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by **coyttl** on Thu Apr 04, 2013 11:23 am

Interesting, as traffic seems to be high on the new front today on my local news station:

http://www.wtop.com/654/3273712/Why-you ... he-Beltway

Some interesting things to note:
- First, the comment about waiting for GPS to imrpove. That's a riot, since it could be 10-20 or more years before consumer GPSes get better accuracy. (I beta test for a GPS and Iridium company, so I'm familiar with GPS..)
- Second, at the *very* bottom, note the small paragraph about bluetooth. Remember one of my earlier posts (I'll find it if I have to) about gov't tracking with the unique BT ids? Sure, no personal info is obtained, but using that they could GET personal info. (If they wanted to..)

by **RunsWithCrouse-Hinds** on Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:11 pm

coyttl wrote:- Second, at the *very* bottom, note the small paragraph about bluetooth. Remember one of my earlier posts (I'll find it if I have to) about gov't tracking with the unique BT ids? Sure, no personal info is obtained, but using that they could GET personal info. (If they wanted to..)

We can all put on our tin foil hats and worry about the government stealing our information in order to tell us travel times, or we could just face the fact that if we turn off the freakin' bluetooth on our phones, the data wouldn't be out there in the first place. I actually think using BT pings to determine travel time is a very smart and effective means of providing traveler information. If we weren't doing that, then Google wouldn't have traffic data either, as well as several other services people use quite often. It's also much less invasive than, say, the government requiring car manufacturers to put an RFID chip or other type of electronic ID tag on every new vehicle in order to generate this kind of data. Intelligent Transportation Systems need this data in order to work, so unless you want traffic to stay the same or get worse, you have to provide SOME information about the roads you're travelling.

by **coyttl** on Thu Apr 04, 2013 1:30 pm

RunsWithCrouse-Hinds wrote:
coyttl wrote:- Second, at the *very* bottom, note the small paragraph about bluetooth. Remember one of my earlier posts (I'll find it if I have to) about gov't tracking with the unique BT ids? Sure, no personal info is obtained, but using that they could GET personal info. (If they wanted to..)

We can all put on our tin foil hats and worry about the government stealing our information in order to tell us travel times, or we could just face the fact that if we turn off the freakin' bluetooth on our phones, the data wouldn't be out there in the first place. I actually think using BT pings to determine travel time is a very smart and effective means of providing traveler information. If we weren't doing that, then Google wouldn't have traffic data either, as well as several other services people use quite often. It's also much less invasive than, say, the government requiring car manufacturers to put an RFID chip or other type of electronic ID tag on every new vehicle in order to generate this kind of data. Intelligent Transportation Systems need this data in order to work, so unless you want traffic to stay the same or get worse, you have to provide SOME information about the roads you're travelling.

Nah, I didn't mean it as a paranoid item list.

More of a false-news-reporting angle. :)

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