# New types of traffic cameras allowed by the state legislature have the potential to lead to big safety gains in Seattle -- but a potential clash over how those cameras are deployed could be on the horizon. SDOT and transportation chair Rob Saka are not seeing eye to eye.
  • LettucePrey@lemm.eeEnglish
    3·
    9 days ago

    At some point they realized some people left their bluetooth on on their phones (which wasn’t the case when the initial deployment happened, bluetooth was seen by most as a battery sucking crap technology) and by comparing the bluetooth ping logs at two points they could approximate driving speeds to a decently accurate degree. You couldn’t use the data to pinpoint a specific user really and you couldn’t pinpoint speed exactly so it was no use to law enforcement, but it was fabulous data to model traffic on.

    This is exactly why I turn my bluetooth off of my phone. I know grocery stores use this too for tracking where people shop within the store.

    • specialseaweed@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      9 days ago

      Absolutely. There is a granularity of data and ability to process it today that did not exist when Houston was using it, but we were aware then of the serious questions of privacy regarding the ethics of reading devices without permission that all of us were grappling with. The conclusion was that it was ethical to use because tools didn’t exist to de-anonymize that data even if someone wanted to. There was no way to match a bluetooth MAC address to anything.

      That was a different time though. Privacy got nuked from orbit.