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[aaronjb]

My point is that it's not possible in the way described - a store autonomously tracking mobiles without the holder's consent based on detecting the signals they emit. I'd be a happy man if I'd managed to find a way to do it. I've been asked.

Could you do it with lots and lots of very small femtocells, and triangulate between known locations of those in a closed space? (i.e. fill the store with femtocells)..

* waits for the penny to drop*

huh? 

Put a number into the site posted. Any number. Just.. any number. Then you'll understand...

[Kevin Wood]

Could you do it with lots and lots of very small femtocells, and triangulate between known locations of those in a closed space? (i.e. fill the store with femtocells)..

Possibly, but you'd have to manage the network to which those femtocells were attached, and they normally just phone home to Vodafone / whoever and get managed as part of the overall mobile network. The owner of the premises sees nothing of what the femtocell is doing.

..and you'd have to cover the 4 main network operators in both GSM and UMTS. That's a lot of boxes on the wall.

[Dishevelled Den]

There have been some interesting points made here.

The only thing I would say - by way of caution - (having just a wee bit of experience here), is be careful of what each of you as individuals except, as being reasonable, in the present and proposed level of surveillance carried out by way of police/security service/government/local government and private enterprise initiatives.

Howsoever it's dressed up, the need to extract even more information becomes evermore imperative as enough is never quite enough - this will lead to intrusive regulation in how we in this country lead our everyday lives - it is not acceptable (in my view at least) to have our every move monitored by those charged with our protection.

If people were aware of the nature and amount of information held by some of the organisations I've mentioned, they would be very concerned to say the least - and rightly so.

I was told once by a relative, who worked for a certain establishment in Gloucestershire, that information - irrespective of how it is used - is power, it is therefore disappointing to me that many organisations within the governmental and private enterprise structures in this country are becoming too powerful by far, especially for the good of those of us who live in it.

[aaronjb]

Possibly, but you'd have to manage the network to which those femtocells were attached, and they normally just phone home to Vodafone / whoever and get managed as part of the overall mobile network. The owner of the premises sees nothing of what the femtocell is doing.

Good point - although I'm sure I read recently that the Vodafone box had already been compromised? I could be wrong about that, though.

..and you'd have to cover the 4 main network operators in both GSM and UMTS. That's a lot of boxes on the wall.

True - especially to get the kind of granularity stores would want (i.e. down to aisle level)! Surely much easier to accomplish using entry/exit beam counters and/or video cameras with motion tracking/facial recognition (all of which are commercially available now and probably a lot cheaper than a mobile phone based solution).. and it wouldn't surprise me if stores haven't been using at least some of these technologies for a long time (especially entry/exit counters).

[Omega32E]

There have been some interesting points made here.

The only thing I would say - by way of caution - (having just a wee bit of experience here), is be careful of what each of you as individuals except, as being reasonable, in the present and proposed level of surveillance carried out by way of police/security service/government/local government and private enterprise initiatives.

Howsoever it's dressed up, the need to extract even more information becomes evermore imperative as enough is never quite enough - this will lead to intrusive regulation in how we in this country lead our everyday lives - it is not acceptable (in my view at least) to have our every move monitored by those charged with our protection.

If people were aware of the nature and amount of information held by some of the organisations I've mentioned, they would be very concerned to say the least - and rightly so.

I was told once by a relative, who worked for a certain establishment in Gloucestershire, that information - irrespective of how it is used - is power, it is therefore disappointing to me that many organisations within the governmental and private enterprise structures in this country are becoming too powerful by far, especially for the good of those of us who live in it.

That hits the nail on the head perfectly.