Ever walk around the crowded streets of New York City but oddly feel like someone is watching you? You may not just be reliving a paranoid scene from Kiefer Sutherland film Phone Booth.
An outdoor media company has actually hidden hundreds of radio transmitter 'beacon' devices in the phone booths across New York City.
The company Titan, which controls the city's phone booth advertising, installed 500 Gimbal beacon devices in the panels of phone booths in more than 5,000 panels around each of the five boroughs.
But if New Yorkers have felt like Big Brother might be following them, they are not too far off. The hidden devices could be used to track people's movements. The Bluetooth beacons emit signals that smartphones can easily pick up. This kind of device is more commonly known for its use in retail when stores send alerts to customers to notify them about sales and deals.
"To the extent that the city is involved in this, the lack of transparency [is] of even greater concern," says New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman
Gimbal admitted to avoiding red tape by claiming they were installing the devices for maintenance purposes. The beacons instead were used to push the phone booth ads as well as smartphone ads to the participants of the Tribeca Film Festival.
City Hall asked Titan to remove the devices after hours of published reports. As a response to the reports, the city announced it would remove the beacons "in the coming days."
Learning that the devices could potentially track people through their smartphones adds to the heightened sensitivity people feel towards surveillance and their privacy, especially since the devices were installed without public consent.
"Consumers should be aware when they're in a zone that projects beacons," says Doug Thompson, the CEO of beacon technology company dot3. "It shouldn't be kept hidden from them," adds Thompson who also runs the industry blog BEEKn,
The exact locations of the phone booths that have the hidden beacons installed are unknown. An Android app can be used to identify beacons close by.
Titan and NYC tech regulators both claim that the devices were used only in this one test and will seek city approval for commercial use.
