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Watched from a waste bin: UK pulls plug on ‘spy’ trash cans

RT | August 12, 2013

The City of London has demanded that an advertising firm cease its ‘spy bin’ program which uses high-tech trash cans to track people walking through the city’s financial district. The bins follow Wi-Fi signals and capture smartphone serial numbers.

Renew installed 200 bomb-proof bins with built-in Wi-Fi and digital screens inside London’s Square Mile during and after the 2012 Olympic Games. The firm initially offered to place advertisements and financial information on its “pods.” But in June, the agency started testing the bins’ wireless potential, subsequently launching a smartphone-tracking campaign.

The company’s ‘ORB’ technology scanned the streets for smartphones, indentifying the manufacturer of every device through unique media access control (MAC) addresses. It also detected the owner’s “proximity, speed and duration” of stay. Renew had hoped the program would attract advertisers and help companies in their marketing campaigns.

“The technology enables clients to accumulate data readings that will aid in compounding statistical analysis on trending demographics in high profile locations (and particularly a client’s own market share within the City relative to peers in the handheld manufacturing example),” the website’s press release said at the start of the ‘Renew ORB’ beta-testing.

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.

Instead, the program triggered a media storm, building on ‘spy bins’ hype. This was followed by public outrage and an official ban. Questions were raised regarding whether the scheme was completely legal.

Responding to the turbulent reaction, Renew’s ORB technology CEO attempted to downplay the trash bins’ data collection capabilities.

“I’m afraid that in the interest of a good headline and story there has been an emphasis on style over substance that makes our technology trial slightly more interesting than it is,” Kaveh Memari said in a Monday statement published on Renew’s website. He added that “none” of the proposed capabilities “are workable right now.”

Memari also assured that the MAC addresses collected during the pods’ beta-testing were totally “anonymized and aggregated.” He stressed that no personal details could be devised from analyzing such data, comparing the process to the work of a website counter.

Earlier, Renew promised the technology would enable it to “cookie the street.” The comment was in reference to internet cookies – tiny files created by websites to track an individual’s activity.

A City of London spokesman took a different position on the matter, saying, “Irrespective of what’s technically possible, anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public.”

According to the spokesman, the issue has been taken to the Information Commissioner’s Office – a UK public body dealing with data protection and freedom of information.

Renew appeared to be ready both for public discussion and for a legal battle, saying that “the law has not yet fully developed and it is our firm intention to discuss any such progressions publicly first and especially collaborate with privacy groups…to make sure we lead the charge on this as we are with the implementation of the technology.”

However, the firm admitted that such technology required “the future levels of protection” and “people being comfortable with interactive technology.”

Meanwhile, Nick Pickles of Big Brother Watch – a civil liberties and privacy pressure group – said that questions need to be asked “about how such a blatant attack on people’s privacy was able to occur.”

August 13, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

FCC Ponders Powerful and Free Internet Service for All… Again

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | February 6, 2013

Free public access to government-created WiFi networks across the United States could become a reality in the near future, under a proposed plan by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The FCC idea could allow Americans to make phone calls or access the Internet without the need to do business with cell phone companies.

Not surprisingly, telecoms hate the FCC plan and intend to lobby heavily against it.

But the FCC does have its own heavyweights supporting the WiFi networks, namely Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who see free wireless service as a way to encourage innovation and new technology.

The new WiFi networks would reportedly be more powerful than existing wireless networks found in most households. “They could penetrate thick concrete walls and travel over hills and around trees. If all goes as planned, free access to the Web would be available in just about every metropolitan area and in many rural areas,” according to Cecilia Kang of The Washington Post.

Drawbacks to the plan include that it would take years to set up the networks, assuming the FCC can convince local television stations and other broadcasters to sell portions of their airwaves for the new access.

Critics add that once in operation, the government might not do a good job of managing the networks against crashes and bandwidth problems.

To Learn More:

Tech, Telecom Giants Take Sides as FCC Proposes Large Public WiFi Networks (by Cecilia Kang, Washington Post)

FCC Bends to Telecoms on Broadband Internet Development (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

FCC Proposes Broadband Internet for All Americans (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

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February 6, 2013 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

Streetviewed: Google cars snooping on WiFi users not an accident

RT | 30 April, 2012

Google bosses were informed their Street View cars would collect e-mails, names, addresses and other personal data from Wi-Fi users around the world, a government report shows. But the company insists the message didn’t get through.

­Neither a mistake nor the work of an unauthorized engineer was behind Google’s massive harvesting of Wi-Fi communications that included e-mails, passwords and other sensitive personal information across three continents in 2007-2010, indicates the recent report filed by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The supervisors of the Street View program were well aware Google cars would go beyond photographing streetscapes. Or at least they should have been.

On Saturday, the web giant releases their own version of report – with employees’ names blacked out. An earlier version provided by the FCC had whole blocks of text blacked out.

The search giant said it wanted a more transparent version to be shown to the public as evidence that any wrongdoing by the company was inadvertent. Apparently, the company wants to avoid speculation over what could have been withheld from the initial release and thus limit any damage.

The report confirms Google’s engineer behind the data-collecting software voluntarily embarked on a project to gather personal e-mails and Web searches of potentially hundreds of millions of people. Identified as Engineer Doe, the individual declined to speak to the FCC, invoking Fifth Amendment rights, which protects citizens from being compelled to testify against themselves.

The design document prepared by Engineer Doe clearly shows his intention to collect payload data in addition to taking panoramic snapshots, as Google’s cars drove by. The private data would “be analyzed offline for use in other initiatives,” like finding how well Google’s other services are used, the document said.

Privacy consideration did come to his mind. “A typical concern might be that we are logging user traffic along with sufficient data to precisely triangulate their position at a given time, along with information about what they were doing,” the document says.

Engineer Doe decided that no harm will be done because Google’s data harvesters would not remain in the vicinity of any particular Wi-Fi user for “an extended period of time.” Nevertheless he added the following “to do” item: “Discuss privacy considerations with Product Counsel.”

“That never occurred,” the FCC report says.

The employee also “specifically told two engineers working on the project, including a senior manager, about collecting payload data.” It actually appears that at least seven Street View engineers had “wide access” to the plan to collect payload data back in 2007.

Engineer Doe’s code was used to collect some 200 gigabytes of payload data across the US between January 2008 and April 2010. Similar logging of private data happened across the world, which made Google the butt of investigations by respective authorities.

The report further cites a number of other people involved in the project as failing to recall knowing that collecting of payload data was happening at the time. Those include an engineer, whose job was reviewing Engineer Doe’s code line by line for bugs and a senior manager, who said he pre-approved the man’s document before it was written.

Following the investigation the FCC fined Google $25,000 for obstructing its investigation, including withholding an email, that openly discussed the engineer’s review of payload data with a senior manager on the Street view project.

It ruled that since the payload data collected was not encrypted, the act didn’t violate American wiretapping law, but said it has “significant factual questions” about why this ever happened.

Google denied stonewalling the probe and blamed the FCC for any delays.

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April 30, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment