Public Surveillance and our Privacy in the Digital Age.

Has it dawned on you that there is now a way for organisations to watch your every move and to know your interest?

11:49 31 October 2017

And it involves not just CCTV systems installed in almost every part of the country but also your phone and the way you connect to the Internet.     

 

Dr. Joss Wright, of the Oxford Internet Institute, said: “In terms of surveillance of your communications, then there’s all sorts of information: which websites you’ve been visiting, who you’ve been phoning - that kind of thing. That [data] is not so much in the physical realm, but there is increasing crossover: the signals - or ‘track-ability’ - of devices by [way of] the fact that they are broadcasting data and connecting to information.

 

“Your mobile phone, because it connects from cell tower to cell tower, can be localised to within a couple of miles based just on when your mobile phone was connected to a particular tower. Then there are Wi-Fi connections. Your phone is constantly spewing out ‘seeking packets’, to see what Wi-Fi networks might be available… Your phone tends to send out the names of networks that you’ve connected to before, to see if they’re around.

 

"So, if your phone is connected to [your home network] it also tends to be broadcasting the name of that network as you’re walking around, and obviously that can be traced. [And] if your device’s Bluetooth is on, it will often be sending out pings looking for local devices around.

 

“Where this could go looking forward, obviously a shopping centre or an advertiser is going to be very interested to know who is seeing their adverts,” Wright continues.

 

“[Say] you walked past a [billboard]. Did you pause for a couple of seconds to look at the advert that was being displayed? If so, they can infer that you had some interest in that advert, and then potentially that… could feed into a profile about you. The next step up [could be]: if your phone is detected passing an advertising board, perhaps they might display an advert that was of interest to you as you walk past. This is where it could go on the corporate side.”

 

Businesses claim that the data they gather are used to “serve us better.” But where to we draw the line? When does public surveillance become dangerously invasive?