This just in…
Bluetooth “Big Brother” tracks festival-goers
In a study looking for ways to develop data on concert goer activities:
“We have installed 36 bluetooth scanners across the site and along a few surrounding roads, as well as bus stops,” the university’s Nico Van de Weghe said on Friday of the project at the Werchter festival, northeast of Brussels this weekend.
Within a radius of 30 metres, the scanners track mobile phones equipped with bluetooth, a type of short-range wireless technology which allows different devices to connect with one another, often to transfer files.
How does that make your feel? Almost all modern phones have a geo-location capability built in that transmits location information to the cellular provider, allowing E-911 compliance. Some use bona fide GPS, others use tower triangulation. Simply, you are being tracked by your service provider, every moment your phone is on, within range of a tower. You may not also be aware that they can turn on the microphone, on your phone, and listen to conversations without our knowledge. Yes it sounds like the ranting of a paranoid lunatic, but you can veriy my veracity.
This is going to another level entirely. This is a 3rd party installing listening devices to identify (each BlueTooth node has and ESN/MAC that is unique to the device) and monitoring the comings and goings of various BlueTooth devices around the venue. Now, depending on how you have configured your phone’s BlueTooth (mine is OFF 24×7, always has been) you might also be announcing your NAME along with your devices ID.
Now, the researchers have said this:
The researchers will only track the devices’ MAC address — a number that identifies each device on a network — which cannot be traced to phone numbers or personal details.
I don’t buy that for one section. If there is anything I’ve learned working 20 years in the information business, if you can get a piece of data, it would be very rear indeed that they not store every piece of that data. It’s just a practice. As they say, “You never know when you might really need that extra bit of data we could have recorded”.
Now here is the paragraph that concerns me the most. You draw your own conclusion:
The technique could also be used by security services to track suspicious movements, or monitor evacuations at mass events.
You have been warned.