Friday, December 15, 2006

Your shoes are spying on you

Bruce Schneier blogs about a surveillance system that automatically tracks people by their shoes.

Don't toss your loafers away and go barefoot just yet: it can't track any shoes, just the particular combination of Nike + iPod Sport Kit.

Schneier writes:

To me, the real significance of this work is how easy it was. The people who designed the Nike/iPod system put zero thought into security and privacy issues. Unless we enact some sort of broad law requiring companies to add security into these sorts of systems, companies will continue to produce devices that erode our privacy through new technologies. Not on purpose, not because they're evil -- just because it's easier to ignore the externality than to worry about it.

No comments: