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Bluetooth signals can be used to identify and track smartphones

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Re: Bluetooth signals can be used to identify and track smartphones

#81

Post by pmoriarty »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #64
pmoriarty wrote: post #27

In another hundred years are people going to look back at this time as a barbaric age of surveillance or are they going to be even more surveilled and controlled than ever before? So far the trend is towards the latter...

It's a nice thought experiment. I call it ubiquitous surveillance. Anything you say, do, etc. is picked up by cameras, microphones, sensors, etc. and analyzed and archived for the duration of your life. We're a few decades away from that becoming practical to do for the entire population of earth. A few exa bytes of data per person sounds like a lot right now but there are already companies operating at that scale to…

This vision reminds me of David Brin's "Transprent Society"[1], which I believe doesn't take in to account that the wealthy and powerful will be able to afford much more privacy and surveillance than poor people. The former will also be able to bend laws, technology, and the rest of society to their benefit and to the detriment of less powerful, poorer, and less well-connected people.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

Re: Bluetooth signals can be used to identify and track smartphones

#82

Post by jillesvangurp »

pmoriarty wrote: post #81
jillesvangurp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice thought experiment. I call it ubiquitous surveillance. Anything you say, do, etc. is picked up by cameras, microphones, sensors, etc. and analyzed and archived for the duration of your life. We're a few decades away from that becoming practical to do for the entire population of earth. A few exa bytes of data per person sounds like a lot right now but there are already companies operating at that scale to…

This vision reminds me of David Brin's "Transprent Society"[1], which I believe doesn't take in to account that the wealthy and powerful will be able to afford much more privacy and surveillance than poor people. The former will also be able to bend laws, technology, and the rest of society to their benefit and to the detriment of less powerful, poorer, and less well-connected people. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

The key thing is that there will need to be an arms race in people's ability to defend themselves against unwanted attention. And of course there are no guarantees. So assuming privacy when you actually have no way to guarantee you have it becomes dangerous if you start breaking rules and laws.

And of course you having little side chats with other people about helping you out in exchange for something would count exactly as a situation where that conversation might not actually be private anymore.

Re: Bluetooth signals can be used to identify and track smartphones

#83

Post by yata69420 »

froh wrote: post #70
yata69420 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be shocked if my cell phone contract said they couldn't sell my data. Why would they do that? I have plenty of options besides cell phones. I could have a landline, or get my ham license, or pen a letter! I'm just a subscriber to a private service, after all.

The potential for abuse of personal private data like location, movement profile, corelation with other movement profiles, etc, is so ginormous it blows my mind it's legal to keep the data for years, let alone to sell it to private companies. If that is true then that means there is no data privacy protection in the US?

> If that is true then that means there is no data privacy protection in the US?

There may be some very specific data privacy laws (like two-party consent states), but yeah, you should assume no data privacy protection in the US.

Re: Bluetooth signals can be used to identify and track smartphones

#84

Post by godelski »

kalleboo wrote: post #60
godelski wrote: post #50

How is this "for the first time?" I saw a well established company demonstrating this technology 5 years ago. They were selling it on being able to either track your employees (this was gov fwiw) or other people in your building. They could do it both through WiFi and Bluetooth and uniquely identify you. While I think this technology is concerning, I'm confused what's new here and trying to read through the marketing…

Starting around 3-4 years ago, iOS and Android started randomizing the MAC address periodically to thwart tracking like that. This new report works around that.

Ah thanks, that helps clarify things. I still think it makes the wording clunky

Re: Bluetooth signals can be used to identify and track smartphones

#85

Post by sieabah »

kalleboo wrote: post #61
sieabah wrote: post #12

Was this not apparent when every manufacturer was working on Covid tracking in the open? Were people really not aware of the technologies being employed? That technology now exists on every phone that has had any semblance of an update in the past two years. There is no privacy, you have always been and will always be completely trackable. You can even use ultrasonic sound signatures so your phone doesn't even need t…

You're being downvoted because this is a completely different technology from the covid tracking. For one thing, the covid tracking had to be explicitly installed and enabled, whereas this works passively.

It wasn't optionally installed on any Android device, look through any recently updated Android for "Exposure Notifications".

So to your point of it being installed, it already is. Being enabled is whether we trust the governments involved with that switch.

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