MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Using a cell phone to locate your destination

hacker · 03-13-2005, 12:27 PM

This reminds me of that service (can't recall the name, will Google later) that lets you take a picture of a building with your cellphone's camera, and it will tell you exactly where in the US (world?) you are, based on that picture. Pretty slick stuff..

Hertz started doing this with their rental cars that were equipped with GPS and navigation systems. What happens if their GPS says you had to be speeding to make it from one toll stop to the next in such a short period of time? Do they just report you to the authorities and send you a speeding ticket in the mail? What happens when these systems go into every new vehicle? "But if your car is stolen, we can track and retrieve it!". Sure.

...but the conspiracy theorist in me thinks they'll use these "wonderful features" as a way to drive more technologies that are used to violate our freedoms. Triangulation of the phone's location is only the first step. As technology gets better, smaller, faster, we'll see this in everything.

Back in 1998 when I worked for a pharmaceutical company (largest in the world) in Emerging Technologies, I attended a small meeting with Symbol Technologies, and they mentioned that their RFID tags (remember, this is back in 1999) were the size of a grain of rice, and could store 6k of information on them. 6k is a lot of information, if you encode it properly.

They said they could take a palette of up to 50 boxes which had these RFID tags in their labels, and run them through a door with an RFID scanner, and scan all of the tags within 1 second. This sounds great for warehouse operations. They put the scanner on the warehouse door, and they can track inventory in and out, saving lots of time and man-hours and possible human error with manual scanning of boxes with barcode scanners.

Now the downside to that technology.. Foxwoods Casino (the biggest casino in the world, coincidentally about 10 miles from where I live), puts these same sort of RFID tags in their "Wampum" cards. These cards are like basically debit cards for gambling, and are the same size and shape of a normal credit card. You put your card in the slot machine, and it deducts from your account (or adds to it, if you win).

They mailed thousands of these cards out to random people. When someone walked onto casino property with one of these cards in their pocket, wallet, whatever... a casino liason would immediately be notified of the person's full name, home address, physical location in the casino, etc. so they could go find them and talk to them about "upgrading" their Wampum card to something with greater value. All from just walking through the door with one of these cards in their possession.

Technology is a double-edged sword, and can be used for good, or for ill. We just have to make sure that these companies are made aware of that before they start spending thousands of dollars on solutions that do nothing but violate our privacy and rights.

03-13-2005, 12:27 PM	#2
hacker Technology Mercenary Posts: 617 Karma: 2561 Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: East Lyme, CT Device: Direct Neural Implant	This reminds me of that service (can't recall the name, will Google later) that lets you take a picture of a building with your cellphone's camera, and it will tell you exactly where in the US (world?) you are, based on that picture. Pretty slick stuff.. Hertz started doing this with their rental cars that were equipped with GPS and navigation systems. What happens if their GPS says you had to be speeding to make it from one toll stop to the next in such a short period of time? Do they just report you to the authorities and send you a speeding ticket in the mail? What happens when these systems go into every new vehicle? "But if your car is stolen, we can track and retrieve it!". Sure. ...but the conspiracy theorist in me thinks they'll use these "wonderful features" as a way to drive more technologies that are used to violate our freedoms. Triangulation of the phone's location is only the first step. As technology gets better, smaller, faster, we'll see this in everything. Back in 1998 when I worked for a pharmaceutical company (largest in the world) in Emerging Technologies, I attended a small meeting with Symbol Technologies, and they mentioned that their RFID tags (remember, this is back in 1999) were the size of a grain of rice, and could store 6k of information on them. 6k is a lot of information, if you encode it properly. They said they could take a palette of up to 50 boxes which had these RFID tags in their labels, and run them through a door with an RFID scanner, and scan all of the tags within 1 second. This sounds great for warehouse operations. They put the scanner on the warehouse door, and they can track inventory in and out, saving lots of time and man-hours and possible human error with manual scanning of boxes with barcode scanners. Now the downside to that technology.. Foxwoods Casino (the biggest casino in the world, coincidentally about 10 miles from where I live), puts these same sort of RFID tags in their "Wampum" cards. These cards are like basically debit cards for gambling, and are the same size and shape of a normal credit card. You put your card in the slot machine, and it deducts from your account (or adds to it, if you win). They mailed thousands of these cards out to random people. When someone walked onto casino property with one of these cards in their pocket, wallet, whatever... a casino liason would immediately be notified of the person's full name, home address, physical location in the casino, etc. so they could go find them and talk to them about "upgrading" their Wampum card to something with greater value. All from just walking through the door with one of these cards in their possession. Technology is a double-edged sword, and can be used for good, or for ill. We just have to make sure that these companies are made aware of that before they start spending thousands of dollars on solutions that do nothing but violate our privacy and rights.