You (and Your Cellphone) on Candid Camera

Published: July 18, 2013

Anybody who shops at online stores like Amazon.com knows that those merchants track customers, what they look at, what they buy and how long they spend on the site. Perhaps it’s not all that surprising that traditional retailers — with little or no notice — have started tracking shoppers in stores, using security cameras and devices that can monitor the location of customer cellphones.

In this era of big data and cheap monitoring equipment and software, national chains like Family Dollar and even neighborhood cafes are using tracking technologies to offer coupons to customers and gather information about their in-store shopping habits, according to a recent article in The Times.

Retailers say they need to monitor customers so they can help them find what they want. If you linger in the men’s formal wear section, for instance, a store might send you a coupon that offers you a free shirt with the purchase of a new suit.

Retailers also argue that they collect no more, and often a lot less, information about their customers than Web merchants do.

The Federal Trade Commission says it has not found evidence that retailers are using facial recognition technology that could allow them to identify and build profiles of customers. But what’s disturbing about these tracking methods is that stores are mostly doing so without informing their customers.

The technology that allows stores to track shoppers’ cellphones, for instance, works even when customers do not log on to the Wi-Fi networks of stores. The only way a cellphone user can avoid being tracked is to turn off the Wi-Fi feature on their phones, which few are likely to do if they are unaware of the monitoring in the first place.

While a few retailers like Nordstrom have posted signs telling customers that they were being monitored in this way, many others do not do so. (Nordstrom stopped tracking cellphones in May, partly as a result of complaints from customers.)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/opinion/you-and-your-cellphone-on-candid-camera.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130719

 

NSA growth fueled by need to target terrorists - The Washington Post

page 3 of the article.

"By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off. JSOC troops called this “The Find,” and it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, according to members of the unit.
At the same time, the NSA developed a new computer linkup called the Real Time Regional Gateway into which the military and intelligence officers could feed every bit of data or seized documents and get back a phone number or list of potential targets. It also allowed commanders to see, on a screen, every type of surveillance available in a given territory."
@BTPost but but but they don't have the BANDWIDTH?
REALLY!!!!???

 

Pfft. I am the difference.
When I started provisioning DSL it was 1 meg.
Today it's 250 meg hybrid fiber coax.
Do u think that LTE or 4G towers are fed with a copper loop or somethin? It's FIBER.
Not just sayin'...if you are targeted...it's ALL in REALTIME from that point on and it won't be long, if it aint already that we're ALL REALTIME tracked, logged, profiled and run through a quantum computer to decide our "Risk Assessment".


Note - I'm only nagging u out of Christian love....I'm well aware that I'm gonna have to put up with your angry oldfartedness in the afterlife...