Oz states count cars using Bluetooth

The government of Australia's Capital Territory (ACT) has issued a statement about the use of Bluetooth-sniffing technology for traffic studies. The issue arose as the result of grassroots activism from Canberra-centric news service The-RiotACT, which has its take on events here. RiotACT considers the Bluetooth collection to …

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

"While RiotACT's reaction seems overblown"

Anyone who's spent time on The RiotACT will tell you this is par for the course.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Oh yeah

ACT, or Australian Capital Territory, as hinted by its name, is a territory, not a state.

[RAjohnboy]

User content is not indicative of an editorial view

As the RiotACT editor I'd just like to clarify that while we thought our reader trixyf's story was worthy of public airing, as obviously does The Register, it does not represent the editorial view of the site.

We sought comment from the ACT Government to those claims which was included in full in our story:

http://the-riotact.com/big-brother-is-watching-government-invades-resident-privacy/98860

Cheers,

John "Johnboy" Griffiths

[david 12]

apparently not rare

This map of Brisbane shows a score of them:

http://www.atrf11.unisa.edu.au/Assets/Papers/ATRF11_0129_final.pdf

And yes, I expect the police would be using the data if they didn't find telephone cell data easier, and yes, I think this would be illegal in some parts of the USA.

The map appears to be a google map, so perhaps the location of the Bluetooth traffic scanners was slurped by Google? No credit was given.

[Martin Budden]

Missing the point.

The data slurp is not the biggest issue: the govt* is making a far bigger mistake.

"TAMS has collected these data as part of its evidence base in support of the highly controversial plan to implement more than 82 traffic calming devices across the southern suburbs of Chisholm, Gilmore, Richardson, Macarthur, Fadden and Gowrie."

Of course there is rat-running through these suburbs: there is no decent city-bound route through them. Installing "traffic calming devices" will only make the route problem even worse. They should instead be upgrading roads and re-aligning junctions to make one or two key high-flow city-bound routes through this area.

Why am I not surprised that this govt can't get basic infrastructure planning right?

*it's a four-letter word around here.