Tag Archives: Vermont WIFI privacy

Five hundred bugged buses

local/regional, National, , , ,

Here in Vermont recently there has been a flurry of reports over privacy concerns with the free public Wi-Fi’s foot traffic tracking system at the Church Street Market Place installed almost a year ago. But that’s just pedestrian compared to the secretly bugged public buses in Maryland. Apparently the Maryland Transit Administration didn’t think twice of secretly recording conversations on 500 of its public buses starting at least three years ago.

busrecorde 2Here in Vermont, questions remain about the extent that Burlington’s city supplied free Wi-Fi  utilizes monitoring capabilities above and beyond the impressive shopper foot traffic tracking system. VtDigger and VPR news both had good pieces exploring the privacy issue.

Unfortunately Vermont Edition didn’t ask Burlington Mayor Weinberger about it when they had him on the program a day or two later. Maybe there will be follow-up next time allows.The only sure way around tracking at the Church Street Market Place is not carrying a cell phone or other device at all to solve privacy worries in Burlington.

But on public buses in Maryland you better talk at a whisper or not at all if you want privacy.

Probably unbeknownst to many riders, the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) has been recording sound, as well as video, on 487 of its 771 buses, starting in 2013, in the name of safety and customer service. So are cities like Atlanta and San Francisco. In fact, the ability to record sight and sound comes standard on most new bus fleets being bought by city and state transit agencies.

The MTA says secretly recording conversations on buses is just another investigative tool and in addition they are able to secretly check the bus driver and monitor customer service, these are the added benefits. Nearly all new buses come equipped for audio surveillance but how many municipalities use them isn’t often reported.

Apollo Video Technology manufacturer of the listening devices defends the eavesdropping: Chief Operating Officer April Johnson, as a way to check the quality of driver and customer service. And, they insist, the listening devices aren’t overly intrusive or in violation of riders’ privacy.[added emphasis]

The standard rationale for this, heard almost every time a privacy question is raised goes like this: “…lawmakers look to strike a balance between personal privacy and giving police the tools they need to do their job”. If all of this- increases in cell phone tracking, police body cameras and license plate detectors recording and saving data- is all about striking a balance, it seems like someone’s got a thumb tipping the scale.

Church Street Marketplace “free” WIFI, fo,fum

Business, , ,

“Free” WIFI was installed at the Church Street Market place in the summer of 2015. The $50,000.00 system, with support from Burlington Telecom, was paid for by private donors, and the largest chunk chipped in by L.L. Bean.

Now, six months later, WCAX News reports the WIFI network shows 20,000 people visited the Burlington shopping destination on its busiest Saturday.

“We started collecting data in June, so once we start to have a full year of data, we’ll be able to say we we’re up or down in terms of pedestrian traffic. That’s going to help us measure how we’re doing,” said Ron Redmond with Church Street Marketplace.”Sometimes they’ll be thinking it was a bad day, and we can show them, well actually there were 12,000 people on the street that day. It provides them with a little sense of security.”

free wifiNot to go all paranoid but privacy concerns are an ongoing worry with “free” WIFI areas. Data storage and collection from WIFI devices is a relatively new area, not subject to uniform privacy protections as cell phone data is supposed to be. In 2014 a California coffee shop ran into privacy complaints when it was discovered that it used tracking analytics that could locate a device as being unique from others in the area. In that way specific conclusions could be drawn from the data:  how long an individual device user stayed in an area, in a store, or even where an individual stood. Because of public pressure the coffee shop stopped using the software. Do you get Free WIFI in Burlington and a bell on your collar too?

The goal at Church Street Market Place is to monitor foot traffic and individual store sales. With this data, individual retailers can better analyze the effectiveness of their current and future sales promotions and advertising.

It is too bad it never occurred to WCAX, Vermont’s [self-proclaimed] “best news source” to probe a little deeper and ask about what else might be gained by those businesses that put up $50,000.00 for “free” public WIFI. It is a surprise just plain curiosity wasn’t enough for WCAX News to ask who owns and stores the data collected: the city-owned Burlington Telecom or a private entity. And could whoever does control the data be able to profit from it by sharing (for a price)  the stored shopping and traffic marketing information?

The common claim is that most Americans are willing to give up some privacy for discounts and sales. But in a report called the Trade off Fallacy: How Marketers Are Misrepresenting American Consumers and Opening Them Up to Exploitation the Annenberg School of Communications found it may actually be a simple matter of resignation.

Americans, the report contends, aren’t happy that they have to give their name, phone number, email address, and other data to get discounts. They do it because they believe marketers will get the data anyway. “Rather than feeling able to make choices, Americans believe it is futile to manage what companies can learn about them,” co-author Joe Turow says.

And should we be equally resigned to WCAX News missing some obvious follow-up questions that would have made a fluffy item into a local news story?