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)."

mandatory bluetooth collars next???

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

Re:mandatory bluetooth collars next???

mandatory bluetooth collars next???

Yes. The obvious next step to analysis of open-air traffic is electronic tagging and tracking of free citizens. Of course, that will just be to get us to drop our guard while they prepare to implant their dream-recorders to preemptively stop terror by arresting us for thought crime.

Want to buy some tin-foil? Your head looks cold.

Re:mandatory bluetooth collars next???

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.

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Wouldn't it be easier to just look at their gang tattoos? Even then, you can't prove guilt based on association, so it's kind of pointless.

I suspect the guards.

This project is going to discover that the GUARDS have contact with prisoners that go on to commit crimes.

Prisoner-A and Prisoner-B commit a terrorist act of child pornography and BOTH of those prisoners will have had contact with Guard-C in Prison-D. Therefore, every other prisoner who had contact with Guard-C is a potential terrorist child pornographer.

Really. That's all that you're going to find from this. This is a waste of money.

That explanation smells like bullshit

Tracking prisoners? With Bluetooth devices? Horseshit.

RFID is a far better choice - it's passive (no batteries) and it's cheap. I bet the purpose of Bluetooth tracking is to track non-imprisoned people.

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If you're going to broadcast your music, your cell phone conversations, and whatever other data people transfer by bluetooth to anyone in a ten meter radius I don't see why you should be so up in arms about someone happening to receive and record that in

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If you're going to broadcast your television programs, and whatever other data people transfer by satellite to anyone in the whole continent I don't see why you should be so up in arms about someone happening to receive and record that information.

The prob

Not even pretending.

So I guess Britain's not even pretending anymore that there's a difference between free people and imprisoned criminals.

Who wants to bet that this data will be subpoenaed in a case in the future?

Re:Not even pretending.

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.

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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

Aren't Bluetooth devices for communication?

Why not giving cellphones to the prisoners?
I mean, what kind of devices you give to prisoners so they are not able to hack and communicate without being close to each other?

hmm

What does the case study prove really? Only that prisoners talk to other prisoners. I fail to see how this proves intent.

Sure while in prison a prisoner may talk to someone who may have ties to a terrorist organization. But if/when they get out and they d

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Yeah but you can see if new groups form, remember if your in jail then you've already lost your liberties, so they're free to watch you as much as they want in there.

Oh puhleeeese!

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

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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 vi

How is this different than..

.. 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"

Then don't broadcast?

Newsflash: Broadcasting a signal to anyone in range is a very easy way to get yourself tracked.

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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 y

What about battery life issues? and the devices...

What about battery life issues? and the devices may be used as a weapon as prisoners are very good with tuning just about anything into one.

So tell me why....

Unrelated to the article....Where the hell are our Bluetooth Star Trek combadges? Hmmm? I mean, really, how farking hard can this be?

-A PC is set up as a "server" station.

-Off The Shelf earpieces are paired up to the bluetooth dongle.

-Server keeps a record

Re:I've been experimenting with this a while.

Don't click notlong.com link in parent. Nasty stuff.

Re:I've been experimenting with this a while.

It redirects to a link on nimp.org which is the last measure - a load of shock sites and a loud samples. If you have flash or javascript enabled it will crash the browser with essentially a forkbomb. I opened it in Opera with flash and javascript off and it looks like it's trying a Java exploit too.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Last-Measure [nationmaster.com]

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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 near

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The work was prompted by revelations that the Madrid train bombers who devastated the city in 2004 first met in a Spanish prison

Obviously prisons are a poor solution to the "undesirable waste persons" created by our economic system.

No, they do their job we