TMC - You are being watched by Big Brother

cantgetlost · Frequent Visitor Joined: Nov 14, 2005 Posts: 291

Have a read here -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=483682&in_page_id=1770

Our roads have been paid for by hard pressed over taxed motorists for generations.
With probably the highest fuel tax's in the world we pay by the mile for every mile we drive and the blame for polution lies on the doorstep of Governement and the Motor and Oil industries, we pay huge ammounts of duty on buying cars and VAT on that and all other motoring related services and equipment and now we have TMC selling out to the devil!
So if your TMC does work and your trying to keep out of the heavy traffic you are likely to add to further penalties for motorists Crying or Very sad

SpikeyMikey · Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:23 am Post subject:

I'm confused by this.

How can a sat-nav system give vehicle details? If I take my PDA or other devices from car to car, how do they know what car i'm in? In fact how do they know who I am??

TMC is a free to air service surely, unless you have to register for it, or your device has to send out a code to receive it, I don't see how this could happen.

Stands back and waits for clever dicks to put him right .......... Wink

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Mike
TT GO6000 (Europe); iPhone and iPad Pro with iOS TT GO & MyDrive + CamerAlert

swing · Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:51 am Post subject:

First of all, it's got nothing to do with TMC. The Daily Mail report says it only relates to uses of the SmartNav service from TM.

Secondly, I have a personal feeling that this is an example of really bad reporting - the contract with the DfT is for the supply of traffic flow data from TM's 50,000 vehicle sensors plus it's fixed sensor network. Those 50,000 are part of TM's commercial fleet business, and nothing (as I understand it) to do with their SmartNav consumer business.

Also, the contract is for traffic flow data, although it does seem (according to the Daily Mail) to include a provision for actual number plates. Of course, unless their main license has been updated, the fixed sensors are not allowed to record the whole number plate, and hence the only vehicles uniquely tracked are those already fitted with a tracking device...

I could be wrong, but I don't believe this is a good example of Big Brother - a better example is the London Congestion Charging system - which, although standalone at inception, now has the capability to provide data to other organisations.

In my opinion, the Daily Mail is either making a story where there isn't one, or there is a story, and they've not fully described (to those who understand how these systems work) exactly what the story is...
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Darren · Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:08 am Post subject:

Another load of journalistic rubbish. There are many errors in the article. Firstly the traffic monitoring system they refer to is TrafficMaster's PTFM (Passive Target Flow Measurement) Network. This is not TMC (although they may use the data from PTFM in their RAC/TrafficMaster service).

PTFM is the network of 7000+ sensors on Blue poles across all major A and M Routes in the UK. The Infra-red cameras capture the electronic pattern of number plates of passing vehicles. This is then converted on-site into a "tag" and in a similar way to SPECS these tags are compared with records from other sensors to compute travelling time. The difference is that no identifying information is used, the sensors read the number plate pattern not the actual number, convert that into a non-identifying hash code and then compare with data from other sensors.

The data has a shelf life of 30 minutes after which it is automatically deleted, cannot identify an individual vehicle in any way that could be used to identify the owners nor is it recorded. In fact it was a specific clause of the licence that the system could not be capable of this.

SmartNav may well use the data as it's a TrafficMaster service, but again it's traffic density information and journey times only.

I did try commenting on the article but ended up going around in circles with their anti-bot protection and after trying two browsers gave up, perhaps that is the idea!
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Darren Griffin

swing · Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:18 am Post subject:

Darren - as well as the PTFM fixed network sensors, Trafficmaster also have access to real speed information from 50,000 vehicle sensors.

From TM themselves on the subject of this DfT contract: "Trafficmaster will supply a combination of real road speed data, collected from its 50,000 intelligent vehicle probes and journey time and traffic flow data collected through its fixed sensor network, positioned across major roads in the UK."

In all other points, I completely agree with you though.
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Anita · Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:32 am Post subject:

Did you notice where the device is positioned in the picture? Confused

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Anita
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Darren · Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:42 am Post subject:

Skippy · Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 8:21 pm Post subject:

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