Loss of Privacy

Source.

Starting next month, an Australian shopping center will begin tracking customers in their malls, a move that has prompted privacy concerns and an investigation.

One unnamed Queensland shopping centre is next month due to become the first in the nation to fit receivers that detect unique mobile phone radio frequency codes to pinpoint location within two metres.

Path Intelligence national sales manager Kerry Baddeley stressed that no mobile phone user names or numbers could be accessed.

“All we do is log the movement of a phone around an area and aggregate this to provide trend data for businesses,” she said.

“It’s much less intrusive or invasive than existing people-counting methods, for instance CCTV cameras and number plate monitoring.”

Except for the fact that, when you are shopping in a mall, no one is checking your number plate inside the store. While number plate monitoring has its own problems, it is generally accessing that data to look for crimes. CCTV is also not able to clearly identify a person and there are means to hide your identity from the camera. It is also, typically, passively monitoring a person’s movement and, theoretically, only tracking you when you have done something suspicious.

Australian Privacy Foundation chairman Dr Roger Clarke said emerging retail tracking techniques were “seriously creepy” and should be thoroughly investigated.

Some shops are already using image-monitoring to log customers’ movements, how long they stop in front of products, and whether they are male or female.

Federal Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said the Privacy Act applied only if the information collected identified individuals.

Ms Baddeley said mobile phone monitoring, already operating in the UK and US, would help the struggling retail sector develop marketing campaigns and identify the best mix of shops in centres.

Just because others are doing it, doesn’t make it right. A person who has a cell phone has no ability to opt out of said tracking while shopping. The only thing a person can do is not shop there or leave their cell phone at home so that they are not tracked.

She said receivers attached to walls picked up phone transmissions. Data was then fed via the internet to computer servers to create weekly reports outlining popular customer routes and visitors’ length of stay.

And while they claim that they cannot track or identify a person, if that person shops in the mall, or several malls, their unique ID on their cell phone will, indeed, identify exactly who they are.

Questions remain about the legality of such a system. Australia’s Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 states that

A person shall not:
(a) intercept;
(b) authorize, suffer or permit another person to intercept; or
(c) do any act or thing that will enable him or her or another person to intercept;
a communication passing over a telecommunications system.

Furthermore, communication is defined as:

“communication” includes conversation and a message, and any part of a conversation or message, whether:

(a) in the form of: (i) speech, music or other sounds;(ii) data;(iii) text;(iv) visual images, whether or not animated; or (v) signals; or (b) in any other form or in any combination of forms.

The signal is intercepted because the device being used here has to gather/intercept the signal. As defined in Australian law, the device that is to be used in malls is intercepting signals that are sent over a telecommunications system, which is illegal. However, it appears that there is a bypass to this law because they are only using radio communications.

Considering the fact that malls also have CCTV, it wouldn’t take much to track and identify a person shopping. The best advice is, stop visiting malls and, if you must shop at a mall, pay with cash and leave your cell phone home or take out the battery before you get anywhere near the mall as they can track you outside in the parking lot too.

Several months ago, I wrote about Qantas airlines’ new RFID-enabled Q Tags that tracks passengers’ luggage. It’s now launched its first retail store to customers.

The store, in the Sydney Qantas Club (Terminal 3), will remain in Sydney in July and August, move to Melbourne for September and October and then to Brisbane in November and December.

Qantas Club members and their guests can take advantage of a special deal with a “buy one get one free” offer until December. The tags normally retail at $49.95 each.

The Q Bag Tag has been designed to streamline the bag drop functionality of Qantas’ new faster, smarter check-in system. It replaces the need for paper tags and improves the speed and ease by which a customer moves through the airport. The tag contains world first RFID technology, allowing the tag to be electronically imprinted with the information of the passenger and their flight details.

You can also purchase them online, but they only work on Qantas’ domestic network for now. If things go as smoothly as Qantas hopes, it will roll out to the entire Qantas network. When that happens, look for other airlines to introduce similar measures.

If a New South Wales police officer suspects a person of a crime, they now have the power to remove a person’s head covering in order to confirm their identity.

NSW Muslim organisations have largely welcomed the new laws, but civil libertarians have criticised them for giving unnecessary powers to police.

Mr O’Farrell announced late yesterday that cabinet had approved laws allowing police to direct people to remove coverings, including veils and motorcycle helmets, if they had reasonable grounds for suspecting breaches of security may occur, or breaches of the law had occurred.

The laws come after the high-profile case of the Muslim woman Carnita Matthews, who successfully appealed against her conviction for falsely accusing a police officer of trying to rip off her veil. The judge found there was not enough evidence Mrs Matthews had made the statutory declaration accusing the officer.

Basically, Carnita Matthews was let go because there was no good way to actually identify her. The case stems from the video below.

View this footage and judge for yourself. Did the police officer try to lift Muslim Carnita Matthew’s burqa? Was he being racist?

I think, in this case, the police officer was extremely patient. I don’t think I could have been as polite or patient with this woman.

A New South Wales high school installed fingerprint scanners as a means to take attendance. The kids could get around the scanners with Gummi Bears.

Principal Bob Cox told the ABC that the system was preferred over swipe cards, which students can abuse by signing-in for each other.

But a litany of fingerprint scanners have fallen victim to bypass methods, many of which are explained publicly in detail on the internet. The hacks could potentially be used by students to make replicas of their own fingerprints, or lift those of others from imprints left on the reader.

Japanese cryptographer Tsutomu Matsumoto used gelatin, the ingredient in Gummi Bears, to forge a replica finger that fooled 11 fingerprint scanners during tests in 2002. Gelatine has virtually the same capacitance as a finger’s skin, meaning it can fool scanners designed to detect electrical charges within the human body.

The NSW Department of Education said in a statement that the software does not store digital copies of fingerprints, but creates templates of unique characteristics.

This should prevent stored fingerprint images from being stolen, but would not prevent students bypassing machines.

Yes, we’ve heard this before. It’s not storing the actual prints, except it is and it’s a matter of semantics. Maybe the school should have spent the money on educational items instead of prison and control items.