10K Google Wi-Fi kiosks are collecting millions of faces and MAC addresses

MassPrivateI

According to a NYC. gov page, CityBridge was chosen in 2014 to offer free private Wi-Fi to NYC residents. CityBridge is a consortium of companies that includes Intersection, Qualcomm, and CIVIQ Smartscapes – to develop and operate the LinkNYC network. (the above pic. shows one of two surveillance cameras)

These kiosks, called ‘Links,’ will provide the public with a fast, private Wi-Fi network providing free domestic calling, two USB charging ports, a tablet for accessing the internet, and a red 911 button to contact emergency services. New York city plans on installing nearly10,000 spying kiosks.   

LinkNYC’s pinhole camera is just below the speaker

According to Cryptome, LinkNYC kiosks use microphones, cameras, sensors and more to spy on the public.

Users committed to a democratic city are entitled to robust transparency about the workings of any municipal system’s disclosed and undisclosed frameworks. Such municipal transparency has been obscuredby a kiosk design which conceals cameras, microphones, sensors and reporting hardware and software that will be transmitting real-time big data to centralized command-and-control entities.

Google is collecting millions of faces and MAC addresses

CityBridge collects lots of personal information

MAC address, IP address, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device type, and device identifiers;

Information about your visits to websites we provide, including the full URL clickstream to, through and from these websites (including date and time);

Information used to facilitate your use of the Services, such as access to third party websites and services, including URL requests, destination IP addresses, configuration details, or other information necessary to provide access to the Services;

Pages you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

CityBridge claims they won’t keep a person’s personally identifiable information longer than 12 months after their last login. Which means, every time the same person uses CityBridge they reset their privacy countdown.

CityBridge collects personal info. and uses it to sell ads

“By having access to the browsing activity of people using the Wi-Fi — all anonymized and aggregated — we can actually then target ads to people in proximity and then obviously over time track them through lots of different things, like beacons and location services, as well as their browsing activity. So in effect what we’re doing is replicating the digital experience in physical space” Sidewalk’s CEO, Dan Doctoroff said.

CityBridge denies sharing people’s personal info. and pictures with law enforcement

“CityBridge will never sell any user’s personal information or share with third parties for their own use. This includes the city, law enforcement, investors, vendors, partners, and advertisers. Alphabet, Sidewalk Labs, and Google are all third parties to CityBridge.”

Last week, I warned everyone how easy it is for the police to identify allegedly anonymous Wi-Fi users.

• Law enforcement can, differentiate between residents (daily matches) and visitants (sporadic matches).
• Law enforcement can identify the walking routes of individual people and their average time in each area.
• Law enforcement can identify individual MAC addresses allowing them to identify users.

According to an Electronic Privacy Information Center Amicus Brief, (pages 8-12) a person’s MAC address actually serves as a better way to identify an iPhones’ owner than their names. A person’s MAC address can also be used to identify their age and sex. Unique device identifiers are like Social Security Numbers, they’re used to link a particular transaction to a unique individual. MAC addresses“ can be used to recognize a user over time and across different websites or online services.”A WiFi-enabled device acts as an “actual wireless beacon” of a device’s unique identifier.

Last year, Google acquired Control Group, which is CityBridge’s parent corporation.

Control Group and Titan Outdoor are both behind an effort called LinkNYC, which aims to put Wi-Fi and digital advertising screens in thousands of pay phone booths across the city. The Wi-Fi hotspots will also offer charging stations for cell phones and free calls to anywhere in the US.

Google has spied on more than 5 million people
According to Inverse, LinkNYC has been used more than five million times since its debut, and 15,000 people use it for the first time every week. It doesn’t get more ominous than that, CityBridge/Google are collecting millions of peoples faces, MAC addresses and personal info.

Google’s spying kiosks to expand across the country

The company [Google] intends to clone that system and start selling it around the world, government by government…every place that signs on will become another profit center in Google’s advertising business…

CityBridge’s president is one of the most powerful women in D.C.

The President of the CityBridge Foundation, Katherine Bradley is one of the most powerful women in Washington D.C., she’s also on Washington Life’s A-list. (page 3) Mrs., Bradley is married to David Bradley owner of Atlantic Media, the National Journal Hotline (NJH) and the Government Executive(GE) magazines. Mr. Bradley is also one of the largest employers of young professional talent in the Washington, D.C.

The NJH’s primary audience includes Congressional staffers, political operatives and pundits. His GE magazine is distributed free to senior executives in federal, state and local governments and is thenumber one publication read by federal managers.

A brief history of Qualcomm and Google:

In 2014, Qualcomm installed spying Bluetooth beacons in LA & Chicago.
Qualcomm is part of DHS’s ‘National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center‘.
Qualcomm is working with DHS to create smartphone chemical sensors.
Qualcomm even has a Government Affairs Director, Mark Koro.
Google has a close relationship with DHS.
Google had secret anti-piracy meetings with DHS & Sony.
Google has created numerous DHS apps.

Google has turned the Minority Report into a punch list

“It’s as if someone (Google) took Minority Report as a shopping catalogue or a punch list rather than a vision of dystopia,” University College, London professor Adam Greenfield said.

http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2016/07/10k-google-wi-fi-kiosks-are-collecting.html