell phone." For many people NBC12 talked to, that sounds like a creepy announcement from a mall.

"I would be disturbed by that," explained Cherian Abraham.

"I just don't think it's any of their business," added Julie Ross.

There are antennas throughout the mall that capture the unique ID number for each phone.  It's sort of like an IP address for a computer and they track its movement throughout the stores.

A vice president of the management company for Short Pump said, "We won't be looking at singular shoppers. The system monitors patterns of movement."

Things like how many shoppers are going from the Gap to Nordstrom or are there any less popular spots in the mall. That revelation made at least one customer less leery.

"If that information is going to use in interest of businesses, what people like, what people don't like, maybe it's ok," said Tatiana Ozrerski.

But the ACLU of Virginia believes there are privacy concerns.

"This is one of those issues where the laws haven't caught up with technology," explained Kent Willis. "There should be laws that prevent this and there may be in the near future if enough people complain."

Short Pump will be putting up signs to notify customers. The only way shoppers can opt out is by turning off their cell phones. Some people on the NBC12 Facebook page were concerned they'd also have to take out the battery in order to avoid tracking. We've learned simply turning it off will work.
These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here!

peternap

Add this to the fire:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/license-plate-readers-a-useful-tool-for-police-comes-with-privacy-concerns/2011/11/18/gIQAuEApcN_print.html
License plate readers: A useful tool for police comes with privacy concerns

More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.

With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.

Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.

"It never stops," said Capt. Kevin Reardon, who runs Arlington County's plate reader program. "It just gobbles up tag information. One of the big questions is, what do we do with the information?"

Police departments are grappling with how long to store the information and how to balance privacy concerns against the value the data provide to investigators. The data are kept for three years in the District, two years in Alexandria, a year in Prince George's County and a Maryland state database, and about a month in many other suburban areas.

"That's quite a large database of innocent people's comings and goings," said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program. "The government has no business collecting that kind of information on people without a warrant."

But police say the tag readers can give them a critical jump on a child abductor, information about when a vehicle left — or entered — a crime scene, and the ability to quickly identify a suspected terrorist's vehicle as it speeds down the highway, perhaps to an intended target.

Having the technology during the Washington area sniper shootings in 2002 might have stopped the attacks sooner, detectives said, because police could have checked whether any particular car was showing up at each of the shooting sites.

"It's a perfect example of how they'd be useful," said Lt. T.J. Rogers, who is responsible for the 26 tag readers maintained by the Fairfax County police. "We see a lot of potential in it."

The plate readers are different from red-light or speed cameras, which issue traffic tickets and are tools for deterrence and enforcement. The readers are an investigative tool, capturing a picture of every license plate that passes by and instantly analyzing them against a database filled with cars wanted by police.

Police can also plug any license plate number into the database and, as long as it passed a camera, determine where that vehicle has been and when. Detectives also can enter a be-on-the-lookout into the database, and the moment that license plate passes a detector, they get an alert.

It's that precision and the growing ubiquity of the technology that has libertarians worried. In Northern Virginia recently, a man reported his wife missing, prompting police to enter her plate number into the system.

They got a hit at an apartment complex, and when they got there, officers spotted her car and a note on her windshield that said, in essence, "Don't tow, I'm visiting apartment 3C." Officers knocked on the door of that apartment, and she came out of the bedroom. They advised her to call her husband.

A new tool in the arsenal

Even though they are relatively new, the tag readers, which cost about $20,000 each, are now as widely used as other high-tech tools police employ to prevent and solve crimes, including surveillance cameras, gunshot recognition sensors and mobile finger­print scanners.

License plate readers can capture numbers across four lanes of traffic on cars zooming up to 150 mph.

"The new technology makes our job a lot easier and the bad guys' job a lot harder," said D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

The technology first was used by the postal service to sort letters. Units consist of two cameras — one that snaps digital photographs and another that uses an optical infrared sensor to decipher the numbers and letters. The camera captures a color image of the vehicle while the sensor "reads" the license plate and transfers the data to a computer.

When stored over time, the collected data can be used instantaneously or can help with complex analysis, such as whether a car appears to have been followed by another car or if cars are traveling in a convoy.

Police also have begun using them as a tool to prevent crime. By positioning them in nightclub parking lots, for example, police can collect information about who is there. If members of rival gangs appear at a club, police can send patrol cars there to squelch any flare-ups before they turn violent. After a crime, police can gather a list of potential witnesses in seconds.

"It's such a valuable tool, it's hard not to jump on it and explore all the things it can do for law enforcement," said Kevin Davis, assistant chief of police in Prince George's County.

The readers have been used across the country for several years, but the program is far more sophisticated in the Washington region. The District has 73 readers; 38 of them sit stationary and the rest are attached to police cars. D.C. officials say every police car will have one some day.

The District's license plate cameras gather more than a million data points a month, and officers make an average of an arrest a day directly from the plate readers, said Tom Wilkins, executive director of the D.C. police department's intelligence fusion division, which oversees the plate reader program. Between June and September, police found 51 stolen cars using the technology.

Police do not publicly disclose the locations of the readers. And while D.C. law requires that the footage on crime surveillance cameras be deleted after 10 days unless there's an investigative reason to keep it, there are no laws governing how or when Washington area police can use the tag reader technology. The only rule is that it be used for law enforcement purposes.

"That's typical with any emerging technology," Wilkins said. "Even though it's a tool we've had for five years, as it becomes more apparent and widely used and more relied upon, people will begin to scrutinize it."

Legal concerns

Such scrutiny is happening now at the U.S. Supreme Court with a related technology: GPS surveillance. At issue is whether police can track an individual vehicle with an attached GPS device.

Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University who has been closely watching the Supreme Court case, said the license plate technology probably would pass constitutional muster because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on public streets.

But, Kerr said, the technology's silent expansion has allowed the government to know things it couldn't possibly know before and that the use of such massive amounts of data needs safeguards.

"It's big brother, and the question is, is it big brother we want, or big brother that we don't want?" Kerr said. "This technology could be used for good and it could be used for bad. I think we need a conversation about whether and how this technology is used. Who gets the information and when? How long before the information is deleted? All those questions need scrutiny."

Should someone access the database for something other than a criminal investigation, they could track people doing legal but private things. Having a comprehensive database could mean government access to information about who attended a political event, visited a medical clinic, or went to Alcoholics Anonymous or Planned Parenthood.

Maryland and Virginia police departments are expanding their tag reader programs and by the end of the year expect to have every major entry and exit point to the District covered.

These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here!


MountainDon

Storing the acquired data is the real problem as I see it. Locating a stolen car, car used in a robbery, and so on, in real time could be very useful. But data storage for three years is too much. Once again somebody wants to try to "protect" us from everything that they see that could go wrong.

Just because something has been done and has not failed, doesn't mean it is good design.

peternap

Quote from: MtnDon on November 23, 2011, 10:18:53 AM
Storing the acquired data is the real problem as I see it. Locating a stolen car, car used in a robbery, and so on, in real time could be very useful. But data storage for three years is too much. Once again somebody wants to try to "protect" us from everything that they see that could go wrong.

And history shows that the data will eventually be abused. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Thank heaven for farm mud! ;D
These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here!

MountainDon

I probably shouldn't admit to it, but I haven't washed the Jeep in years; I clean the windows and lights off. It's difficult to collect more than dust in a dry desert though.
Just because something has been done and has not failed, doesn't mean it is good design.


Gary O

"Attention shoppers: we now know where you're going in Short Pump Town Center. In fact, we'll be tracking your movement from store to store through your cell phone."

Halleluiah!

I may now permit myself to re-enter the mall with my bride.

Typical scene;
'I'll be in sporting goods'
'I'll be in the yarn section'
Five minutes max, I'm entering the yarn section, officially beginning help mate hunting season.
Two hours of systematic scouring of every aisle, twice, doubling back, borrowing binoculars from sporting goods, and step ladder from hardware, spotting, scanning the horizons, I collapse in a heap in the couch section. Then gather my wits and resign myself to being skunked yet again, trudging to the car.
There she is, working on a second sock, wondering what took me so long.......

This, I must admit, has also worked in the reverse.
Turns out, if you keep on the move, you may never be found.

Yeah, if I could tap into that in store MPS (mate positioning system), then it's a giant step for mankind.
Information booth;
Me
'Where is she now?'
'On your right, sir, and may we suggest our newly opened Optical center'

Wife
'And now?'
'He's still in the restroom, ma'am, BTW we are having a great sale on bath tissue'
I'm enjoying all that I own, the moment.

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air." Emerson

NM_Shooter

I don't like the little discount grocery shopper cards either, and I notice that Lowe's is pushing their new system that tracks your purchases and keeps them online.  I told them that was just a bit to Orwellian for me.

"Officium Vacuus Auctorita"

Native_NM

Sometimes it works to your advantage.   For my friends in NM, try this:  go to a Smiths Fuel Center.  When it asks for your grocery card, enter it manually by phone number.  Try 505-555-1234.  About half the time you will get 30 or 40 cents off a gallon, because so many people have registered their card with fake phone numbers.  ;D ;D

I've used that number, 999-9999, and a couple others.  There was actually an article on the practice recently, so I expect them to crack down on the practice soon.

The tracking and profiling trend in general is alarming.  The only recourse is to not use the technology.  For the average law-abiding citizen, I'd argue that the benefit on a personal level outweighs the risks.  I would like to see strict privacy laws, but doubt that will happen. 
New Mexico.  Better than regular Mexico.

Sassy

I don't like those grocery store/drug store cards either... 

The RFID chips are becoming almost universal, too.  They're in most of the tags of anything you buy.  They can track what you are buying & even target their ads personally to you.  The credit cards have the chips in them, as well as our passports & all the military/Federal gov't name tags (I had one).  Eventually, they'll be able to follow you around from your RFID chip...  some manufacturing companies already do, but most will get there one of these days.

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Technology-Article.asp

It's all so they can be up close & personal...  as well as monitor where their stuff is at (ie shipping) or whether someone is stealing something. 

Big brother is here... 
http://glennkathystroglodytecabin.blogspot.com/

You will know the truth & the truth will set you free


MountainDon

Not all credit cards have RFID's in them; not yet. And some of those CC companies that have RFID cards may issue a card w/o the chip if asked. Anyone can buy a reader and there are several plans available on line that show how to build your own for cheap. I really do not like CC with them.  Most cards, maybe all are marked with a symbol to note the RFID presence. AMEX cards have an image of the chip and antenna on the card IIRC. 

If a crad is immersed in acetone the card will dissolve and leave the chip and antenna. Of course the card is lost in the process so I'm not sure what good that is. Interesting I suppose.   ;)
Just because something has been done and has not failed, doesn't mean it is good design.