Loveland, December 11, 2017





Loveland's City Council approved a new 'public works' program last Tuesday to

place receivers around the City of Loveland to collect MAC (Media Access

Control) unique identifiers emitted from private cell phones via bluetooth from

an unaware public.



The devices can not only track a person's travel throughout the city but also

determine your precise speed, who might be travelling with you depending on

whether they are carrying a mobile device and ultimately display your

movements on a map throughout the city over a period of years once enough

data is collected and archived.



Presented on the consent agenda at as approval of a federal grant, Councilman

Dave Clark said he failed to call staff about the item so pulled it from the

consent agenda to ask questions during last Tuesday's council meeting.





Jeff Bailey, City of Loveland Interim Director of Public Works

, provided false

information to the council and public during his short presentation regarding

the technology. Bailey described the system as

Traffic-Adaptive Control



product used for traffic mitigation. The federal grant was facilitated through

the

MPO (North Front Range Metropolitan Planning

Organization)

providing

the City of Loveland $380,000 to acquire and install the receivers at traffic

intersections throughout the city. Bailey described the funds as "

Basically

$380,000 free to the city

" because the usual matching funds requirement was

not included.



Councilman Dave Clark responded,

"I am not sure to be thankful or worried."



Bailey responded,

"It is an emerging technology."





Bailey Misleads Council and Public





While Loveland's City Council sat quietly, declining to ask any questions despite

Mayor Jacki Marsh's invitation, with the exception of Clark, a man in the

audience came to the microphone asking a series of probing questions. It was

the assurances Bailey provided that man and the rest of the audience that were

misleading.



For example, the audience member asked why the need to track people instead

of just their vehicles if the intent is to mitigate traffic congestion by learning the

routes various commuters are using through the city. In his response, Bailey

stated,

"If we were to use cameras to pick-up say license plate data than we

are getting into issues of privacy."





On the contrary, license plates only indicate who is the registered owner of the

vehicle while tracking the unique identifier of each mobile device in the vehicle

provides information regarding who is in the vehicle and their likely identity.

Bailey further explained,

"There is no tracking, there is no way of knowing

who owns which bluetooth signal, because the computer itself assigns a

number to it so its just a random number generated."

Bailey also corrected

the man explaining the telephone communication signal is not what is being

tracked only the bluetooth; presumably to protect the individual's privacy.



For clarification, mobile phone companies can change subscriber identifiers

and often do over a period of time so any one signal doesn't necessarily

identify the user. The MAC, however, is different. Each mobile device is

provided a unique MAC which remains with the device for the life of the device

since it is tied into the physical embedded chipset. Therefore, the most reliable

way for intelligence agencies or law enforcement to connect an individual to a

pattern of activity over time is through their MAC not the communication signal

of their mobile devices.



Even if the vendor of the "

Traffic-Adaptive Control

" device assigns its own

unique number for each mobile device, the police can easily determine the

identity of anyone's phone once they have custody of it by passing it by a

receiver thus revealing a suspect's local travel history. Bailey also indicated

earlier in his presentation that the computer for the receiver is housed

alongside cameras and other detection equipment.



After repeatedly assuring the audience the technology is for tracking cars not

people, Bailey was asked by the same man,

"What if three iphones in that car

what happens,

" to which Bailey replied,

"It will only pick-up one."





Of course, this is false as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the

Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have been known to use identical devices to

track multiple suspects traveling in a single vehicle. Each mobile device is

transmitting while the passive receiver is receiving those signals. While the

city's computer software may cancel out near signals for simplicity of traffic

counting, it is certainly misleading to indicate the technology can only pick-up

one signal in each vehicle. It picks-up all the signals and depending on how it is

programed can certainly determine the characteristics of which signal is

analyzed and archived.

See article regarding DEA and DHS use of the same



technology.



