New York caught with 'beacons' in pay phone kiosks: What did they do?
| New York
Q: How many New Yorkers can fit into a phone booth?
A: All of them, if they walk by carrying a smart phone.
New York City ordered an advertising firm to remove hundreds of tracking devices it had installed in public phone kiosks Monday after it was revealed the firm had equipped them with hidden dime-sized transmitters called 鈥渂eacons.鈥� Such beacons are commonly used to 鈥減ush鈥� ads to nearby smart phone users, but they can also be used to track movements and gather user information.
The advertising company, , a multimedia firm that says it specializes in 鈥減eople in transit鈥� and controls the ad panels for over 5,000 hardwired phone cubbies throughout New York City, began a test program to install the transmitters in selected stations in Manhattan, according to a .
While New York City phone booths may be anachronisms in the digital age of ubiquitous smartphones, the open-air, hard-wired 鈥渂ooths鈥� are still valuable as advertising posts 鈥� even though many of the old-fashioned pin-hole-dotted handsets just dangle on their silver heavy duty wires and are often out of order.
The city鈥檚 Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications had approved Titan鈥檚 plans to install the beacons in 2013, but without public notice or consultation. After the BuzzFeed report on Monday, however, the city announced it would ask the company to begin removing them.
鈥淲hile the beacons Titan installed in some of its phones for testing purposes are incapable of receiving or collecting any personally identifiable information, we have asked Titan to remove them from their phones,鈥� Mayor Bill de Blasio said . 鈥淭he beacons will be removed over the coming days.鈥�
The company said the beacons installed in Manhattan were going to be used for maintenance and "inventory management" purposes only, but beacon technology is becoming more and more a part of retail advertising and consumer convenience programs. Stores and sports stadiums use them to send messages to nearby users.
The technology requires users to have Bluetooth technology on their phones turned on, and also to have a third-party app that works with the beacon installed.聽
A user with an app from the video game retailer GameStop, for example, could be tracked by a store鈥檚 beacons and then sent a push notification of a special deal. Or a sports stadium beacon could track a user鈥檚 location to push gate information or other advertising messages, experts say.
But as the Buzzfeed report notes, 鈥渢he spread of beacon technology to public spaces could turn any city into a giant matrix of hidden commercialization 鈥� and vastly deepen the network of surveillance that has already grown out of technologies ranging from security cameras to cell phone towers.鈥�
Even though a user must 鈥渙pt in鈥� by downloading a third-party app, beacon companies can still develop a much deeper and behavior by automatically accessing other information stored on the user鈥檚 phone. This includes demographic data, personal interests, and stored in GPS location information on your phone 鈥� all of which are coveted by companies seeking to send personalized, relevant ads to a user.
Titan said none of their current beacons were being used to collect data or trigger advertising, but 鈥渢here are potential advertising-use cases, for sure,鈥� a spokesman told
The fact that the city never informed the public about the beacons troubled many civil libertarians.
鈥淭o the extent that the city is involved in this, the lack of transparency about this data-mining operation is even more, of even greater, concern,鈥� said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, to the Daily News. 鈥淭his is an agreement that has to be suspended pending an open process about what鈥檚 going on.鈥�
