Bluetooth Surveillance Tested In the UK

KentuckyFC writes "If you live in the city of Bath in the UK and carry a Bluetooth-enabled device, your movements may have been secretly monitored in an experiment designed to test surveillance techniques in prisons. Researchers from Bath University recorded the movements of 10,000 Bluetooth-enabled devices during their 6-month trial. They say the experiment was a test of a technique for monitoring the interactions between prisoners in jail that could be used to work out which inmates have become closely associated. The work was prompted by revelations that the Madrid train bombers who devastated the city in 2004 first met in a Spanish prison (abstract)."

How is this different than..

[h.ross.perot]

.. the tracking feature in your current cell phone? The nature of "Cells" enables device tracking.. Thats how it works.. Cells monitor and could record differential signal strength and plot your movements easily. Even with the tracking feature "disabled" I; for one welcome ....

Re:Workaround: Ditch bluetooth devices...

[CogDissident]

If anything, a criminal would carry a bluetooth spoofer. All it has to do is capture the signal of another bluetooth device, and just broadcast it as your own.

Maybe even set it up so you press a button, and it randomly picks another bluetooth signal nearby and starts broadcasting that one. Would entirely defeat the system, and cost maybe 20$ and a bit of time at radioshack.

Re:mandatory bluetooth collars next???

[Anonymous Coward]

firstly, you don't give up the rights, those charged with protecting them stop doing that job (the effect, of course, is much the same).
Secondly, the point is that this experiment was run in public without the knowledge or consent of the innocent people who were its subjects. Now, at the moment this is just academics doing what academics do, but mark my words, the police will try to get hold of this technology. My advice to the researchers is to publish their results, then destroy all the equipment and schematics.

Re:mandatory bluetooth collars next???

[owlnation]

expect civil liberties to really hit the roof over this one... whatever happened to the right of free association?

You do not, and never have had that right in the UK. It's just that until recently it was rarely enforced.

It's already too late. The sun is setting on democracy in the UK.

Re:Oh puhleeeese!

[owlnation]

If you live in the UK, (especially London) you know your movements are being monitored - there's a bloody video camera every 12 feet.

Not just London -- everywhere in the UK. There's nearly 5 million of the things. So all you have to do is match up the video to the bluetooth signal from the (easily traceable by bank details or credit card) mobile phone. So if you have a hoodie or a baseball cap on, then they still know who you are (or whose phone you've stolen).

Re:Then don't broadcast?

[Plutonite]

Well yes of course, but let's not assume that lack of tech familiarity is justification for getting 1984-ed by the benign government. I can't believe the general public is being used as testing grounds for civil rights abuses in jails. It's very funny if you think about it. It's also the scariest thing the big brothers in the UK have come up with in a long time.

Re:Not even pretending.

[Valdrax]

Right, right. Apparently, they're called "witness summons" now for people, though I have no idea what you call subpoena duces tecum nowadays. I'm sure that you have some procedure for compelling potential witnesses to a crime to appear and present documents -- like this data.

While two university students don't represent your whole population, the tolerance you people have of being watched by cameras all day does. Frankly, I find your countrymen somewhat distubring for supporting 24/7 pervasive surveillance.

And it's not a non-issue. It's a demonstration of a technique to track the coming and goings of non-criminal citizens for the purpose of determining who they associate with. So what if they claim the ultimate goal is tracking actual prisoners? They've demonstrated a far more useful purpose for it for a nanny state. Can you not imagine the utility this would have in tracking down members of protest groups? This is so much easier to sort through than video footage.

Re:Not even pretending.

[Macthorpe]

Right, right. Apparently, they're called "witness summons" now for people, though I have no idea what you call subpoena duces tecum nowadays. I'm sure that you have some procedure for compelling potential witnesses to a crime to appear and present documents -- like this data.

The presenting of data which was legally gained to a court of law is not an invasion of privacy. There's nothing personally identifiable in the data they've collected, so it would be challenging to actually link this to a potential crime.

While two university students don't represent your whole population, the tolerance you people have of being watched by cameras all day does. Frankly, I find your countrymen somewhat distubring for supporting 24/7 pervasive surveillance.

Good combination of exagerration and an absolutely ridiculous generalisation that isn't substantiated by a single fact. I'm going to hazard a guess that you only get your information about the UK and security issues from Slashdot articles, which is a pretty sure-fire way of getting overblown and inaccurate information.

And it's not a non-issue. It's a demonstration of a technique to track the coming and goings of non-criminal citizens for the purpose of determining who they associate with. So what if they claim the ultimate goal is tracking actual prisoners? They've demonstrated a far more useful purpose for it for a nanny state. Can you not imagine the utility this would have in tracking down members of protest groups? This is so much easier to sort through than video footage.

Wow, you've worked out a tool that can be used for good can also be used for evil and that it all depends on who is doing the work. You're so caught up in your default attitude of hostility that you can't see past the end of your own nose.

In all this you forget that if the government really wants to track citizens to that level, it's trivial to triangulate someone's cellphone position even if they're not using it using existing technology, not to mention that recording someone's phone calls is far more useful than collating encrypted Bluetooth data and trying to work out who is saying what.