Cell Phones to Monitor Traffic Flow

PCOL writes "The Baltimore Sun reports that Delcan technology will soon begin fullscale deployment of a system in Maryland that will mine cellphone data to determine traffic conditions such as jams and slowdowns. As long as a user's phone is turned on, the cellphone network notes the time of handoffs from cell to cell to calculate the location and speed of vehicles. Researchers say the program will reduce congestion by quickly delivering alerts on road conditions to drivers. The company says they will not track the movement of individual drivers. However, a staff attorney for the EFF says that tracking might violate federal law and 'increases the chances that information will be used for more invasive purposes in the future.'"

First DUPE!!!!

[Viceice]

*Ahem*

DUPE!

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/ 01/159241&tid=193 [slashdot.org]

Re:Doesn't have to be a privacy problem.

[jacksonj04]

Not accurate enough. It's possible to triangulate a phone's position on demand down to a few metres using 3 or more towers and best-signal feedbacks, but if all it's logging is cell hand-offs then it could be a phone from any point in the cell switching to any other point in the other cell.

Re:Doesn't have to be a privacy problem.

[Macka]

I'm writing this from the City of Sheffield in the UK, about 200 miles away from where I live. I just drove up this morning. On 3 occasions I called the Orange traffic info line to check what was happening on the motorways (freeways) ahead of me. Apart from getting info on specific motorways (punching the number in on the car keypad) one option is to get traffic information near to where I am. It takes only a couple of seconds, then they announce the A road or motorway I'm traveling on, the direction I'm traveling in, and then proceed to give me a full report on what happening ahead of me and in the surrounding area. It's bloody useful.

It's also possible to be too paranoid about things to you own detriment !!