Trash cans gather your Smartphone info

1984 Trash Can Spying

British officials are "shocked" that the company they

hired is doing what they hired it to do.

Officials demanded Monday that an advertising firm stop using a network of high-tech trash cans to track people walking through London's financial district.

The Renew ad firm has been using technology embedded in the hulking receptacles to measure the Wi-Fi signals emitted by smartphones, and suggested that it would apply the concept of "cookies" -- tracking files that follow Internet users across the Web -- to the physical world.

"We will cookie the street," Renew Chief Executive Kaveh Memari said in June.

But the City of London Corporation insisted that Renew pull the plug on the program, which captures smartphones' serial numbers and analyzes signal strength to follow people up and down the street.

The captured data – which encompassed 4,009,676 devices in just one week of testing – was to be sold to advertisers in “raw form.” Shop owners, for example, could find it very useful for analyzing their customers’ visit time and loyalty reports RT News.

Renew didn't immediately return a call seeking comment on whether it would comply with the authorities' demand reports the Associated Press.


Bigger Brother: Total surveillance comes to UK
In the UK, the chances are you're being watched. It has more CCTV cameras per person than almost any other nation on earth. And now the government is planning to cast its intrusive eye over online activity, phone calls and text messages, all under the guise of an anti-terror law.

George Orwell - A Final Warning

The trash cans join a host of everyday objects from televisions to toilets that are being manufactured with the ability to send and receive data, opening up new potential for interaction -- and surveillance.

It's unclear how Renew had planned to use the data, which were gathered by its reinforced, shoulder-height pods stationed near St. Paul's Cathedral and Liverpool Street Station.

But if a company could see that a certain smartphone user spent 20 minutes in a McDonald's every day, it could approach Burger King about airing an ad on the bin's video display whenever that user walks by at lunchtime. Or it could target its commercials in real time by distinguishing between people who work in the area and visiting tourists.

The prospect drew comparisons to the creepy "Good evening, John Anderton" ads from the Tom Cruise thriller "Minority Report."

Renew first tested the technology using 12 trash cans in May, but the story didn't get traction until an article on news website Quartz led to a burst of media coverage.

"Anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public," read a statement from the City of London Corporation, which is responsible for the city's historic "square mile," home to financial institutions, law firms and tourist landmarks.

A spokesman for the body said it had been blindsided by the tests, which he said it learned about through the press only last week.

Britain's data protection watchdog said it would investigate, while Nick Pickles of the privacy advocacy group Big Brother Watch said questions need to be asked "about how such a blatant attack on people's privacy was able to occur."

In a recent statement, Memari said media coverage of the "spy bins" had been a bit breathless.

"A lot of what had been extrapolated is capabilities that could be developed and none of which are workable right now," he said.

What the Fuck!
Now Big Brother is rolling out computerized toilets that are connected to the Internet.  It appears the All-Powerful-State wants to measure ever inch of crap and every drop of urine.
(Boston Globe.com/business)

 

Irony - Big Brother cameras watch George Orwell's home.

 

On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where George Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.

The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.

In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell's favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.

Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.