Surveillance cameras that collected not only garbage but also personal information What is the "smart garbage box" in Great Britain?

Surveillance Camera Powers Great Britain has more than 3 million surveillance cameras, and London citizens say they will shoot more than 300 times a day. In London, not only surveillance cameras shooting people but also recycling boxes to record and collect smartphone data appeared. It was finally ceased to collect data due to poor reputation. What exactly is a notorious box that collects not only garbage but also data?

City of London halts recycling bins tracking phones of passers-by - Quartz
http://qz.com/114174/city-of-london-halts-recycling-bins-tracking-phones-of-passers-by/

This recycling bin is following you - Quartz
http://qz.com/112873/this-recycling-bin-is-following-you/

City of London calls halt to smartphone tracking bins - BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490

No, this is not a scene from Minority Report. This trash can is stalking you | Ars Technica
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/no-this-isnt-a-scene-from-minority-report-this-trash-can-is-stalking-you/

◆ High-tech garbage can
Renew LondonCompany (hereinafter Renew company), from 2012 before the London Olympics was held, high-tech garbage box during LondonBinWe will start installing " Bin not only has a digital screen on the side, but also connected to the Internet, you can update the contents online. The Renew company installed 100 bins in the urban area of ​​London, which is also called "smart garbage box", and London City, which got a smart garbage box without paying taxes as a result, is delighted. In addition, 5% of the time on the digital screen succeeded also to make Renew agree on sending public information. However, there were obvious reasons for Renew's free offer of 100 bins. The bin project was a business model that profits by selling the screen beside the garbage box as an advertisement space.

Here is bin. An advertisement is displayed on the screen. Of course you can use it as an ordinary trash can.


The London citizens and the Olympic tourists have become very convenient when new trash cans are installed everywhere even with advertisements. London City, which got 100 smart garbage boxes for free, boasts the media of the world that came to cover the Olympic Games, "I installed it without paying taxes." If Renew also collects the initial cost of bin at advertising cost, profit can be expected consistently. It was a business model of Renew who was thought to be beneficial for everyone, but gradually it will be subject to criticism.

◆ Tracking function ORB
The beginning of the thing was that Renew had the bin equipped with the function "ORB". The ORB was a tracking device developed by Presence Aware, based in London as well as Renew, and had a function called "tracking cookie in the real world". Tracking cookie is a mechanism to record on the web for the purpose of collecting Internet users' browsing tendency etc. Information that identifies and identifies individuals is not included in the cookie itself, it is used to investigate trends such as "what kind of web site are being viewed by anyone who does not know who they are, what kind of preferences do they have?" It is. In the case of ORB, it is assigned unique to each smartphoneMAC addressIt tracks the movement, it is the "real world" version of the tracking cookie used in the "net world".

ByDarwin Bell

By introducing the ORB system in bin, Renew adds the ability to gather MAC addresses from smartphones who pass by the trashcan and whose Wi-Fi function is turned on. This allows Renew to grasp the behavior of tens of thousands of people walking along the bin. For example, all the information on when a certain MAC address user came here before is accumulated, and in some cases it is possible to predict when the next time you visit.

In addition, Renew sells the tracking function of bin to advertisers as marketing content. For example, I decided to install five Renew tracking devices in one bar. One is an entrance, one is a ceiling, one is a cash register, and each one is in a male and female bathroom. With this, you can see the sex of each customer (this can be distinguished in the bathroom), customer's preference (alcohol if it is terrace, if you can discriminate as meal etc), staying time (can be determined by the entrance). These accumulated data is shared by bin. And when the "MAC address" using the bar appears, bin displays a target advertisement prompting the bar a little while. Continue to keep track of MAC address users whose bin is the target. This is a model that was being considered between actually bars and Renew.

ByOatsy 40

For this type of individual advertising methodMinority ReportWhat is foreseen in the famous. However, bin can grasp the information from the MAC address to the information that the terminal is iPhone or Galaxy. Indeed, Renew's press release says that bin can be a powerful promotional tool for businesses and retailers, and by analyzing target behavior it is possible to predict behavior to perfection It was.

◆ Starting pilot operation
Renew will install tracking devices on 12 of the 100 London bins in central London and begin collecting MAC addresses. Most of the 12 bins are clearly the intention of utilizing bin as a marketing tool, as retailers have been set up in the Cheapside area with lively streets.

In the first month of installing the ORB, bin says that it captured one million terminals. According to Renew 's report, on July 6, bin seems to have successfully distinguished between 106,629 people, recognizing the existence of 940,000 6016 terminals. We tracked over 4 million devices in a week in June and provided footprints within 4 minutes as MAP data.

The figure below is a graph of terminal data recorded by bin in week, but from here it can be seen that the graph is rising rapidly for commuting and lunch time.


For the operation of such a bin,Criticism of collecting personal information, infringement of privacy is ragingTo do. However, Renew's CEO Kaveh Memari refutes that these criticisms will not be hit. That's why "MAC address is unique information, but it does not reveal owner's name or other personal identification information". In addition, Mr. Memari said, "Companies like Facebook and Google are gathering more personal information," defeating other companies and defending themselves. Certainly it is correct that Facebook and Google have many personal information, but those sites have deadlines and conditions regarding the use of information. It is completely self-defensive as it is completely different from the bin which has no conditions of use.

Despite many criticisms, Renew continued to collect MAC addresses at bin had legal deficiencies. In the UK and the EU, although there are strict laws regarding searching personal data using cookies, including PCs and mobile terminals, there is no law regarding tracking the MAC address of individual mobile phones.

Bullish Memari says, "If we say it, the bin system is open to everyone, anyone can buy data." "London is the world's most monitored city, Bin is legitimate unless you add information such as address ", continue to collect MAC address by bin. And we plan to expand bin technology to New York, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur.

ByKenjonbro

◆ difficult to escape from bin
There are two ways to prevent bin from capturing smartphone MAC address in London. One is to turn off the Wi-Fi function. However, according to Mr. Memari, "When 80% of people leave their homes or offices they still keep Wi-Fi on." It is extremely difficult to surely turn off the Wi-Fi function every time and never turn it on outside. According to Mr. Mari, "Even if you do not see you on the first day, the second day, the third day, you will be able to capture you one day after all, just wait for when you are turning on Wi-Fi That's why we can see that this countermeasure is not effective at all from the word.

Another way is to prevent Renew's MAC address from being caught by binOnline form. However, this is nothing more than an act of exposing the MAC address to Renew itself, and there is no guarantee that it can be actually removed from the object to be captured, so this is not an effective countermeasure. After all it was almost impossible to escape the capture from the bin in London.

◆ Operation stop order
On 12th August, London City said, "Everything that happened on the streets of Cheapside this time, regardless of whether it is technically possible or not, has to be done more carefully and the contents are disclosed in advance and the opinions of citizens We need to ask for Renew to stop collecting the MAC address by bin. By doing this, the act of collecting the MAC address of the smartphone terminal in London ended finally.

Big Brother Watch leader Nick Pickles said, "I am delighted that London City has stopped this scheme, but why was it possible to put such a noisy attack on people's privacy? It is necessary to present the doubt as "It is necessary."

After all, it seems to say that "there is nothing higher than free".