Bluetooth "Big Brother" tracks festival-goers

Bluetooth "Big Brother" tracks festival-goers

www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I'm hoping to get some responses from our European members on this. I seems extremely invasive to me, and a possible stepping stone to greater monitoring of the public. The article claims..



How do you feel about it?

-E-


www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 3-7-2009 by MysterE]

Rip them down, boycott the festival and let people know that we do NOT want to be tracked like babies.

They can go and stick them up their own nosey arses.

That's how i feel...

What's good about this for the government is the public is providing the tracker signal and unique identifier at their own expense, and freely. When cellphones started coming out with Bluetooth I knew this was too good an opportunity for the government to pass on.

Why are you so concerned about what UK members think of this?

It's in Belgium, afterall.

Good point, allow me to update OP!

-E-

reply to post by CRB86

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I'm concerned about the tracking of any free, lawful humans... If it was eskimo's being tracked or Pygmies... I'd still be concerned.

My point still stands, stick them up their own arses.

Can this be avoided by simply turning off your bluetooth? I know a few of my friends are gonna be at this festival...

Thing is, yes it probably will be used for nefarious means by the government(s), sooner rather than later. I think though, in the immediate future it'll provide more of an opportunity for targeted marketing, I was reading on here about DARPA creating a kind of "Lifebook" that would store everything about you, ever! So it's a logical working towards that, the pubs you go to, the foods you buy... can't find the link, sorry.

This could lead on to a greater understanding of many things, social organisation, human interaction in groups etc, etc. Scarily (?) this could be a larger step towards AI progress, the more we understand how we act and can scientifically correlate it, the more likely we can put this into software, maybe even hardware one day, get some decent replicants.

Edit to add:

To be honest, the vast majority of people at most festivals will be sheep anyway, it's more likely to be used to figure whether coldplay fans prefer coke or pepsi...

Although, if anything illegal happened you could use the data to narrow down and track anyone suspected...

Of course by illegal I mean thought-crime.

[edit on 3/7/0909 by jokei]

Yes. Turn the Bluetooth off on your cellphone, and it won't transmit it's MAC address for them to track.

From palowireless.comThis suggests to me that Bluetooth must be 'turned on' to have a valid number. But then I dont know anyone who leaves their phone with Bluetooth on the whole time, because it drains the battery much quicker, so I dunno, seems like they wouldn't bother doing it if that were the case. I wonder if putting the phone on 'invisible' would prevent detection?
It's a scary development. They'll have them built into police cars next & track demonstrators. B'stards!
S&F

T in The Park festival, Scotland is to have a night vision camera fitted to a blimp this year too.

The excuse is a knife attack at last years event. I was a regular at this festival for many years until I hung my wellies up 2 years ago and other than a similar incident in 2001, I didn't witness any trouble in all that time.

Read more here

Seems to me they are using summer festivals as training ops for large crowd control.

Whats going on here? things just seem to be getting out of control with this police state. It's like that drone they had at Stone Henge. we've been alright for the last 50 years, why do they feel the need to monitor everything we do all of a sudden, especially the young.

people need to get smart and out smart the police's shady tactics

reply to post by KSPigpen

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Would you post a link to some info about MAC numbers & how they work please?
I love festivals & it's great to be able to use my phone to get online @them, so I'd hate to have to just switch the thing off.

reply to post by woodwardjnr

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Um, not quite true, I remembered this from being a kid and watching it on tv in the 80s, pretty much the majority of the UK press came out to condemn it and most importantly the news-press condemned it and broadcast lots of footage:

tash.gn.apc.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

www.youtube.com...

It's weird looking back at that the police seem so disorganised and the media seem interested and disgusted by the police treatment.

This is too easy, take the battery out of your phone when not in use.

It's really nothing new - real old technology in the wide scheme of things... I even once had an app on my last Nokia that showed me all the SSID's in the area (you know the name you give your phone) It displayed the data in a graphical form which gave the signal strength and hence the distance.

You could even log your friends and get it to alert you when your in range - handy for a packed crowd, once your in bluetooth range your pretty much in shouting range... You just lo-jacked those 'friends' who never brought a round!