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Secondly, there's no technology at current that can pinpoint a mobile phone's location using WiFi with sufficient accuracy to match it to a face in a crowded place.

^ It wont be a crowded place though with social distancing
 
- And don’t even get me started on supermarket loyalty cards - they even know when ladies are having their period. You can’t get much more personal than that!

Well they think they do. And it makes a great sell to management.

But the reality is that:

1) they tie the purchase to an identifier (credit card, phone, loyalty card) which is not necessarily the person using the product
2) they don't see purchases made elsewhere

So you get an incomplete picture.

So an example - a buyer procures disposable nappies in bulk once every two months. A parent? Well turns out its a grandparent. Children in the household? No they drop off at their daughter's house because she doesn't have a car. Daughter buys from a different supermarket on her own loyalty card - and avoids readymade baby food because she liquidises and mixes her own from fresh ingredients. So she's down on the computer as living alone - and her choice of ingredients categorises her as a particular kind of eater.

As I said - great sell to management - particularly if you run a demo that gives great graphs.
 
If your phone is on, it can be tracked, no downloads or consent required.
 
Secondly, there's no technology at current that can pinpoint a mobile phone's location using WiFi with sufficient accuracy to match it to a face in a crowded place.

^ It wont be a crowded place though with social distancing

By 'crowded' I meant that there will be many WiFi Clients connecting to any one access point.

You can't pinpoint the location of a WiFi client within a 2m accuracy even if you triangulated between 2 (or more) access points.

In addition you'll have to plot a curve that matches the movement of the WiFi client devices in a two dimensional space with the visual imagery of the movement of the people.

So I suppose that given enough time and money you could develop an AI algorithm that matches a MAC address with an image of a person, about whom you know nothing else.

As Robbie Coltrane said when he was playing Dr Samuel Johnson in Blackadder's 'Ink and Incapability': "It's like fitting wheels on a tomato: time-consuming and pointless".
 
If your phone is on, it can be tracked, no downloads or consent required.

...but no identifiable information can be retrieved from it *). It's no different to watching CCTV footage: you see people come and go, but you have no idea who they are or why they are there.

Additionally, the store won't be able to extend the tracking beyond the boundaries of their own property and WiFi cover.

*) without breaking the law, unless you are a law enforcement agency.
 
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On a philosophical note... we have a holiday flat in the very rural south of Italy. You buy fruit and veg that was picked by the farmers early that morning and taken to the market using their ancient Piago 3-wheelers. The olive oil is bought in old wine bottles from a neighbour that has an olive grove. And you get drunk on home-made Limoncello offered to you by the locals. That sort of place. Technology is non-existent and we only managed to get 8mbps Internet (replacing the analogue modem we had before). My point? The locals know about each other far more than Google and Facebook ever will. There's no technology and no privacy either. The flat is overlooking an open courtyard, we can see what every other family is doing, and vise versa. We know (and see, and hear) who is dating who, and who quarreled or broke up. We know who is unwell, and who got better. Gossip travels faster than data over a Fibre cord... the idea that privacy is something we had, but lost to technology, is a myth. Technology made it possible for us to live in physical isolation from each other, but in terms of privacy, it simply replaced one type of lack of privacy with another.
 
...but no identifiable information can be retrieved from it *). It's no different to watching CCTV footage: you see people come and go, but you have no idea who they are or why they are there.

Additionally, the store won't be able to extend the tracking beyond the boundaries of their own property and WiFi cover.

*) without breaking the law, unless you are a law enforcement agency.

Hi,
A few years back, a friend of mine was promoting a few tracking products that could be used by stores and malls.
One of them is mentioned in the article below.
Cheers
Steve
 
My point? The locals know about each other far more than Google and Facebook ever will.

Being able to track phones and other activities is extremely useful if you have the resources to *follow up* looking in more detail - so knowing markjay was in the centre of Leominster at 1215 on a given date means you can start picking off other bits of the jigsaw - and if it's worth it then have somebody look at CCTV or go interview possible witnesses.

If you have location tracking using GPS on your phone or some app then things get a lot more precise. Google can follow people to specific large rooms in buildings.

I'm not particularly convinced about GDPR - it just adds hassle without protection. Real protection means very very tough controls on some companies and strict data borders.
 
Hi,
A few years back, a friend of mine was promoting a few tracking products that could be used by stores and malls.
One of them is mentioned in the article below.
Cheers
Steve

Company dissolved ..... ?

There was a lot of hype about this stuff back in the 2000s. Every so often the stuff still resurfaces and we see large organisations getting drawn in to spending some money based on demonstrations - and then after it becomes clear the demos don't reflect the real world they seem to fade.
 
Hi,
A few years back, a friend of mine was promoting a few tracking products that could be used by stores and malls.
One of them is mentioned in the article below.
Cheers
Steve

Good find.

Yes, information regarding movement of people can be collected via cellphone and WiFi, but (a) it would be illegal to collect any identifiable information without explicit consent, I.e. you'd know how many people there were and how they moved about, but you wouldn't know who they are, and (b) it is limited to the premises, I.e. the store or the shopping centre, but you can't track movement of mobile phones beyond that.

The technology is there, and it's useful, but it does not invade our privacy in any way.
 
Then of course we have the use of facial recognition cameras in the UK. Which on the face of it appears to break every rule in the book.

Innocent until proven guilty is difficult when these systems will scan your face without consent and cross reference against a "facebook" of targets for law enforcement.


 
Then of course we have the use of facial recognition cameras in the UK. Which on the face of it appears to break every rule in the book.

Innocent until proven guilty is difficult when these systems will scan your face without consent and cross reference against a "facebook" of targets for law enforcement.

I was rather under the impression that facial recognition was quite an old system - that goes back to earlier forms of policing.

Apparently - according to the great history archive knowns as Hollywood - in the late 1800s the US experimented with a distributed form facial recognition in remote or frontier areas based on "Wanted" posters.
 
Then of course we have the use of facial recognition cameras in the UK. Which on the face of it appears to break every rule in the book.

Innocent until proven guilty is difficult when these systems will scan your face without consent and cross reference against a "facebook" of targets for law enforcement.

I'm OK with that.
 
I was rather under the impression that facial recognition was quite an old system - that goes back to earlier forms of policing.

Apparently - according to the great history archive knowns as Hollywood - in the late 1800s the US experimented with a distributed form facial recognition in remote or frontier areas based on "Wanted" posters.
The FBI carry on the tradition.

 
Then of course we have the use of facial recognition cameras in the UK. Which on the face of it appears to break every rule in the book.

Innocent until proven guilty is difficult when these systems will scan your face without consent and cross reference against a "facebook" of targets for law enforcement.



A very valid point.

We need to distinguish though between private/commercial use, and law enforcement use.

The former is indeed governed by the ICO, as the article clarifies:

"Yesterday the Information Commissioner's Office announced it would launch its own investigation into the use of facial recognition cameras after it was revealed scanners were being used in the 67 acre King's Cross area of London.

The UK's data and privacy watchdog said it was 'deeply concerned about the growing use of facial recognition technology in public spaces' and is seeking 'detailed information' about how it is used."

The latter will be governed by laws passed in Parliament.

So yes, a cause for concern indeed, but not a cause for alarm. This is precisely why we have the relevant regulatory bodies in place, to keep this sort of things in check.
 
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