City of London trashes advertising firm's 'spy bins'
Monitoring pedestrians' phone signals a step too far for corporation and privacy groups
Officials in London have demanded that an advertising firm stop using a network of hi-tech rubbish bins that track people walking through the city's financial district by monitoring their cell phone signals.
The Renew ad firm has been using technology embedded in the bins to measure the Wi-fi signals emitted by smartphones, and suggested that it would apply the concept of "cookies" - tracking files that follow internet users across the Web - to the physical world.
"We will cookie the street," Renew chief executive Kaveh Memari said in June.
But the City of London Corporation has demanded Renew pull the plug on the programme, which captures smartphones' serial numbers and analyses signal strength to follow people up and down the street.
The rubbish bins join a host of everyday objects, from televisions to toilets, that are being manufactured with the ability to send and receive data, opening up new potential for interaction - and surveillance.
It's unclear how Renew had planned to use the data, which was gathered by its reinforced, shoulder-height bins near St Paul's Cathedral and Liverpool Street Station.