9 ms·

Hundreds of Devices Hidden Inside New York City Phone Booths

93 points by jboynyc 12y ago

pattle 12y ago
Out of interest does anyone have any statistic on how often phone booths are used? I'd have thought that with most people owning mobile phones the need to ever use a pay phone is very rare
- bluedino 12y ago
  I thought they were all gone in NYC for some reason.
  - acafourek 12y ago
    As of 2009, only 4 phone booths remained in Manhattan: http://www.scoutingny.com/the-last-phone-booth-in-new-york-city/ http://www.scoutingny.com/the-last-phone-booth-in-new-york-c... Comments on that thread note that in 2012, at least 2 of those were verified as still around, but not sure about now. There are a lot of phone stalls still around though - a number of which have been sites for experimental improvements for some time now, including a Google initiative to outfit some with public wifi: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/business/future-of-public-pay-phone-wifi.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/business/future-of-public...
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  I was wondering that too. I very rarely see public phones anywhere except airports nowadays, and they're pretty thin on the ground even there (sometimes you see the dedicated lines that connect directly to (e.g.) a cab company). It's not like the old days when there was a phone booth every few blocks, and massive banks of pay phones in airports.
userbinator 12y ago
Beacons are Bluetooth devices that emit simple signals that smartphones can pick up. A beacon in a New York City phone booth ad would need to recognize a corresponding app to push beacon-linked content to that phone. From what I can see from reading the article this isn't the scary "things that watch you without your knowledge" but more like "things you can connect to if you're nearby" - and given that there's WiFi hotspots and other things in this category too, it doesn't seem all that frightening. In other words you'd have to have allow your phone to connect to them for them to gather any info, and in that case it's not much worse than connecting to a WiFi hotspot setup for marketing purposes (e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19/how-stores-use-your-phones-wifi-to-track-your-shopping-habits/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19... ). (The fact that the majority of people leave their phones in a "promiscuous" mode with all the radios enabled and constantly looking for things to connect to, and submissively install apps without reading their privacy policies/terms of use carefully, is a different although related issue - but this is something you can educate yourself and protect against.)
- jamesk_au 12y ago
  It does seem a bit exaggerated: "In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive 'opt-in' permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.) ... Gimbal-powered apps may collect your current location, the time of day you passed the beacon, and details about your device." If the beacons are doing anything more, it is not reported in this article.
  - noselasd 12y ago
    It is however a rather small step to such a 3. party app being bundled with your branded phone, which you've opt-ed into by buying the phone.
    - dwild 12y ago
      Then let's wait for that step to happen before jumping to conclusion.
      - floatrock 12y ago
        Are there any rules or precedent preventing this? Or is it a chicken-and-egg not-enough-beacons-out-there-to-make-it-worth-it type situation? One smells like conclusions are a bit premature, the other smells more like inevitability.
  - srcmap 12y ago
    If you turn on wifi tether mode, you are broadcasting your unique Mac address. Not sure if you have just BT headset running, can they sniff an unique address from the air way.
- bndw 12y ago
  Personally, I disable both WiFi and Bluetooth unless I'm actively using it in a trusted location for this very reason.
- 12y ago
tonylemesmer 12y ago
Wifi beacons were deployed in London[1][2] as part of advertising systems on waste bins. These logged your MAC address as you passed by and allowed targeted advertising. I believe they were removed once the rollout was publicised and people rightly kicked up a stink about it. It was an opt-out system because if wifi on your smartphone was switched on (which most people probably do) then it would automatically log your phone's presence. Users would have had to switch off wifi to avoid being tracked. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 [2] http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following-you/ http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following-you/
- viewer5 12y ago
  Do people normally have wifi enabled when they're out-and-about? I turn it on when I'm at home/at a friend's house, but otherwise turn it off since there's no wifi to be had, and it's just an extra drain on the battery. Or does London have widespread public wifi?
  - cbr 12y ago
    I think most people just leave wifi on; constantly turning it off and on is annoying, and you get better GPS when it's on.
    - morpher 12y ago
      Friendly pedantic clarification: you get better location accuracy when WiFi is on by combining access point location databases with the GPS signal.
      - cbr 12y ago
        While I was using "GPS" as shorthand for "automatically determined location", technically doesn't the GPS receiver work better/faster when your phone already has a rough idea where you are?
  - leephillips 12y ago
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Ah Gimbal, the HaaS company... the beacons that require you to register them on-line to be able to reconfigure them. Also, iBeacon compatibility doesn't work well in Series 10, i.e. those you can order a dev-kit of for free. I'm waiting for someone to figure out how to force all those various beacons to talk the same language. Right now, everyone is trying to lock users in to a particular brand. It's incredibly annoying (and the same thing goes for the entire IoT and home automation market).
andyhawkes 12y ago
I hate all these FUD headlines that claim iBeacons can track you or send you adverts - everything to do with beacons is (at present) mediated by an app, and therefore subject to a user installing it and granting permissions. Sure, you can get people to install stuff that they don't understand and which will allow snooping etc. but that's by no means constrained to anything using the (Apple-owned) iBeacon standard. I'll be more interested in keeping an eye on the URL-centric 'physical Web" experimental project recently revealed by Google (https://github.com/google/physical-web https://github.com/google/physical-web) as that potentially removes the need for app-based mediation of beacon (without the "i" prefix) interactions, uses the universality of http and URLs for content identification, and could make for a much lower-friction way of implementing beacon integration across different platforms.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  Thanks for the physical web link - you can easily see Googles "play to our strengths not Apples" thinking behind it (https://github.com/google/physical-web/blob/master/documentation/introduction.md https://github.com/google/physical-web/blob/master/documenta...) I like it - might have to try a RPi build for one
  - andyhawkes 12y ago
    It makes total sense to make beacons broadcast something that devices can interpret / interact with directly. iBeacons are an interesting "first move" for the technology thanks to the weight Apple / iOS puts behind the potential for adoption, but the current model of interaction is just too convoluted / clumsy: iBeacon broadcasts UUID/major/minor > subscribed app listens > app checks internal database or more probably fetches some data from a web-based API > decides what to do with that data / response. vs beacon broadcasts a URL > OS (or subscribed app) pulls data from URL > user (or app) decides what to do with that data / response The abstraction provided by the iBeacon model is interesting but arguably too abstract, whereas the simple use of a URL is decidedly simple and logical by comparison, and (potentially) cuts out the app mediation. If you combine the simplicity of using a URL with the idea that either the OS interacts with it directly or an app with a URL- or domain-specific mapped intent takes over that interaction then you get a simpler and more transparent journey as a result. I think it's very early days for the Physical Web project, but it should definitely be one to watch!
Vulkum 12y ago
I recommend watching Person of Interest. The TV show has started long before the NSA scandal, but it's like a Hollywood post interpretation of some major event. Except it was a premonition.
- morganvachon 12y ago
  It's one of my favorite shows because it's at least plausible, and felt that way even before the 2013 revelations. A lot of the tech and storylines in the show are of course fictionalized and a bit "out there", but the core concepts it presents are at least within the bounds of possibility. I tend to view it both as suspension-of-disbelief popcorn entertainment, and as a telling allegory on today's surveillance state.
zavulon 12y ago
I thought Buzzfeed was on the list of domains you can't link to? If not, this post is a good example why it should be..
- eli 12y ago
  Buzzfeed does some really fine reporting. But this doesn't seem to be a good example.
  - hnha 12y ago
    There are users here who do some really fine commenting. But they got "deaded" for one reason or another. I would love to see buzzfeed and similar sites punished for their wrongdoings even if sometimes they might provide something good. The worse clearly overweighs the good to me.
    - eli 12y ago
      Is the existing voting system so broken that we need to resort to heavy handed tactics like that? I'm not sure I'm a fan of shadowbanning people either, except in really exceptional situations.
mdda 12y ago
And I just became aware of the NYC Halal carts run by the NYPD (in the talk by Steve Rambam at HopeX recently) [0]. [0] http://youtu.be/dNZrq2iK87k?t=2h3m9s http://youtu.be/dNZrq2iK87k?t=2h3m9s
al2o3cr 12y ago
"In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive “opt-in” permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.)" FFS, Buzzfeed. This is buried practically at the end, AFTER the giant infographic and 10+ grafs of scare text. It's like running the headline: YOUR BREAKFAST MAY CONTAIN POISON and then at the end of the article: "Well, if you bought the cereal that said 'CONTAINS POISON' on the box and decided to eat it right now, that might be true."
- Lord_Zero 12y ago
  Clickbait at its finest.
forca 12y ago
People should not be tracked. Full stop. Even with their permission. We are headed for worse than Orwell ever imagined. I cannot believe some people consent to this. There will come a time and soon whereby people will not be able to do a thing without someone tracking it.
- clarkmoody 12y ago
  Get ready for a disturbing time when you read about surveillance on Wikipedia[0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
- Zikes 12y ago
  I'm having a difficult time thinking of something I do that is not tracked by someone somewhere. Even the city knows when I take a crap thanks to "smart meters".
Zigurd 12y ago
Several commenters here have stated that Bluetooth beacon interactions are mediated by apps and they are therefore not surveillance devices. That's just not correct. Bluetooth beacons can log and report information about devices that come within range of those beacons with active Bluetooth radios. Only interactive-time applications of a beacon need the cooperation of an app on a wide-area connected device. Beacons that don't have external power generally can't use WiFi or mobile networks to do it, but this information can be uploaded on demand. For example, this information could be collected when coins from pay phones are collected. Moreover, these beacons are reportedly installed in pay phone kiosks that do have wired connectivity. It's possible, even likely, that they "phone home."
tashoecraft 12y ago
Why is this exaggerated journalism even on here? These aren't tracking everyone in NYC within range, only those who have bluetooth enabled, downloaded a very specific application, and then allow the app to track you in the background. Now this is all for IOS, android on the other hand does have potential to be troublesome.
diego_moita 12y ago
This article is cheap sensationalism to foster Luddite paranoia. The beacons will only track those that want to be tracked. And there a lot of valid situations where people would want to share geographical information in order to be guided, notified or rescued. Sometimes I feel that valid concerns on privacy are doing to IT what pollution did to chemistry: people got so panicked that blindly reject any valid contribution that technology might give.
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  The main point is that the beacons were installed in secret, without any public notice or consultation. And that, time after time, many "opt-in" services prove to be not so "opt-in" after all (thanks to technical backdooring and/or murky service agreements). It isn't Luddite paranoid, or cheap sensationalism to point this out; it's good journalism, coming from a surprising source (BuzzFeed, which for years seemed to have cheap sensationalism written into its very DNA).
joeclark77 12y ago
There are still phone booths in NYC? Without reading the article, just seeing the headline above, my first thought was that a reporter discovered strange, long-forgotten devices with handsets and number pads and coin slots, collecting dust in the booths.
uptown 12y ago
UPDATE: And they're being removed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/new-york-city-to-advertising-contractor-take-down-secretly-i http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/new-york-city-to-adv...

93 points by jboynyc 12y ago

Out of interest does anyone have any statistic on how often phone booths are used? I'd have thought that with most people owning mobile phones the need to ever use a pay phone is very rare

bluedino 12y ago
I thought they were all gone in NYC for some reason.
- acafourek 12y ago
  As of 2009, only 4 phone booths remained in Manhattan: http://www.scoutingny.com/the-last-phone-booth-in-new-york-city/ http://www.scoutingny.com/the-last-phone-booth-in-new-york-c... Comments on that thread note that in 2012, at least 2 of those were verified as still around, but not sure about now. There are a lot of phone stalls still around though - a number of which have been sites for experimental improvements for some time now, including a Google initiative to outfit some with public wifi: http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/business/future-of-public-pay-phone-wifi.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/doitt/html/business/future-of-public...
Turing_Machine 12y ago
I was wondering that too. I very rarely see public phones anywhere except airports nowadays, and they're pretty thin on the ground even there (sometimes you see the dedicated lines that connect directly to (e.g.) a cab company). It's not like the old days when there was a phone booth every few blocks, and massive banks of pay phones in airports.

userbinator 12y ago

Beacons are Bluetooth devices that emit simple signals that smartphones can pick up. A beacon in a New York City phone booth ad would need to recognize a corresponding app to push beacon-linked content to that phone. From what I can see from reading the article this isn't the scary "things that watch you without your knowledge" but more like "things you can connect to if you're nearby" - and given that there's WiFi hotspots and other things in this category too, it doesn't seem all that frightening. In other words you'd have to have allow your phone to connect to them for them to gather any info, and in that case it's not much worse than connecting to a WiFi hotspot setup for marketing purposes (e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19/how-stores-use-your-phones-wifi-to-track-your-shopping-habits/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/19... ). (The fact that the majority of people leave their phones in a "promiscuous" mode with all the radios enabled and constantly looking for things to connect to, and submissively install apps without reading their privacy policies/terms of use carefully, is a different although related issue - but this is something you can educate yourself and protect against.)

jamesk_au 12y ago
It does seem a bit exaggerated: "In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive 'opt-in' permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.) ... Gimbal-powered apps may collect your current location, the time of day you passed the beacon, and details about your device." If the beacons are doing anything more, it is not reported in this article.
- noselasd 12y ago
  It is however a rather small step to such a 3. party app being bundled with your branded phone, which you've opt-ed into by buying the phone.
  - dwild 12y ago
    Then let's wait for that step to happen before jumping to conclusion.
    - floatrock 12y ago
      Are there any rules or precedent preventing this? Or is it a chicken-and-egg not-enough-beacons-out-there-to-make-it-worth-it type situation? One smells like conclusions are a bit premature, the other smells more like inevitability.
- srcmap 12y ago
  If you turn on wifi tether mode, you are broadcasting your unique Mac address. Not sure if you have just BT headset running, can they sniff an unique address from the air way.
bndw 12y ago
Personally, I disable both WiFi and Bluetooth unless I'm actively using it in a trusted location for this very reason.
12y ago

tonylemesmer 12y ago

Wifi beacons were deployed in London[1][2] as part of advertising systems on waste bins. These logged your MAC address as you passed by and allowed targeted advertising. I believe they were removed once the rollout was publicised and people rightly kicked up a stink about it. It was an opt-out system because if wifi on your smartphone was switched on (which most people probably do) then it would automatically log your phone's presence. Users would have had to switch off wifi to avoid being tracked. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 [2] http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following-you/ http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following-you/

viewer5 12y ago
Do people normally have wifi enabled when they're out-and-about? I turn it on when I'm at home/at a friend's house, but otherwise turn it off since there's no wifi to be had, and it's just an extra drain on the battery. Or does London have widespread public wifi?
- cbr 12y ago
  I think most people just leave wifi on; constantly turning it off and on is annoying, and you get better GPS when it's on.
  - morpher 12y ago
    Friendly pedantic clarification: you get better location accuracy when WiFi is on by combining access point location databases with the GPS signal.
    - cbr 12y ago
      While I was using "GPS" as shorthand for "automatically determined location", technically doesn't the GPS receiver work better/faster when your phone already has a rough idea where you are?
- leephillips 12y ago

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Ah Gimbal, the HaaS company... the beacons that require you to register them on-line to be able to reconfigure them. Also, iBeacon compatibility doesn't work well in Series 10, i.e. those you can order a dev-kit of for free. I'm waiting for someone to figure out how to force all those various beacons to talk the same language. Right now, everyone is trying to lock users in to a particular brand. It's incredibly annoying (and the same thing goes for the entire IoT and home automation market).

andyhawkes 12y ago

I hate all these FUD headlines that claim iBeacons can track you or send you adverts - everything to do with beacons is (at present) mediated by an app, and therefore subject to a user installing it and granting permissions. Sure, you can get people to install stuff that they don't understand and which will allow snooping etc. but that's by no means constrained to anything using the (Apple-owned) iBeacon standard. I'll be more interested in keeping an eye on the URL-centric 'physical Web" experimental project recently revealed by Google (https://github.com/google/physical-web https://github.com/google/physical-web) as that potentially removes the need for app-based mediation of beacon (without the "i" prefix) interactions, uses the universality of http and URLs for content identification, and could make for a much lower-friction way of implementing beacon integration across different platforms.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Thanks for the physical web link - you can easily see Googles "play to our strengths not Apples" thinking behind it (https://github.com/google/physical-web/blob/master/documentation/introduction.md https://github.com/google/physical-web/blob/master/documenta...) I like it - might have to try a RPi build for one
- andyhawkes 12y ago
  It makes total sense to make beacons broadcast something that devices can interpret / interact with directly. iBeacons are an interesting "first move" for the technology thanks to the weight Apple / iOS puts behind the potential for adoption, but the current model of interaction is just too convoluted / clumsy: iBeacon broadcasts UUID/major/minor > subscribed app listens > app checks internal database or more probably fetches some data from a web-based API > decides what to do with that data / response. vs beacon broadcasts a URL > OS (or subscribed app) pulls data from URL > user (or app) decides what to do with that data / response The abstraction provided by the iBeacon model is interesting but arguably too abstract, whereas the simple use of a URL is decidedly simple and logical by comparison, and (potentially) cuts out the app mediation. If you combine the simplicity of using a URL with the idea that either the OS interacts with it directly or an app with a URL- or domain-specific mapped intent takes over that interaction then you get a simpler and more transparent journey as a result. I think it's very early days for the Physical Web project, but it should definitely be one to watch!

Vulkum 12y ago

I recommend watching Person of Interest. The TV show has started long before the NSA scandal, but it's like a Hollywood post interpretation of some major event. Except it was a premonition.

morganvachon 12y ago
It's one of my favorite shows because it's at least plausible, and felt that way even before the 2013 revelations. A lot of the tech and storylines in the show are of course fictionalized and a bit "out there", but the core concepts it presents are at least within the bounds of possibility. I tend to view it both as suspension-of-disbelief popcorn entertainment, and as a telling allegory on today's surveillance state.

zavulon 12y ago

I thought Buzzfeed was on the list of domains you can't link to? If not, this post is a good example why it should be..

eli 12y ago
Buzzfeed does some really fine reporting. But this doesn't seem to be a good example.
- hnha 12y ago
  There are users here who do some really fine commenting. But they got "deaded" for one reason or another. I would love to see buzzfeed and similar sites punished for their wrongdoings even if sometimes they might provide something good. The worse clearly overweighs the good to me.
  - eli 12y ago
    Is the existing voting system so broken that we need to resort to heavy handed tactics like that? I'm not sure I'm a fan of shadowbanning people either, except in really exceptional situations.

mdda 12y ago

And I just became aware of the NYC Halal carts run by the NYPD (in the talk by Steve Rambam at HopeX recently) [0]. [0] http://youtu.be/dNZrq2iK87k?t=2h3m9s http://youtu.be/dNZrq2iK87k?t=2h3m9s

al2o3cr 12y ago

"In its current iteration, a Gimbal beacon requires a third-party app to trigger advertisements, and requires those apps to receive “opt-in” permission from users in order to collect data and send notifications. (Users, of course, also need to have Bluetooth enabled.)" FFS, Buzzfeed. This is buried practically at the end, AFTER the giant infographic and 10+ grafs of scare text. It's like running the headline: YOUR BREAKFAST MAY CONTAIN POISON and then at the end of the article: "Well, if you bought the cereal that said 'CONTAINS POISON' on the box and decided to eat it right now, that might be true."

Lord_Zero 12y ago
Clickbait at its finest.

forca 12y ago

People should not be tracked. Full stop. Even with their permission. We are headed for worse than Orwell ever imagined. I cannot believe some people consent to this. There will come a time and soon whereby people will not be able to do a thing without someone tracking it.

clarkmoody 12y ago
Get ready for a disturbing time when you read about surveillance on Wikipedia[0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
Zikes 12y ago
I'm having a difficult time thinking of something I do that is not tracked by someone somewhere. Even the city knows when I take a crap thanks to "smart meters".

Zigurd 12y ago

Several commenters here have stated that Bluetooth beacon interactions are mediated by apps and they are therefore not surveillance devices. That's just not correct. Bluetooth beacons can log and report information about devices that come within range of those beacons with active Bluetooth radios. Only interactive-time applications of a beacon need the cooperation of an app on a wide-area connected device. Beacons that don't have external power generally can't use WiFi or mobile networks to do it, but this information can be uploaded on demand. For example, this information could be collected when coins from pay phones are collected. Moreover, these beacons are reportedly installed in pay phone kiosks that do have wired connectivity. It's possible, even likely, that they "phone home."

tashoecraft 12y ago

Why is this exaggerated journalism even on here? These aren't tracking everyone in NYC within range, only those who have bluetooth enabled, downloaded a very specific application, and then allow the app to track you in the background. Now this is all for IOS, android on the other hand does have potential to be troublesome.

diego_moita 12y ago

This article is cheap sensationalism to foster Luddite paranoia. The beacons will only track those that want to be tracked. And there a lot of valid situations where people would want to share geographical information in order to be guided, notified or rescued. Sometimes I feel that valid concerns on privacy are doing to IT what pollution did to chemistry: people got so panicked that blindly reject any valid contribution that technology might give.

dreamweapon 12y ago
The main point is that the beacons were installed in secret, without any public notice or consultation. And that, time after time, many "opt-in" services prove to be not so "opt-in" after all (thanks to technical backdooring and/or murky service agreements). It isn't Luddite paranoid, or cheap sensationalism to point this out; it's good journalism, coming from a surprising source (BuzzFeed, which for years seemed to have cheap sensationalism written into its very DNA).

joeclark77 12y ago

There are still phone booths in NYC? Without reading the article, just seeing the headline above, my first thought was that a reporter discovered strange, long-forgotten devices with handsets and number pads and coin slots, collecting dust in the booths.

uptown 12y ago

UPDATE: And they're being removed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/new-york-city-to-advertising-contractor-take-down-secretly-i http://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/new-york-city-to-adv...