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Why do they need to do this? They already track people with Oyster and contactless which gives them journey information. This is just a convenient data grab and

• martinald 9y ago
  Because they don't know where people go on the system. All they know where you entered and exited.
  • posterboy 9y ago
    I don't quite believe this because they could have additional readers set up that can read at a distance.
    • matthewmacleod 9y ago
      That’s nonsense and not how RFID readers should or realistically will work.
      • posterboy 9y ago
        What do you mean should, are you an RF or electrical engineer of sorts? There have been demonstrations of activists scanning in-clothes rfid identification from 100 meters across on the streets, which were used for store inventory assesment before.
    • ZoFreX 9y ago
      How would tracking the Oyster card ID that's registered to my name, address, and credit card # in their system be an improvement compared to tracking the hashed MAC address of my phone?
• 0898 9y ago
  >profiteering TfL is a not-for-profit.
  • Fifer82 9y ago
    So they profit, take their money, then they are not-for-profit.
    • victorhooi 9y ago
      You do realise this is a government body that runs public transport, right? Public transport which is notoriously bad at making profits, all around the world. Sorry, but this comes across as a bit of a silly conspiracy theory, by people who can't be bothered doing basic research.
      • vmateixeira 9y ago
        End result != motivation Bad at making profit doesn't necessarly means you're not-for-profit. Also from the article: "What they told people at the time was we're going to use this data to improve services. But now thanks to [Sky News] investigative reporting, we find out that it's partly to improve the services, but also it's to exploit people's data for revenue, doing advertising."
        • superqwert 9y ago
          TfL IS not-for-profit. I.E. any profit it gets is reinvested in London's transport infrastructure. Sky News hasn't really done any investigative reporting here, the information is publicly available and most interested people knew about this project years ago.
      • Fifer82 9y ago
        Is not-for-profit not superflous on a government body supplying 50% of it's income? Who pays for the 6 figure board salaries? Is that from the profit part, or me the tax payer? Just seems a bit stretched. never-gonna-profit
• thesehands 9y ago
  Oyster allows them see entry and exit, but is doesn't show what route the customer took, which lines did they take if a change was required. It also allows TFL to see where people travelled within the station concourse, how long they took, and what print advertising they would have walked past from turnstile to train.
  • gsnedders 9y ago
    It's notable that there's quite a few places in busy stations where the most direct route between two lines (or from one line to an exit, etc.) isn't signposted, because the footfall between them exceeds the capacity of the (typically older) direct tunnel.
• Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  They want to be able to charge advertisers more based on potential viewers of their advertisements - they probably charge a fixed fee / week for ads now, then they can go "Yeah according to our analytics a million people viewed this ad, vs 100K for the other, please pay more".
• dx034 9y ago
  If you understand how people get from A-B (which lines, what paths within stations) you can better control overcrowding.
• dspillett 9y ago
  In most cases Oyster will only tell them where you entered the tube and where you exited. At a few exchange points you might tap out and in again but at most you will not. On a bus it will tell them where you go on but IIRC you don't tap on exit. Tracking you by WiFi MAC address or similar techniques (I've heard of Bluetooth being used in some places) allows them to see where you went between entry and exit and how long you spent there. It will also allow them to track you outside the network when you are in range of one of their APs. The CityCOnnect WiFi in York tracks people around the city in this way, I'm sure other cities have similar arrangements. > This is just a convenient data grab and profiteering. I'm not sure about where direct profits might come from, but IIRC when York's city-wide WiFi started they were quite honest (or at least refreshing undeceptive) about it being a bit fo a data grab. From the council's point of view it helps them to know how people, especially visitors, navigate around the place. This can be a great help when planning changes to pedestrian signage & bus routes, and to reduce disruption when planning maintenance works on paths & roads. Of course the commercial partners will use the same data to assess advertising potentials and other such.
• nkoren 9y ago
  > This is just a convenient data grab and profiteering. I know people working on this project, and that is absolutely not their motivation. They want to better understand the movement of people within the system, so they can design better stations, trains, and services. The traditional way of understanding such passenger movements is by parking students with clipboards and people-counters all around stations, doing passenger interviews and such. This traditional methodology is not only hugely expensive, but the data it generates is spectacularly bad, and has lead to some incredibly poor planning at times.
  • titzer 9y ago
    > I know people working on this project, and that is absolutely not their motivation. It doesn't really matter the motivation if the system that gets built in the end has the same vulnerabilities and potential for abuse. Attitudes change, and history shows us that governments have a bad track record for sticking to original motivations. Companies are even worse, once they realize the profit potential of something.
  • spuz 9y ago
    Could you give more details of the kind of information they receive from wifi tracking that they don't already through oyster barriers and how this helps with service designs?
    • 88 9y ago
      Passenger movements within stations, and between stations where there are often many possible routes.
    • shawabawa3 9y ago
      Just guess but: Accurate real-time data of passenger movement through the stations. Barriers only tell you when they enter/exit, they give you no information about the routes people use, how long it takes them, how many people transfer between lines etc
    • codingmyway 9y ago
      They want to detect overcrowding of stations which means before people have gone through any barriers
• ZoFreX 9y ago
  > Why do they need to do this? This is explained in detail here: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/review-tfl-wifi-pilot.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/review-tfl-wifi-pilot.pdf If you would rather buy a paper ticket with cash you can still do that, and you won't be tracked if you put your phone into wireless mode. Personally I'm happy for them to collect limited amounts of data, with restraint, if that means they can improve the effectiveness of the network. But if you're not, that's understandable, and it's not that difficult to avoid it.