LinkNYC kiosks have become a familiar eyesore to New Yorkers. Over 1,600 of these towering, nine-and-a-half-foot monoliths — their double-sided screens festooned with ads and fun facts — have been installed across the city since early 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio has celebrated their ability to provide "the fastest and largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the world" as "a critical step toward a more equal, open, and connected city for every New Yorker, in every borough." Anyone can use the kiosks' Android tablets to search for directions and services; they are also equipped with charging stations, 911 buttons, and phones for free domestic calls.
But even as the kiosks have provided important services to connect New Yorkers, they may also represent a troubling expansion of the city's surveillance network, potentially connecting every borough to a new level of invasive monitoring. Each kiosk has three cameras, 30 sensors, and heightened sight lines for viewing above crowds.
[...] Now an undergraduate researcher has discovered indications in LinkNYC code — accidentally made public on the internet — that LinkNYC may be actively planning to track users' locations.
In May of this year, Charles Meyers, an undergraduate at New York City College of Technology, came across folders in LinkNYC's public library on GitHub, a platform for managing files and software, that appear to raise further questions about location tracking and the platform's protection of its users' data. Meyers made copies of the codebases in question — "LinkNYC Mobile Observation" and "RxLocation" — and shared both folders with The Intercept.
According to Meyers, the "LinkNYC Mobile Observation" code collects the user's longitude and latitude, as well as the user's browser type, operating system, device type, device identifiers, and full URL clickstreams (including date and time) and aggregates this information into a database. In Meyers's view, this code — along with the functions of the "RxLocation" codebase — suggests that the company is interested in tracking the locations of Wi-Fi users in real time.
[...] LinkNYC disputes these speculations. David Mitchell, Intersection's chief technology officer, told the Intercept that the code was never intended to be released and was part of a longer-term research and development process. "In this instance," he explained over email, "Intersection was prototyping and testing some ideas internally, using employee data only, and mistakenly made source code public on Github. This code is not in use on the LinkNYC network."
Source: The Intercept
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @09:29AM
This is a glimpse into the dystopia of the future. Nice to know that NYC is ahead of the competition. They already have their contracts in place, and are actively assisting Google and company to set up the surveillance.
Nice joke hidden in there. "Oh, we don't actually plan on sharing data with law enforcement, and if we do share data, we'll try to let you know about it!" Yeah - you'll know about it when all the discovery motions are made in court. If, that is, your lawyer actually makes the effort to file discovery motions. So, I guess that makes this a little better than the fake cell phone towers?
So, they have ~1500 of these obelisks in operation, and plans for ~6000 more? It might be interesting to see a map of all that coverage.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:56AM (5 children)
If they can track my ass in TN with kiosks in NYC, I'm pretty damned impressed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 12 2018, @11:57AM (4 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 12 2018, @12:16PM (3 children)
Shit, good luck tracking me with that. I can't even get cell reception out at the lake. Internet service for tracking me is right the fuck out.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @02:21PM (2 children)
they'll install 5g microcells in fishing rods. better start using a wooden pole.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:23PM (1 child)
We could send 5g infiltration robots disguised as fish.
Bonus if we can somehow get our 5g robot fish to encourage real fish to hang out in his fishing hole.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday September 13 2018, @10:43AM
You manage that and you can track me all you like without me giving even one tenth of a fuck. It's not like there'll be much movement happening though. House->fishing_hole->house->fishing_hole->etc...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:57AM
With a 911 button, what could you expect other than an Orwellian agenda?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @01:43PM (4 children)
There's one on the corner of my block. Even when you're standing right next to it, the throughput sucks. I have yet to see anyone standing their recharging their phone on the USB ports, or even using the thing for any reason whatsoever. Tourists universally have smart phones and data plans. Locals universally have smart phones and data plans.
It's a nice idea to have Internet as public infrastructure, like roads, but the execution on this effort so far is poor.
As far as their tracking your location, well, my friends, that ship has already sailed. Think the cell phone companies aren't handing that same data over to the feds and local cops? Think stingrays aren't already doing more than that? Think all the ubiquitous traffic cams and other cameras aren't tracking you? At this point, either we all flee to the woods to reclaim a measure of privacy, or we have a revolution and recast the country as one that has an ironclad right to privacy in its DNA.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 12 2018, @02:31PM
See also junk dna [wikipedia.org] (i.e presence in the dna does not guarantee function)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @03:13PM (1 child)
I see people charging from them time to time. I even have seen a few people try to make phone calls over the speaker built in. Generally they look like vagrants.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 12 2018, @05:09PM
Like I said, the concept is sound. Being able to store a profile and some files (resume, cover letter, etc) on the cloud gives people at rock bottom a leg up. It helps bridge a little bit of the extreme social isolation people suffer in that state. But as somebody who's tried to interact them via devices of my own, it falls short.
The other issue is that the kiosks just showed up one day. Nobody announced them. There was no public awareness campaign. So even if you don't have your phone or tablet or what-have-you on hand, it wouldn't really occur to you to try to use one. Now, if they had thought through their use-cases a little harder they would have put them next to bus stops where you're a bit of a captive audience, waiting for the bus to come. So you might then take a moment to try to use them and see what they're about. Instead, they did not do that and put them next to genius places like USPS mailboxes, which are rapidly falling into disuse because fewer and fewer people use regular mail anymore.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12 2018, @10:13PM
This sounds like a much better option than just giving up. Hopefully the "revolution" would be political in nature, as unbelievable as that would be.