Entries Tagged "geolocation"

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WiFi Tracking

“…a few hundred meters away….”

Forget RFID. Well, don’t, but National Scientific Corporation has a prototype of a WiFi tagging system that, like RFID, lets you track things in real-time and space. The advantage that the WiFi Tracker system has over passive RFID tracking is that you can keep tabs on objects with WiFi Tracker tags (which can hold up to 256K of data) from as far as a few hundred meters away (the range of passive RFID taggers is just a few meters). While you can do something similar with active RFID tags, with WiFi Tracker companies can use their pre-existing WiFi network to track things rather than having to build a whole new RFID system.

In other news, Apple is adding WiFi to the iPod.

And, of course, you can be tracked from your cellphone:

But the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have seized on the ability to
locate a cellular customer and are using it to track Americans’ whereabouts
surreptitiously—even when there’s no evidence of wrongdoing.

A pair of court decisions in the last few weeks shows that judges are split
on whether this is legal. One federal magistrate judge in Wisconsin on Jan.
17 ruled it was unlawful, but another nine days later in Louisiana decided
that it was perfectly OK.

This is an unfortunate outcome, not least because it shows that some judges
are reluctant to hold federal agents and prosecutors to the letter of the
law.

It’s also unfortunate because it demonstrates that the FBI swore never to
use a 1994 surveillance law to track cellular phones—but then, secretly,
went ahead and did it, anyway.

Posted on February 14, 2006 at 1:29 PM • View Comments

Big Brother Prison

This Dutch prison is the future of surveillance.

At a high-tech prison opening this week inmates wear electronic wristbands that track their every movement and guards monitor cells using emotion-recognition software.

Remember, new surveillance technologies are first used on populations with limited rights: inmates, children, the mentally ill, military personnel.

Posted on February 2, 2006 at 11:23 AM • View Comments

Vehicle Tracking in the UK

Universal automobile surveillance is coming:

Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts.

By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate “reads” per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites.

As The Independent opines, this is only the beginning:

The new national surveillance network for tracking car journeys, which has taken more than 25 years to develop, is only the beginning of plans to monitor the movements of all British citizens. The Home Office Scientific Development Branch in Hertfordshire is already working on ways of automatically recognising human faces by computer, which many people would see as truly introducing the prospect of Orwellian street surveillance, where our every move is recorded and stored by machines.

Although the problems of facial recognition by computer are far more formidable than for car number plates, experts believe it is only a matter of time before machines can reliably pull a face out of a crowd of moving people.

If the police and security services can show that a national surveillance operation based on recording car movements can protect the public against criminals and terrorists, there will be a strong political will to do the same with street cameras designed to monitor the flow of human traffic.

I’ve already written about the security risks of what I call “wholesale surveillance.” Once this information is collected, it will be misused, lost, and stolen. It will be filled with errors. The problems and insecurities that come from living in a surveillance society more than outweigh any crimefighting (and terrorist-fighting) advantages.

Posted on December 22, 2005 at 2:41 PM • View Comments

Electronic Shackles and Telephone Communications

The article is in Hebrew, but the security story is funny in any language.

It’s about a prisoner who was forced to wear an electronic shackle to monitor that he did not violate his home arrest. The shackle is pretty simple: if the suspect leaves the defined detention area, the electronic shackle signals through the telephone line to the local police.

How do you defeat a system such as this? Just stop paying your phone bill and wait for the phone company to shut off service.

Posted on December 21, 2005 at 12:03 PM • View Comments

Supermarket Loyalty Program Used to Pinpoint Location

This is an interesting (six-month-old) story about a supermarket loyalty program.

Person 1 loses a valuable watch in a supermarket. Person 2 finds it and, instead of returning it as required by law, keeps it. Two years later, he brings it in for repair. The repairman checks the serial number against a lost/stolen database. Person 2 doesn’t admit he found the watch, but instead claims that he bought it in some sort of used watch store. The police check the loyalty-program records from the supermarket and find that Person 2 was in the supermarket within hours of when Person 1 said he lost the watch.

EDITED TO ADD: Earlier confusion about video surveillance fixed, and two comments pointing out the error deleted. Thank you.

Posted on October 24, 2005 at 1:30 PM • View Comments

RFID and Privacy

Boston Globe editorial on RFID and privacy:

It’s one of the cutest of those cute IBM Corp. TV commercials, the ones that feature the ever-present help desk. This time, the desk appears smack in the middle of a highway, blocking the path of a big rig.

”Why are you blocking the road?” the driver asks. ”Because you’re going the wrong way,” replies the cheerful Help Desk lady. ”Your cargo told me so.” It seems the cartons inside the truck contained IBM technology that alerted the company when the driver made a wrong turn.

It’s clever, all right—and creepy. Because the technology needn’t be applied only to cases of beer. The trackers could be attached to every can of beer in the case, and allow marketers to track the boozing habits of the purchasers. Or if the cargo is clothing, those little trackers could have been stitched inside every last sweater. Then some high-tech busybody could keep those wearing them under surveillance.

If this sounds paranoid, take it up with IBM. The company filed a patent application in 2001 which contemplates using this wireless snooping technology to track people as they roam through ”shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, rest rooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, museums, etc.” An IBM spokeswoman insisted the company isn’t really prepared to go this far. Patent applications are routinely written to include every possible use of a technology, even some the company doesn’t intend to pursue. Still, it’s clear somebody at IBM has a pretty creepy imagination.

There’s a Slashdot thread on the topic.

Posted on October 14, 2005 at 7:11 AM • View Comments

NSA Watch

Three things.

U.S. Patent #6,947,978:

Method for geolocating logical network addresses

Abstract: Method for geolocating logical network addresses on electronically switched dynamic communications networks, such as the Internet, using the time latency of communications to and from the logical network address to determine its location. Minimum round-trip communications latency is measured between numerous stations on the network and known network addressed equipment to form a network latency topology map. Minimum round-trip communications latency is also measured between the stations and the logical network address to be geolocated. The resulting set of minimum round-trip communications latencies is then correlated with the network latency topology map to determine the location of the network address to be geolocated.

“Fact Sheet NSA Suite B Cryptography“:

The entire suite of cryptographic algorithms is intended to protect both classified and unclassified national security systems and information. Because Suite B is a also subset of the cryptographic algorithms approved by the National Institute of Standards, Suite B is also suitable for use throughout government. NSA’s goal in presenting Suite B is to provide industry with a common set of cryptographic algorithms that they can use to create products that meet the needs of the widest range of US Government (USG) needs.

“The Case for Elliptic Curve Cryptography“:

Elliptic Curve Cryptography provides greater security and more efficient performance than the first generation public key techniques (RSA and Diffie-Hellman) now in use. As vendors look to upgrade their systems they should seriously consider the elliptic curve alternative for the computational and bandwidth advantages they offer at comparable security.

Posted on September 30, 2005 at 7:31 AM • View Comments

Technological Parenting

Salon has an interesting article about parents turning to technology to monitor their children, instead of to other people in their community.

“What is happening is that parents now assume the worst possible outcome, rather than seeing other adults as their allies,” says Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at England’s University of Kent and the author of “Paranoid Parenting.” “You never hear stories about asking neighbors to care for kids or coming together as community. Instead we become insular, privatized communities, and look for
technological solutions to what are really social problems.” Indeed, while our parents’ generation was taught to “honor thy neighbor,” the mantra for today’s kids is “stranger danger,” and the message is clear—expect the worst of anyone unfamiliar—anywhere, and at any time.

This is security based on fear, not reason. And I think people who act this way make their families less safe.

EDITED TO ADD: Here’s a link to the book Paranoid Parenting.

Posted on August 3, 2005 at 8:38 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.