Bluetooth monitoring

Um projeto da Bath University, o Cityware, instalou secretamente uma série de bluetooth scanners em ruas, escritórios, publicidades etc e vem monitorando os trajetos de inúmeros indivíduos a partir de seus telefones celulares, computadores portáteis e câmeras digitais sem o seu consentimento. Conforme a matéria do The Guardian:

"The scanners, the first 10 of which were installed in Bath three years ago, are capturing Bluetooth radio signals transmitted from devices such as mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras, and using the data to follow unwitting targets without their permission.
The data is being used in a project called Cityware to study how people move around cities. But pedestrians are not being told that the devices they carry around in their pockets and handbags could be providing a permanent record of their journeys, which is then stored on a central database.

The Bath University researchers behind the project claim their scanners do not have access to the identity of the people tracked.
Eamonn O'Neill, Cityware's director, said: "The objective is not to track individuals, whether by Bluetooth or any other means. We are interested in the aggregate behaviour of city dwellers as a whole. The notion that any agency would seriously consider Bluetooth scanning as a surveillance technique is ludicrous.
But privacy experts disagree, pointing out that Bluetooth signals are assigned code names that can, to varying degrees, indicate a person's identity.
Many people use pseudonyms, nicknames, initials, or abbreviations to identify their Bluetooth signals. Cityware's scanners are also picking up signals that are listed using people's full name, email address and telephone numbers."

A discussão reportada acima mostra como se costuma identificar vigilância à violação de privacidade e à identificação pessoal, enquanto os novos dispositivos de vigilância digital envolvem modos bem mais sutis e complexos de rastreamento, monitoramento e classificação das ações e informações individuais, os quais muitas vezes não violam a privacidade no sentido convencional do termo, mas nem por isso deixam de ter efeitos de controle sobre as ações e escolhas possíveis dos indivíduos. Procuro enfrentar essa questão no meu último texto sobre este tema.