What privacy?
Shopping center using your phone to track your movement.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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November 28th, 2011 at 10:25 am
My initial response was to be disturbed. Then I realized they could just use video cameras and do the same thing, with actual motion pictures of me leering at the bras on the way out of Nordtrom’s. Or some minimum wage kids with a notepad and a pen.
November 28th, 2011 at 10:30 am
So they came up with a way to get the Mall Ninja QRF to the trouble site sooner, eh?
Of course, if the Orange Julius shop happens to be having a Sale, I guess they’ll still have to use the Food Court as a Staging Area, huh?
November 28th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Typical local news reporting.
The work TRACK should not be anywhere in this article. No one is tracking you. Everyone’s phone signal strength is being monitored to see what direction people are moving, how long they stay in one place, and what entrances/exits they use.
As above you’re WAY more likely to be ACTUALLY TRACKED by video camera, facial and license plate recognition, RFID in the items you pick up and carry, etc.
It’s barely/questionably legal to monitor IMEI numbers off of public cell phones at all, let alone for recording location deltas. So I don’t see this being a common place thing. I also don’t see it being legal for very long.
That all said, while this system does not TRACK in any means that could be used to identify you. A combination of systems certainly could. Using this system and facial/license plate, and RFID, you could match a Person to their Phone to their Car to how fast they walk, what they buy, how often, etc etc etc. That gets a little fucked up. In this example, cell phone “tracking” is the least of the issues.
However, unless you’re going to shop in a ski mask, own no phone, take the bus, and pay in cash… good luck avoiding the inevitable.
November 28th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
HEY! I made the news!
Well, sort of. This is in my town. Woohoo! We’re famous on the internet!
November 28th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Meh. I can’t remember the last time I was in a mall. Allah bless the intrawebz
November 28th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
So?
What Other Steve said; there’s nothing they can ID you with in that, at least by themselves.
And, well, there are these things called “cameras” that malls and mall stores often (almost always!) already have – and combined with computer analysis, those can both track you in the mall and provide a big boost to identifying you.
That a mall wants to do mass analysis of movement patterns is … unexceptionable, to say the least.
(And if it leads to solving congestion or flow problems, more power to them.)
It’s typically wonderful of the ACLU to spew on about “privacy concerns” – in a completely public place that is already under personal and video surveillance.
That the ACLU only evidently had to say that there “should be laws to prevent this”, without offering any argument or reasoning is probably due to editing by the local reporter, but over the past decade I’ve really lost any respect for them as a quality organization, rater than a fundraiser-of-perpetual-imminent-catastrophe.)