London’s Tube Network to Switch on Wi-Fi Tracking by Default in July | Hacker News Reader

London’s Tube Network to Switch on Wi-Fi Tracking by Default in July

techcrunch.com

78 pointsdmmalam76 comments

Is it just an impression or is UK indeed the most enthusiastic of all Western countries when it comes to performing mass surveillance on its citizens?

Seems like it runs way deeper and broader than in US

Opinion but I'm getting that impression, I was visiting Britain earlier this year and to gain entry to a sit down restaurant (Denny's type place), I was required to produce my passport or ID so that a copy could be scanned and saved before being granted entry (this was the norm for locals as well).

Christ that's unsettling

Wait what? I’ve never come across this.

That is not even remotely normal anywhere in the UK. Where was this?

That's certainly not normal.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you had to do this to get into a restaurant somewhere slightly sensitive, such as at the top of a skyscraper. And i have been asked for ID - and patted down! - going to the bowling lanes in a slightly gangy part of town.

But nobody's going to give you the third degree to get into a Nando's.

Sounds like somebody pranked you.

Most older Brits don't carry any sort of ID at all. Young people often need ID to buy booze, but when you're old enough that nobody could mistake you for under 25 they never bother you. Source: I've never carried ID, in my 40s this ceased ever causing any hassle because now nobody ever even asks.

FYI, that's not even slightly normal for eating out in the UK. In my entire life, I have never been required to produce ID when eating out (other than perhaps a few times when I was younger and ordering alcohol, to prove that I was of legal age).

In fact, such a policy would probably be catastrophic, because there was a big fight over whether we would all be required to carry compulsory ID cards here a few years ago, and for once the civil liberties side won after a big campaign.

You've possibly been scammed in some way. Watch out for weird things happening in your name. This is not normal and most likely not legal.

How can you watch out for something like this?

Free credit checks - make sure you didn't get an unknown credit card / loan / mortgage opened. You could also be cautious and report that passport as stolen, so it gets reissued with different numbers.

There are plenty of nightclubs that do this, and police frequently mandate that they do so as a requirement of operating their alcohol license in the UK. It's completely legal.

It would be very unusual for a restaurant to do so, but I'm wondering if it might have been a restaurant with a nightclub attached (if we're talking central London here maybe Tiger Tiger?). That's quite plausible.

You have to show your ID for the alcohol venue sometimes - that's common. But I've never seen anyone actually scanning one to get a copy.

Some bars and nightclubs use ID scanners for verification purposes. A machine vision system is much better than a bouncer at spotting fake IDs or knowing what a Latvian driving license is supposed to look like. The scanner can also check names against a list of banned patrons, which may be shared between venues.

https://www.patronscan.com/id-scanner-for-bars/

Surely a Latvian driving license looks just like any other European driving license? Driving licenses in Europe were standardised years ago.

But I do see your point.

This isn't quite true. Since the licenses can be valid for a long time (e.g. ten years) there are still europeans with valid old-style licenses. Until I renewed mine last month I had a ridiculous paper booklet with a photo glued on.

As far as I can see, the content is standardized but the design and security features vary a lot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence#Galle...

This is extremely common at major bars in most states in the US, especially if you're anywhere near a college. It's there to detect fakes. I'd imagine fake IDs are a much larger problem in the US, however, given that the drinking age is 21.

That said, at least years ago, the ID scanners would operate on data stored on the card and not make any network connection to a database. So then more expensive fake IDs began to exist that could scan fine. Then, I think some bars started getting more expensive ID scanners which actually do talk to some database.

This absolutely _isn't_ normal. I don't routinely carry ID, and never have done. The only place I can think of that did this was one nightclub near my university, but the upshot was we just didn't go to that nightclub often.

Plenty of bars in my local area of London have this set up unfortunately, usually they only turn them on after a certain point in the evening. I understand it's a requirement of their license. Most larger nightclubs in London will also do the same, I was very concerned when I first saw it.

This is the second time I've read of this on HN and I've literally no idea what any of it is about.

I can perhaps imagine this happening in some [crappy centre-town, tourist-trap] nightclubs, but literally not in a ‘Denny's type’ cafe restaurant.

I can't even begin to imagine why, short of some scam or bored locals teasing tourists.

Given that almost nobody in the UK has any form of ID on them at any given time, and certainly nothing a restaurant can verify, it seems this as an entrance policy may be hurting the restaurant's business. Where was it? I've never been asked this. Did you consider reporting them to the police? If not, why not?

I think TfL just wants money. People won't pay for public transportation with increased taxes and whine loudly whenever fares are increased to cover the cost of the ride, so instead they track your movements with WiFi.

But the Tube is already foolishly expensive, even by London standards. If you compare it with e.g. the BCN Metro the fares are typically about five times higher. The only thing to be said for TfL is that the passengers are generally very well behaved and never look at each other.

I've always found this "TFL is expensive" thing odd, it's insanely cheap. (Speaking as someone who's lived in 5 countys)

Have you ever gotten a bus ticket or taxi in derby? No day tickets. A return from a suburb to Center is around £8.

Compared to say, Kentish Town west to Kew for £2.50. The TFL caps are great.

Compare the whole running cost, not just the ticket price. More than half comes from general taxation.

Also compare to similarly sized cities. Transportation has a massive scaling benefit. If there are 1000 people on a tube train, charging £2.50 each, that's £2500. The drivers salary for the half hour journey could be perhaps £15. The train and track are going to have their costs spread out over 60 years or more. The land was in most cases given to them for free. The electricity for a 5 mile journey for a train costs £0.50.

How else are they spending the remaining £2484.50?

Answer:. Staff salaries are insanely high because of unions. Productivity is insanely low because of government work ethic and red tape. Tech is all contracted out an great expense, and all tech is both ancient and custom, stopping them buying in cheap systems from other countries. In some cases, trains are still controlled by men with big mechanical levers which raise flags!

This abstracts out a couple of things:

- TfL isn't just the Tube. Tube profits are used, among other things, to cross subsidize the buses and ferries and whatnot, which carry less passengers per driver. There's also the stuff like bike infrastructure which has most of its cost frontloaded.

- Track is not a sunk cost, there's also ongoing maintenance and renewal. They've spent billions and are spending billions of pounds on upgrading the signals, and are also spending billions of pounds on upgrading the fleet and make it bigger. Not to mention capital works like building out the Northern Line Extension, the upgrade of Camden Town and eventual separation of the Northern Line, the continuous drive to build accessible access to stations, the assorted array of Crossrail-related upgrades, etc.

- National funding. TfL has seen its operating grant from the Department of Transport shrink to zero since 2017/2018, and has to make up for it from other sources.

Sure they spent billions on new signals... But signals are really just lights in boxes. If I gave you a pile of raspberry pi's, some light bulbs, and a few months salary, I think you could do it.

The expense comes from the ancient methods they wanted to use. In the same way a handwritten book is much more expensive than using a printing press.

The new signals are trains communicating their exact location with each other and a centralized control system, and determining their speed based on the train in front of them. The same kind of vehicle-to-vehicle communication that doesn't really exist in personal automobiles today, despite billions of dollars in investigations. You can't use LIDAR or anything used in commercial AVs, because trains are much heavier and take longer distances to come to a complete stop, and line of sight is not sufficient.

If a satisfactorily reliable solution for such a problem could be engineered on the cheap, a private company offering it for much less would make a fortune off of all the railways chomping at the bit to save billions of dollars. The fact that no such solution exists anywhere leads me to believe that it isn't trivial.

Now compare it to other countries in Europe or even my home; Hong Kong, the region with the most expensive real estate in the world. I live and work in the equivalent of Zone 1 and pay 5.1 HKD (50p) to get to work, even less because there's currently a government fare subsidy scheme in operation.

Now compare it to other countries in Europe

I do (Norway, Sweden and Denmark). Still not expensive.

The MTR did a good job buying real estate and using the proceeds from renting that out to subsidize the system.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-inf...

I thought part of the issue was to raise prices in order to reduce demand, since you can’t even get on the trains at some stations during the rush hour.

It is falling to have to pay five quid to stand on a platform looking on as several train loads of sardines poke their heads through open doors, before you can squeeze on.

There's a whole book giving them an instruction manual.

My comment from yesterday applies here as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19978973

Specifically, I found the "distrustful of everyone to the point of paranoia"-part is really pervasive. I'm not trying to upset anyone here, but it's one of those things that's hard to notice unless you have a different perspective (e.g. you're a foreigners, have lived abroad, etc.)

A lot of the British seem pretty okay with it shrug

The further north you get, the friendlier people are, and the more distrust for Government there is. This however does also include cultural and sectarian divides, so the split isn't as simple as north/south.

With that said, I'm Scottish and living near London and find this distasteful. But it's easier to configure a VPN then whine about it, so maybe we're just lazy?

This is passive listening to unencrypted data. Anyone could do it.

I actually commend them for announcing it. Most businesses just hire an 'analytics' company and end up getting all the same data from their customers without asking.

Note that iOS "grey" color for WiFi does NOT mean disabled - you can still be tracked. A diagonal line across the WiFi symbol = off.

Use "Settings" to turn WiFi completely off, or disable WiFi via Control Center before turning off Airplane Mode.

This stateful & confusing button behavior was added in recent iOS releases. If Apple cares about privacy, they can enable the original iOS behavior via permanent opt-in setting and MDM policy.

Though iOS also randomizes and regularly rotates the MAC address used for WiFi probing and only uses your real MAC once you connect.

So in disconnected mode, or, if you've never actually connected to that wifi network, you'd think that wouldn't really work?

When WiFi is enabled, iOS devices broadcast a list of known SSIDs and possibly the MAC addresses of some known routers. Has that changed?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/anatomy-of-an-iphone...

https://lists.immunityinc.com/pipermail/dailydave/2012-March...

I can't speak to that with accuracy (other than the fact that information is from 2012)

But it doesn't make sense to me it would be probing for known networks in it's disconnected state.

Infosec experts will comment in due course, since there are now a few million reasons to find out definitively.

This behavior is called active scanning and is part of wifi spec. All wifi clients do it:

https://www.wi-fi.org/knowledge-center/faq/what-are-passive-...

If you go to defcon and open your laptop there are usually screens that show all of the networks nearby devices have previously connected to.

>Note that iOS "grey" color for WiFi does NOT mean disabled - you can still be tracked. A diagonal line across the WiFi symbol = off. Use "Settings" to turn WiFi completely off, or disable WiFi via Control Center before turning off Airplane Mode.

Are you sure about that? It's my understanding turning it off in airplane mode turns it off completely.

I just tested - connected to wifi + cell, went into airplane mode, then disabled wifi, and I see a diagonal line through the wifi symbol.

Yes, airplane mode turns off WiFi.

But if you turn on WiFi without airplane mode, even once, you can never again turn off WiFi (only) via Control Center. You can only "Disconnect".

And if you enter Airplane Mode while disconnected, then exit Airplane Mode, WiFi will not be disconnected, but fully enabled (blue). The only way to keep cellular service and disable WiFi at that point is via settings.

> But if you turn on WiFi without airplane mode, even once, you can never again turn off WiFi (only) via Control Center. You can only "Disconnect".

I think OP means..

You can only disable wifi via control center if you are in airplane mode.

There's no other state (or historical events) that matter.

Apple customers who don't consent to WiFi tracking should not be driven by UX dark patterns to disable cellular service, when there exist distinct iOS buttons in Control Center for cellular and WiFi. Other buttons are on/off, stateless toggle switches.

I completely agree, and as an iPhone user since the first iPhone, I dislike the dark pattern.

However:

> But if you turn on WiFi without airplane mode, even once, you can never again turn off WiFi (only) via Control Center.

I don't think that line meant what you intended it to, so I was just trying to clarify.

Will use an ascii state diagram the next time this comes up :)

Luckily I (and my friends) get so many spam calls I've convinced everyone to contact me via Signal, and can just leave my phone in airplane mode a majority of the time :D

Most of the Tube network (by usage, not by distance) is underground so turning cellular off will save battery as well.

So what is your threat model when this partial state is at play? That you're sending out packets looking for your known APs, which deanonymizes you?

One threat model with partial state is WiFI baseband attacks, of which there have been several public ones in the last few years, affecting iOS and Android devices.

For someone living in Asia, it's crazy that people in Western countries have to always fiddle with their phone to search and connect to Wi-Fi, because their plans are expensive or the tunnels don't have coverage.

I'm thinking the same thing. Living in Sweden.

But - WiFi is very good when you are travelling outside of your data plans coverage area.

Coverage is an issue underground, but plans are cheap now, at least in the UK.

I think my phone plan costs me something like £12 per month and I get more data than I ever use from my phone (30GB), and unlimited minutes/texts.

Counterpoint: I pay 10€/mo for 2GB and no minutes/texts included in Germany

Which network is it?

4G will be available across the tube by 2021, even in tunnels. They need an interesting type of antenna [0], basically a long wire running along the tunnel that 'leaks' radio signals, because 4G won't propagate down tunnels. The mayor is trying to take credit for it but it's actually supporting the new Emergency Services Network: an over ambitious plan to replace all police and emergency radios with 4G devices.

[0] https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2019/01/online-und...

As a curious data point, when I bought a new phone and then signed up for a new SIM-only plan with a UK provider not so long ago, they made a big deal about how I now had access to free WiFi on the Underground. This was not mentioned at all during the sign-up process and not something I requested or opted into.

TfL do say they won't identify individuals, but for the purposes of data protection law anything that could be used to identify a specific individual is in scope, so these kinds of systems (and similar ones that have been used in places like shopping centres for a while) might be skating on thin ice if there are also, for example, sufficient CCTV cameras around and recording for an individual to be identified from those and then matched against their phone.

It looks like TfL have been cagey about exactly what precautions are being taken here, and they certainly have other mechanisms that could potentially be used to identify individuals such as CCTV and data from payments and entry/exit barriers, so given the scale of the Underground network and the number of people likely to be affected, it wouldn't surprise me if these kinds of stealthy phone-tracking systems started to come under greater regulatory scrutiny before long.

I use the aptly named Wi-Fi Privacy Police, from F-Droid:

Prevents your smartphone or tablet from leaking privacy sensitive information via Wi-Fi networks. It does this in two ways:

It prevents your smartphone from sending out the names of Wi-Fi networks it wants to connect to over the air. This makes sure that other people in your surroundings can not see the networks you’ve connecte to, and the places you’ve visited.

If your smartphone encounters an unknown access point with a known name (for example, a malicious access point pretending to be your home network), it asks whether you trust this access point before connecting. This makes sure that other people are not able to steal your data.

Link: https://f-droid.org/es/packages/be.uhasselt.privacypolice/

Does it work? Am I being naive?

edit: Formatting, grammar

I don't believe its purely for advertising. Wifi tracking and IMSI catching are already done at airports, makes sense its expanding to other travel locations. It's sad that London is becoming a total surveillance state and everyone seems to be ok with it.

It's not just the UK. Prospect Council in Adelaide Australia have "Prospect Fast WiFi" https://networkprospect.com.au/prospect-fast-wifi/. It costs a little to provide, but they get back actionable metrics for assessing how much foot traffic there is and then evaluate policy effectiveness for their main street. A much richer data source for next to nothing compared to other methods of tracking visitors to the area. Still I'm surprised that TfL wants that level of detail as they already log people in and out of the (transport) system, so can easily measure how well things work (or not).

I remember reading about this when they were still piloting it a while back. Entry and exit info is valuable, but doesn't help when there are multiple routes between those stations that you want to compare. Also, it can identify seemingly rounadabout routes that people take for whatever reason (quieter, fewer transfers, more transfer but more likely to get a seat, want to avoid taking the same train as Mad Mary from the office, etc.), but I don't know what they do with that information.

I'd like to know how any educated and rational person ever formed the belief that they were going to go about in public, on the tube, with a radio transmitter in their pants, and nobody is allowed to notice. It's a very public and very not private activity.

I wonder how this is legal. I work for a Danish municipality and we once used WiFi tracking to help us build a better inner city. The data were wiped of any identifying features, because we really didn’t care who went were, we just wanted to track the flow of citizens in general.

It was still deemed illegal under the government adapted GDPR laws because we didn’t have consent. So how on earth is London getting away with this, and I guess you could say the same about their CCTV footage?

Wondering if these changes will finally make the data service more robust for users.

The main issue seems to be that it's so hit and miss about correctly recognising you, failing with messages about being logged in in too many other locations, so you get blocked from about half the stations as you travel across the network on a typical commute

Having actual WiFi coverage in the tunnels would be a good start. Now it only works at the stations, maybe for 15 seconds at a time, on each stop. It's awful

from what I remember of the pilot, they actually did a good job of anonymising the data.

Basically every mac address/SSID group was md5'd with a salt that was rotated daily. I _think_ that each station had a different salt too. But this was to track user movement though one station, not across the network.

There is of course, no guarantee that they will do this again

There's 2^48 MAC addresses. You can crack 2^48 MD5 hashes in 3 hours using a single Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition

https://gist.github.com/epixoip/a83d38f412b4737e99bbef804a27...

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E48+hashes+%2F+25+b...

Can they please get on with switching on 3G?

4G has come out, and 5G is about to come out, all in the time they've spent delaying.

Didn't Bostrom say the only way for us to survive was through massive surveillance, sounds about right.

All part of the Snoopers Charter.

So typical of the UK these days..

> secure, privacy-protected data collection

This is frequently an oxymoron in practice…

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