UK bars trash cans from tracking people with Wi-Fi
Source: AP-Excite
By RAPHAEL SATTER
LONDON (AP) - Officials demanded Monday that an advertising firm stop using a network of high-tech trash cans to track people walking through London's financial district.
The Renew ad firm has been using technology embedded in the hulking receptacles to measure the Wi-Fi signals emitted by smartphones, and suggested that it would apply the concept of "cookies" - tracking files that follow Internet users across the Web - to the physical world.
"We will cookie the street," Renew Chief Executive Kaveh Memari said in June.
But the City of London Corporation insisted that Renew pull the plug on the program, which captures smartphones' serial numbers and analyzes signal strength to follow people up and down the street. Renew didn't immediately return a call seeking comment on whether it would comply with the authorities' demand.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130812/DA84I5682.html
A youth uses a trash bin in central London, Monday, Aug. 12, 2013. Officials say that an advertising firm must immediately stop using its network of high-tech trash cans, like this one, to track people walking through London's financial district. The City of London Corporation says it has demanded Renew pull the plug on the program, which measures the Wi-Fi signals emitted by smartphones to follow commuters as they pass the garbage cans. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
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... This sort of thing should be reserved for their MI5, or our very own NSA..
It's for our own good.
