8 ms·

London garden bridge users to have mobile phone signals tracked

130 points by OWaz 11y ago

privong 11y ago
This does seem worrying, particularly the private citizens being given some limited subset of police power, to issue fines and confiscate items. > The Garden Bridge Trust said the planning documents detailed theoretical maximum powers that were extremely unlikely to be used It might be intended that way, but realistially, it seems that the exercise of power is invariably pushed to the theoretical maximum (and often beyond).
- suvelx 11y ago
  It's been around for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Safety_Accreditation_Scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Safety_Accreditation...
  - privong 11y ago
    Yeah, I figured from the article that it was existing program. Doesn't make it any less worrying, though.
- zeveb 11y ago
  > particularly the private citizens being given some limited subset of police power What is more worrying to me is when the police have more powers than the citizenry. Recognising the right of free citizens to enforce the law is a-okay in my book, although of course that's not quite what England's doing.
  - privong 11y ago
    > What is more worrying to me is when the police have more powers than the citizenry. > Recognising the right of free citizens to enforce the law is a-okay in my book, although of course that's not quite what England's doing. You make a good point. I'm generally in favor of the idea of "citizens arrest" and the like. But in this particular instance, the asymmetry is concerning.
cryoshon 11y ago
I guess this is another symptom of the UK's rapid slide to totalitarianism. Recreational areas probably shouldn't be strictly surveilled and regulated by quasi-cops at all times. This isn't public land, even though it's built with public funds.
tombrossman 11y ago
I did a talk on privacy topics from a user's perspective at a small 'tech fair' this weekend and I was delighted to see this tweet showing a map of the venue showing everyone's precise location: https://twitter.com/johnebridge/status/662984007370612736 https://twitter.com/johnebridge/status/662984007370612736 I was able to add it to the slide deck just in time and people were genuinely surprised by it. It's a good thing that the company were transparent about it and shared the image but for many non-technical attendees it was a bit of a wake-up call. "Do you use the free WiFi at the local supermarkets?" "Did you buy a bunch of liquor and condoms, and then come back a few weeks later and buy pregnancy tests?" "Did you think you were pretty slick because you paid cash?" The audience's eyes getting bigger and bigger...
- conductor 11y ago
  With face-recognition software using CCTV cameras pointed at your face while in the checkout lane they will recognize and profile you, credit card or cash, WiFi or no WiFi. At least, the technology is there.
- shostack 11y ago
  Can you share more around how that map was generated?
  - tombrossman 11y ago
    I have no idea, sorry. I just happened to see it when someone else re-tweeted it and it looked perfect. The service was provided by JT Global (website here: http://www.jtglobal.com/jersey/ http://www.jtglobal.com/jersey/) and Purple WiFi (http://www.purplewifi.net/ http://www.purplewifi.net/) so you might try following up with them? I don't know any of the people involved, I just showed up for my talk and left soon after.
  - atomwaffel 11y ago
    Not the original poster, but when you sign into a Wi-Fi network, the router needs to know where to send the packets, so it needs to have a way to identify your device. That's why all devices that can connect to a network have what's called a MAC address[1] – a very long number that is unique to your device. Your device also broadcasts that address when it scans for networks, so just about all the time. When you control several access points and a few of them see the same device at the same time, you can triangulate the location of that device down to a few metres. The company I used to work for did something similar[2] at a conference over the course of three days. (You can drag on the map to highlight individual devices.) It's really cool and really quite creepy. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address [2]: https://apps.opendatacity.de/relog/ https://apps.opendatacity.de/relog/
objclxt 11y ago
The article title is a little misleading: > people’s progress across the structure would be tracked by monitors detecting the Wi-Fi signals from their phones, which show up the device’s Mac address ...I think if you said "mobile phone signal" to someone round here they'd assume you were talking about the GSM radio. If you think shopping malls / cities aren't already using MAC addresses sniffed during WiFi discovery to track location you're sadly mistaken (which is why iOS started randomizing them from iOS 8 onwards).
- acveilleux 11y ago
  randomizing helps, but they can still track you over the lifetime of the mac.
mattgibson 11y ago
This article more or less describes what a police state would look like if the Church of England designed it. A controlled, plasticised, corporate Little England, where fun is monitored and must be of an approved nature, freedom of expression is allowed as long as you don't express anything disagreeable, and the public have no democratic rights at all. Yet another small, sad indicator that control over the lives of Londoners and the spaces they live in is for sale to anyone with the money to buy it. “A private place operating as a public space” is not what I want to have on London's limited real estate.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- striking 11y ago
  I think soon enough, citizens of England will realize there's a problem. I don't think they can take this concept to its logical conclusion.
- Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
  I don't get your Church of England reference. I'm a communicant member of a liberal CofE church and these restrictions would be anathema to me and to most of our church's congregation. Indeed, I "play a [rather loud] musical instrument" for the church every week...
  - TomGullen 11y ago
    When you say liberal, do you mean liberal but still will not do gay marriages?
    - alexro 11y ago
      It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.
wolfgke 11y ago
That's why Richard Stallman correctly described mobile phones as tracking and surveillance devices: > https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html "Cell phones are tracking and surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be remotely converted into listening devices."
- keithpeter 11y ago
  The small educational centre where I teach has recently provided free wifi to users of the building. It is a good connection. You have to give a mobile phone number once to use the system. This morning, I went in with my old Thinkpad on which I have replaced Xubuntu with Slackware/MLED including a complete reformat and encryption of the SSD. The wifi recognised the machine and greeted me by name. I can only assume that the server is recording the MAC addresses of devices that use the system. That is just about the only thing left that it could be reading.
  - ableal 11y ago
    > the server is recording the MAC addresses I believe WiFi routers have options for white-listing devices by MAC address. Probably being done automatically in your building.
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    Why do machines broadcast MAC addresses to networks? to identify themselves? Is it easy to randomize your MAC?
    - ethagnawl 11y ago
      > Is it easy to randomize your MAC? It would appear to be: http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=2738 http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=2738
    - zymhan 11y ago
      Yes, computers broadcast their MAC address when they first connect to a network so that they can, for example, obtain an IP address via DHCP. However the MAC address isn't forwarded beyond the LAN to which the computer is connected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Resolution_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Resolution_Protocol
forgottenpass 11y ago
Welcome to the future your cavalier "It's OK when I do it" attitudes towards mass surveillance... er... I'm sorry... I mean "telemetry" are producing.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
athenot 11y ago
I would understand that in a private place such as Disneyland or in an ultra-orderly city such as Singapore. But for a so-called public park, this is an insult to democracy. Part of what makes public parks interesting is how impromptu activities take place. Enforce existing law to keep people safe; no need for locking everything down.
- scholia 11y ago
  True, but it's not really a public park....
  - astrodust 11y ago
    What the hell is this thing, then? Why is private money involved?
    - scholia 11y ago
      It's a £75 million project being set up and run by a charity, the Garden Bridge Trust, so it won't be publicly owned. It will be closed to the public when it's rented out for commercial purposes. The FAQ says: Over 65% of the capital costs to build the bridge will be fundraised from the private sector. More than £145 million has been pledged already and there is a business plan to cover the £2 million annual maintenance and operations costs. Transport for London and the Government have together contributed £60 million in total. https://www.gardenbridge.london/questions-answers/fact-fiction https://www.gardenbridge.london/questions-answers/fact-ficti... The arguments for the public funding contribution are that commuters will be able to walk across it, and it will help regenerate the areas at both ends.
matthewmacleod 11y ago
There is an obvious creeping issue regarding the privatisation of public space, which is the interesting part here and what we should be pushing back against. I'm less bothered about using wifi MACs to measure traffic, so long as no data is retained – it can provide useful insight into the number of visitors. Randomisation is obviously in modern devices, but I'd be concerned that older devices won't have the data regarding them deleted.
Spearchucker 11y ago
The article is bitter sweet to me. Bitter because it's yet another little step in a huge march intended to erode freedom. Sweet, because they track WiFi signals. In 2012 I started turning WiFi and location off on my phone as I left home. I remember the date because it's when London got 4G, and as of that date I no longer really needed WiFi, but I did need my battery to last the day. It's become habit.
- pmontra 11y ago
  I always do it both to preserve battery and for privacy (and I never turned on location services) but a customer of mine, in the business of counting people entering and leaving stores, told me that about 60 to 80% of people has WiFi turned on all the time. That was a surprise. I would have taken a zero off those figures if I were to guess.
pjc50 11y ago
Note that there are plenty of shops doing this kind of thing already: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/datablog/2014/jan/10/how-tracking-customers-in-store-will-soon-be-the-norm http://www.theguardian.com/technology/datablog/2014/jan/10/h... It seems this is the point people pick up on it and start pushing back a bit. The real point is halfway down: "The planning document stresses that the security measures are aimed primarily at crime and antisocial behaviour, and notes that staff would be expected to make full use of their CSAS powers to respond to protests or demonstrations, which are banned on the bridge." A protest-free 'public' space. All part of the Singapore-isation of London. The garden bridge is a massive waste of partly-public money anyway; a conspicuous consumption vanity project like the (private) dangleway.
randomblast 11y ago
Brilliant quote: The bridge trust said the proposed planning conditions would not amount to the structure becoming an overly controlled and regulated place, insisting the visitor hosts are “not police officers”. It said that while the visitor hosts would theoretically have the power to seize any banned items, in practice this would only happen with things such as alcohol. Since when have any powers been granted on a theoretical basis?
TomGullen 11y ago
No flying kites? Isn't that what we were saying you couldn't do under Taliban control about 5 years ago and laughing at how ludicrous it was? Nice to see tens of millions of public money going on vanity projects like this with ridiculous baggage attached to it. The £20mm public loan over a 50 year period sounds interesting. I wonder what interest rate they are getting on that. I would LOVE to see it. Maybe I'll do a FOI request. If I could bet on it, I'd bet they have a pretty swell deal.
- jarek 11y ago
  Strictly speaking, flying kites is not allowed in other London streets as well ("any street, to the obstruction, annoyance, or danger of the residents or passengers", from a 19th century law http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/10-11/89/section/28 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/10-11/89/section/28). Flying a kite from the pavement of Waterloo Bridge seems intuitively a bad idea so that's not very controversial. It does undermine their "park" claims though...
- deadfish 11y ago
  It would probably be deemed 'commercially sensitive'. I sent a FOI to my university and that was what they used to get out of it.
  - TomGullen 11y ago
    I've sent one off, let's see what happens. I've done quite a few before. If they don't reply, it's often worth trying again but rephrasing or targeting a specific detail.
- vidarh 11y ago
  I'd be tempted fly a bag of cheap phones under a kite.. "The tracking system says there's a gang of people gathering... What?!? Now they're hovering over the water?!?"
superkuh 11y ago
The issue here is not so much the invasive tracking and such. That's bad but it is private land. The issue is that millions of dollars of taxpayers' money is being used to pay for things on private land as if it were public.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
zyxley 11y ago
"to have" here is such a weasel phrase. Properly phrased title: "London Garden Bridge Trust will track mobile phone signals of bridge users"

130 points by OWaz 11y ago

This does seem worrying, particularly the private citizens being given some limited subset of police power, to issue fines and confiscate items. > The Garden Bridge Trust said the planning documents detailed theoretical maximum powers that were extremely unlikely to be used It might be intended that way, but realistially, it seems that the exercise of power is invariably pushed to the theoretical maximum (and often beyond).

suvelx 11y ago
It's been around for a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Safety_Accreditation_Scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Safety_Accreditation...
- privong 11y ago
  Yeah, I figured from the article that it was existing program. Doesn't make it any less worrying, though.
zeveb 11y ago
> particularly the private citizens being given some limited subset of police power What is more worrying to me is when the police have more powers than the citizenry. Recognising the right of free citizens to enforce the law is a-okay in my book, although of course that's not quite what England's doing.
- privong 11y ago
  > What is more worrying to me is when the police have more powers than the citizenry. > Recognising the right of free citizens to enforce the law is a-okay in my book, although of course that's not quite what England's doing. You make a good point. I'm generally in favor of the idea of "citizens arrest" and the like. But in this particular instance, the asymmetry is concerning.

cryoshon 11y ago

I guess this is another symptom of the UK's rapid slide to totalitarianism. Recreational areas probably shouldn't be strictly surveilled and regulated by quasi-cops at all times. This isn't public land, even though it's built with public funds.

tombrossman 11y ago

I did a talk on privacy topics from a user's perspective at a small 'tech fair' this weekend and I was delighted to see this tweet showing a map of the venue showing everyone's precise location: https://twitter.com/johnebridge/status/662984007370612736 https://twitter.com/johnebridge/status/662984007370612736 I was able to add it to the slide deck just in time and people were genuinely surprised by it. It's a good thing that the company were transparent about it and shared the image but for many non-technical attendees it was a bit of a wake-up call. "Do you use the free WiFi at the local supermarkets?" "Did you buy a bunch of liquor and condoms, and then come back a few weeks later and buy pregnancy tests?" "Did you think you were pretty slick because you paid cash?" The audience's eyes getting bigger and bigger...

conductor 11y ago
With face-recognition software using CCTV cameras pointed at your face while in the checkout lane they will recognize and profile you, credit card or cash, WiFi or no WiFi. At least, the technology is there.
shostack 11y ago
Can you share more around how that map was generated?
- tombrossman 11y ago
  I have no idea, sorry. I just happened to see it when someone else re-tweeted it and it looked perfect. The service was provided by JT Global (website here: http://www.jtglobal.com/jersey/ http://www.jtglobal.com/jersey/) and Purple WiFi (http://www.purplewifi.net/ http://www.purplewifi.net/) so you might try following up with them? I don't know any of the people involved, I just showed up for my talk and left soon after.
- atomwaffel 11y ago
  Not the original poster, but when you sign into a Wi-Fi network, the router needs to know where to send the packets, so it needs to have a way to identify your device. That's why all devices that can connect to a network have what's called a MAC address[1] – a very long number that is unique to your device. Your device also broadcasts that address when it scans for networks, so just about all the time. When you control several access points and a few of them see the same device at the same time, you can triangulate the location of that device down to a few metres. The company I used to work for did something similar[2] at a conference over the course of three days. (You can drag on the map to highlight individual devices.) It's really cool and really quite creepy. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address [2]: https://apps.opendatacity.de/relog/ https://apps.opendatacity.de/relog/

objclxt 11y ago

The article title is a little misleading: > people’s progress across the structure would be tracked by monitors detecting the Wi-Fi signals from their phones, which show up the device’s Mac address ...I think if you said "mobile phone signal" to someone round here they'd assume you were talking about the GSM radio. If you think shopping malls / cities aren't already using MAC addresses sniffed during WiFi discovery to track location you're sadly mistaken (which is why iOS started randomizing them from iOS 8 onwards).

acveilleux 11y ago
randomizing helps, but they can still track you over the lifetime of the mac.

mattgibson 11y ago

This article more or less describes what a police state would look like if the Church of England designed it. A controlled, plasticised, corporate Little England, where fun is monitored and must be of an approved nature, freedom of expression is allowed as long as you don't express anything disagreeable, and the public have no democratic rights at all. Yet another small, sad indicator that control over the lives of Londoners and the spaces they live in is for sale to anyone with the money to buy it. “A private place operating as a public space” is not what I want to have on London's limited real estate.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
striking 11y ago
I think soon enough, citizens of England will realize there's a problem. I don't think they can take this concept to its logical conclusion.
Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
I don't get your Church of England reference. I'm a communicant member of a liberal CofE church and these restrictions would be anathema to me and to most of our church's congregation. Indeed, I "play a [rather loud] musical instrument" for the church every week...
- TomGullen 11y ago
  When you say liberal, do you mean liberal but still will not do gay marriages?
  - alexro 11y ago
    It doesn't make sense to call gay partnership a marriage. Marriage is a strictly defined cultural phenomenon meaning a relationship between a man and a woman with the original intention to continue the family by having kids.

wolfgke 11y ago

That's why Richard Stallman correctly described mobile phones as tracking and surveillance devices: > https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html https://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html "Cell phones are tracking and surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be remotely converted into listening devices."

keithpeter 11y ago
The small educational centre where I teach has recently provided free wifi to users of the building. It is a good connection. You have to give a mobile phone number once to use the system. This morning, I went in with my old Thinkpad on which I have replaced Xubuntu with Slackware/MLED including a complete reformat and encryption of the SSD. The wifi recognised the machine and greeted me by name. I can only assume that the server is recording the MAC addresses of devices that use the system. That is just about the only thing left that it could be reading.
- ableal 11y ago
  > the server is recording the MAC addresses I believe WiFi routers have options for white-listing devices by MAC address. Probably being done automatically in your building.
- hellbanner 11y ago
  Why do machines broadcast MAC addresses to networks? to identify themselves? Is it easy to randomize your MAC?
  - ethagnawl 11y ago
    > Is it easy to randomize your MAC? It would appear to be: http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=2738 http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/?p=2738
  - zymhan 11y ago
    Yes, computers broadcast their MAC address when they first connect to a network so that they can, for example, obtain an IP address via DHCP. However the MAC address isn't forwarded beyond the LAN to which the computer is connected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Resolution_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_Resolution_Protocol

forgottenpass 11y ago

Welcome to the future your cavalier "It's OK when I do it" attitudes towards mass surveillance... er... I'm sorry... I mean "telemetry" are producing.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

athenot 11y ago

I would understand that in a private place such as Disneyland or in an ultra-orderly city such as Singapore. But for a so-called public park, this is an insult to democracy. Part of what makes public parks interesting is how impromptu activities take place. Enforce existing law to keep people safe; no need for locking everything down.

scholia 11y ago
True, but it's not really a public park....
- astrodust 11y ago
  What the hell is this thing, then? Why is private money involved?
  - scholia 11y ago
    It's a £75 million project being set up and run by a charity, the Garden Bridge Trust, so it won't be publicly owned. It will be closed to the public when it's rented out for commercial purposes. The FAQ says: Over 65% of the capital costs to build the bridge will be fundraised from the private sector. More than £145 million has been pledged already and there is a business plan to cover the £2 million annual maintenance and operations costs. Transport for London and the Government have together contributed £60 million in total. https://www.gardenbridge.london/questions-answers/fact-fiction https://www.gardenbridge.london/questions-answers/fact-ficti... The arguments for the public funding contribution are that commuters will be able to walk across it, and it will help regenerate the areas at both ends.

matthewmacleod 11y ago

There is an obvious creeping issue regarding the privatisation of public space, which is the interesting part here and what we should be pushing back against. I'm less bothered about using wifi MACs to measure traffic, so long as no data is retained – it can provide useful insight into the number of visitors. Randomisation is obviously in modern devices, but I'd be concerned that older devices won't have the data regarding them deleted.

Spearchucker 11y ago

The article is bitter sweet to me. Bitter because it's yet another little step in a huge march intended to erode freedom. Sweet, because they track WiFi signals. In 2012 I started turning WiFi and location off on my phone as I left home. I remember the date because it's when London got 4G, and as of that date I no longer really needed WiFi, but I did need my battery to last the day. It's become habit.

pmontra 11y ago
I always do it both to preserve battery and for privacy (and I never turned on location services) but a customer of mine, in the business of counting people entering and leaving stores, told me that about 60 to 80% of people has WiFi turned on all the time. That was a surprise. I would have taken a zero off those figures if I were to guess.

pjc50 11y ago

Note that there are plenty of shops doing this kind of thing already: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/datablog/2014/jan/10/how-tracking-customers-in-store-will-soon-be-the-norm http://www.theguardian.com/technology/datablog/2014/jan/10/h... It seems this is the point people pick up on it and start pushing back a bit. The real point is halfway down: "The planning document stresses that the security measures are aimed primarily at crime and antisocial behaviour, and notes that staff would be expected to make full use of their CSAS powers to respond to protests or demonstrations, which are banned on the bridge." A protest-free 'public' space. All part of the Singapore-isation of London. The garden bridge is a massive waste of partly-public money anyway; a conspicuous consumption vanity project like the (private) dangleway.

randomblast 11y ago

Brilliant quote: The bridge trust said the proposed planning conditions would not amount to the structure becoming an overly controlled and regulated place, insisting the visitor hosts are “not police officers”. It said that while the visitor hosts would theoretically have the power to seize any banned items, in practice this would only happen with things such as alcohol. Since when have any powers been granted on a theoretical basis?

TomGullen 11y ago

No flying kites? Isn't that what we were saying you couldn't do under Taliban control about 5 years ago and laughing at how ludicrous it was? Nice to see tens of millions of public money going on vanity projects like this with ridiculous baggage attached to it. The £20mm public loan over a 50 year period sounds interesting. I wonder what interest rate they are getting on that. I would LOVE to see it. Maybe I'll do a FOI request. If I could bet on it, I'd bet they have a pretty swell deal.

jarek 11y ago
Strictly speaking, flying kites is not allowed in other London streets as well ("any street, to the obstruction, annoyance, or danger of the residents or passengers", from a 19th century law http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/10-11/89/section/28 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/10-11/89/section/28). Flying a kite from the pavement of Waterloo Bridge seems intuitively a bad idea so that's not very controversial. It does undermine their "park" claims though...
deadfish 11y ago
It would probably be deemed 'commercially sensitive'. I sent a FOI to my university and that was what they used to get out of it.
- TomGullen 11y ago
  I've sent one off, let's see what happens. I've done quite a few before. If they don't reply, it's often worth trying again but rephrasing or targeting a specific detail.
vidarh 11y ago
I'd be tempted fly a bag of cheap phones under a kite.. "The tracking system says there's a gang of people gathering... What?!? Now they're hovering over the water?!?"

superkuh 11y ago

The issue here is not so much the invasive tracking and such. That's bad but it is private land. The issue is that millions of dollars of taxpayers' money is being used to pay for things on private land as if it were public.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

zyxley 11y ago

"to have" here is such a weasel phrase. Properly phrased title: "London Garden Bridge Trust will track mobile phone signals of bridge users"