JFK Displays Actual Wait Times Using Beacons That Monitor Mobile Phones

<i>When a device passes the beacons, its non-personal unique ID—called a MAC address—is recorded, encrypted and time-stamped.</i><p>Blip, you make me laugh. You know this will raise privacy concerns and say the sweet nothings that placate the general public, but inspire no confidence in people who know what those words mean.<p>I&#x27;m not here to say that as a JFK traveler I&#x27;m unhappy with the privacy considerations. I just want to point out you&#x27;re pretending your design is good on privacy when simple tweaks would show the security minded you gave half a shit. I don&#x27;t mind this monitoring if it is limited to the uses described, your maneuvering simply makes me giggle.<p>A MAC may not be in whatever bucket you&#x27;re calling &quot;personal&quot; but is certainly more personal than &quot;non-personal&quot; implies. Encryption is effectively a &quot;we&#x27;re doing it right&quot; buzzword to the general public. What are your authorized uses for the data? What&#x27;s your KMI? What data minimization techniques are employed? Do you purge old records? Replace the MAC with an identifier that can&#x27;t be tied back to MAC once the target has left the line? Hash MACs on entry in a way that is both time-costly to bruteforce and results in a different hash every day?

Nitpick: these are not &quot;beacons&quot;, they are &quot;sensors&quot;. The product page linked from the article doesn&#x27;t even contain word &quot;beacon&quot;. Beacons are unidirectional. But, beacons are hot right now, which presumably the author sought to capitalize on.

Awesome, this kind of technology should be used in ALL waiting lines. I read that the average person spends months of their lives just waiting in lines. This is ridiculous and should be fixed. Every store should have an average waiting time and they should try to minimize it.

Of what use is this information to the people standing in line? &quot;Oh, it&#x27;s 30 minutes. I guess I&#x27;ll hurry.&quot;

I wonder how long before they can do the same with cameras? A bit of computer vision and you have more complete data... Not sure if there is still need for better completeness though.

I am just curious. Wouldn&#x27;t it be more easier to do this with specific devices than using the phones?<p>Each passenger can be given a smart card along with the boarding pass (or embedded in the boarding pass). The sensors could merely check for the smart card at certain points and determine how long it took for the passenger to clear security, etc. The airline can then collect the smart card back just before boarding when they scan the boarding pass. Seems like a simple solution that would work without much privacy concerns.

From <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blipsystems.com&#x2F;indoor-sensor&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blipsystems.com&#x2F;indoor-sensor&#x2F;</a>:<p>&gt; When a device passes the sensors, its non-personal unique ID, called a MAC address, is recorded, encrypted and time-stamped. By re-identifying the device from multiple sensors, travel times, average speeds, dwell times and movement patterns become available.<p>Aren&#x27;t MAC addresses spoofed on most phones now?! I didn&#x27;t expect a system like that to still be usable.

Another simple thing that could be done to increase efficiency is have notices upstream in the security line instructing people to remove their shoes &#x2F; belts and store their personal items like phones before they get to the conveyor belt used to feed items into the x-ray baggage scanner (assuming this is still a relevant bottleneck). A lot of time is needlessly wasted by people who start this process when they first hit the front of the security line.

Serious question: if there is a 16 minute queue for &quot;security&quot;, why wouldn&#x27;t a potential terrorist just wheel up a carry on sized bomb and detonate it in the middle of the &quot;security&quot; line? Is this something that the TSA addresses (I assume not), or do they just ignore the possibility? All they&#x27;ve done is move the soft target further out.

One of the photos shows the system in use at the DHS immigration line. Aren&#x27;t there notices all over this place telling travelers that cellphone use is strictly prohibited before passing the checkpoint? It seems strange that the airport relies on people breaking the law to provide better service...

Good. I suspect that many people aren&#x27;t aware that most smartphones in common&#x2F;default configurations leak a unique identifier that can be passively sensed and monitored. Products like this will help raise awareness as to how privacy invasive simple consumer devices have become.

I hope it didn&#x27;t cost more than hiring extra people to get the mega-lines through faster.

London Luton was displaying similar wait times when I traveled through it last week, and I was wondering how they did it. I thought they might be doing some kind of face recognition using the cameras at entry&#x2F;exit to the hall.

Perhaps, just perhaps... they should be spending money on additional stations to NOT have lines in the first place?<p>You know, fight the cause rather than the symptom :-)

Based on the headline, I thought they were displaying the queue time on monitors held by life-sized mannikins of the former President.<p>Read the article, was disappointed. It&#x27;s still interesting tech though.