JFK Displays Actual Wait Times Using Beacons That Monitor Mobile Phones

http://www.blipsystems.com/jfk-displays-actual-wait-times-using-beacons-that-monitor-mobile-phones/

by brentjanderson • 11 years ago

88 98 11 years ago

gorena• 11 years ago

Serious question: if there is a 16 minute queue for "security", why wouldn't a potential terrorist just wheel up a carry on sized bomb and detonate it in the middle of the "security" line? Is this something that the TSA addresses (I assume not), or do they just ignore the possibility? All they've done is move the soft target further out.

mpeg• 11 years ago

Airport security is there to protect the planes, not the passengers.

bosdev• 11 years ago

* Airport security is there to protect the airline industry, not the planes or passengers

saryant• 11 years ago

Sort of like how they take those super-dangerous bottles of water and toiletries and place them in a secure receptacle AKA a trash can.

pyre3• 11 years ago

I thought the idea wasn't that they were volatile on their own, but components that could be assembled into a bomb once on-plane.

matthewmacleod• 11 years ago

Setting aside the effectiveness arguments for the moment, the point of preventing weapons on aircraft is now less about 'a terrorist might blow up an aircraft' and more about 'a terrorist might hijack an aircraft and turn it into a gigantic missile'.

Obviously any place where there are large groups of people would be a target for attacks of this kind.

harmegido• 11 years ago

I think they're concern is not foremost for the safety of the passengers. The main concern is airplanes going into buildings. Of course, this is definitely an example of fighting the last war.

On a separate note, the TSA really pisses me off. Consider that UPS saves millions by not taking left turns. Removing or adding very small inefficiencies at a very large scale has tremendous cost implications. I don't think these security lines add much security and I think they do that task at a much higher cost than most people think.

digi_owl4• 11 years ago

IF you look at airport security, it is always about fighting the last war. The limitation on liquids comes a lone bomber bringing a liquid binary explosive onboard in the toiletry. the issue with shoes, again another bomber. matching luggage to passengers i believe is because of Lockerbie. And the list goes on and on.

MBlume• 11 years ago

I agree that planes going into buildings is the major security concern, but we fixed it. We've reinforced the cockpit doors and we've taught passengers not to cooperate with hijackers (the latter we managed within hours of the first attack)

rayiner• 11 years ago

It's not like we didn't have airport security lines before the TSA. And with the new millimeter wave machines I'm not sure if they're appreciably slower than the old metal detector setup. The bottleneck was always putting your luggage through the X-ray, and we've had that for as long as I can remember.

smackfu• 11 years ago

At a lot of more risky countries, they do x-ray / metal detector every passenger at the airport entrance.

I assume that's to prevent targeting concentrations of foreign tourists.

remarkEon2• 11 years ago

This just moves the target from the indoor TSA queue to curbside.

molotv• 11 years ago

In Newark, past the TSA checkpoints, the Tel Aviv gate has its own secondary screening with barricades, wands & pat-downs for everyone. I suspect that is because of actual threats and a desire for real security.

remarkEon2• 11 years ago

-> ...why wouldn't a potential terrorist just wheel up a carry on sized bomb and detonate it in the middle of the "security" line?

I have no idea. To me, by far the most dangerous part of flying is the queue at the TSA checkpoints, especially at airports with particularly large checkpoints (I'm thinking EWR and probably ORD). I think some airports address this (SEA, MSP, JFK...maybe) by spreading out the checkpoints among smaller groups of gates to keep the volume of people at those checkpoints down. This is just my speculation, however.

I'd be curious to see how checkpoints have evolved over the last 14 years in terms of design and efficiency.

6d0debc071• 11 years ago

I imagine the reasoning goes somewhat to the effect of:

If a plane goes down, it's reasonable to expect that everyone on board will die. It's less reasonable to expect that the blast radius of a device that was sufficient to down an aircraft would be sufficient to encompass an equivalent number of people in the security line.

forgottenpass3• 11 years ago

When it comes to designing airport safety, instilling the feeling of safety in travelers is a more important goal than actual safety. This is a sorta-open-secret.

We can sit around and come up with thousands of possible attacks scenarios with less than 1% of the security that goes into preventing airplane hijackings. But that doesn't really matter. Airport security is primarily a political item, both responding to political pressures and fears, while generating entirely new ones.

MasterScrat• 11 years ago

From http://www.blipsystems.com/indoor-sensor/:

When a device passes the sensors, its non-personal unique ID, called a MAC address, is recorded, encrypted and time-stamped. By re-identifying the device from multiple sensors, travel times, average speeds, dwell times and movement patterns become available.

Aren't MAC addresses spoofed on most phones now?! I didn't expect a system like that to still be usable.

pyre3• 11 years ago

It just needs the MAC to stay consistent for the duration of your travel through the airport.

digi_owl4• 11 years ago

Even if spoofed, a MAC has to be (locally) unique or else you run into all kinds of network issues.

As for spoofed on phones, maybe if you have root. But i doubt it comes spoofed out of the box (at least i have never heard of such a thing).

macNchz• 11 years ago

As of last year iOS devices do randomize their MAC address when polling for nearby WiFi, specifically to foil this kind of tracking. Here's an interesting breakdown of what is actually happening: http://blog.airtightnetworks.com/ios8-mac-randomization-anal...

eli2• 11 years ago

Nope, definitely not "most" phones. iOS 8 randomizes MAC addresses, but probably not often enough to stop this from working: http://blog.airtightnetworks.com/ios8-mac-randomgate/

And of course you would only need a sample of passengers with static MACs for this to work.

codeaken• 11 years ago

"non-personal unique ID"

Isn't that quite contradictionary?

fluxquanta• 11 years ago

Personal to the device, not personal to its owner. Then again, most of us consider our devices extensions of ourselves nowadays anyway.

forgottenpass3• 11 years ago

Isn't that quite contradictionary?

Yep. It sure is. Know how spammers that don't run afoul of the CAN-SPAM act get really salty when you call their spam spam? The is the same sort of wordsmithing. By arguing that this identifiable information doesn't fall into the the "personal" bucket, they want the public to think what they're doing is A-OK.

They use weasel language to suggest following a standard of what "personal" data is means everything on the "not-personal" side is perfectly normal operation the consumer doesn't have to worry about. All while trying to derive as much personal information as possible from the not-technically-personal data.

vvpan• 11 years ago

I hope it didn't cost more than hiring extra people to get the mega-lines through faster.

crusso• 11 years ago

That definitely goes against my hacker instincts where if I can automate a daily task with the amount of time that it would take me to do it in a few days, I go ahead and automate it.

joaq3• 11 years ago

Yep, I think the same way. I always prefer to spend a lot of time upfront on something and automate it instead of doing it over and over later. I try to avoid repetitive tasks as much as I possibly can.

RobotCaleb• 11 years ago

Of what use is this information to the people standing in line? "Oh, it's 30 minutes. I guess I'll hurry."

0x0• 11 years ago

Might be useful when deciding on whether or not to have another beer before heading to the departure gate ;)

chaz72• 11 years ago

Yeah, I'm not sure the signs will help people, it's kind of out of their hands - but I like the idea of airport staff being able to spot bottlenecks more easily and shift resources where they can.

burkaman• 11 years ago

"It's 30 minutes, I'm definitely going to miss my flight home and I should call my family to let them know."

"It's 30 minutes, my kid has time to go buy a snack and eat it before we go through security."

"No, don't use the bathroom yet, the line looks long but it's only a 5 minute wait."

"I really hate airports, but it's a little less frustrating when I can see the wait time."

"The taxi line is 20 minutes long, maybe it's worth taking the subway instead."

etc.

paulsutter• 11 years ago

What gets measured gets fixed.

Presumably the TSA managers will be rated based on their wait times, and therefore accountable when they're too lazy to staff the right number of people.

Last week I almost missed my flight at Oakland because they had everyone funneled through a single scanner. Two scanners were idle because they were "short staffed". That's not an accident or bad luck. That just means the manager was too lazy to do their job correctly.

nkassis• 11 years ago

I wouldn't call the manager lazy. It's more of lacking clear information that they need to make properly informed staffing decisions. I bet they have incentives tied to cost more than wait time. Instead of optimizing for cost and a gut feeling of need to meet a certain service threshold they can now use this data to predict capacity needs more accurately. Hopefully incentives are correctly set so they don't just ignore these new numbers.

spigoon• 11 years ago

In Austin's airport there are several security lines that you can choose from. Each line shows its average wait time as well as the average wait time for the other lines. It's helpful to be able to see that the lines closest to you is 20 minutes but the line just down the terminal is only 5 minutes.

dopamean2• 11 years ago

I love that feature. It's also incredible to me how many people either ignore it or don't know it's there.

Thriptic5• 11 years ago

Brilliant. This should be implemented everywhere.

fma• 11 years ago

Same in Atlanta. Also, if the main security is backed up and the other security areas are faster, there will actually be an employee directing passengers to the faster one.

radiorental• 11 years ago

One of the benefits of doing this can be found in the psychology behind the existence of progress bars in software.

Removing uncertainty provides for a better end user experience

eli2• 11 years ago

It's right there in the article:

With this data, JFK is able to display accurate wait times to reduce passenger frustration and to notify staffing if areas in the terminal are becoming congested, so staff can identify and rectify bottlenecks before they escalate.

If you're confused about the first part, there is research that shows waiting for an unknown amount of time causes more anxiety than if the wait time is known. See e.g. http://davidmaister.com/articles/the-psychology-of-waiting-l...

donarb• 11 years ago

Reminds me of the story about baggage claim at Houston's airport. They kept getting lots of complaints about how long it took for people to wait for their bags after getting off their flights. To fix this they moved the claim area further away from the gate, it took people longer to get there but the same amount of time for the bags to reach the claims area. Complaints went way down.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waitin...

mikeash4• 11 years ago

An indefinite wait is about a million times more frustrating than a wait of known length, by its very nature. So long as the number is reasonably accurate, it's a much nicer experience.

It's extremely practical, too. There is a lot you can do based on that number. For security, if the wait is extremely long and your flight is soon, you can try to plead your case to the security people. They'll often let you jump the line if your flight is departing soon, so yes, you can actually say "I guess I'll hurry." The information is available even if you're not in line, so you can plan accordingly.

For customs, you can't do much about your own situation, but you can tell people who are waiting for you how much longer you expect to be.

Thriptic5• 11 years ago

Showing people information like this removes uncertainty and makes them feel more calm and in control, even if they can't necessarily act on the information immediately. It promotes the idea that the airport believes that user time is valuable, that the airport cares about performance, and that they are trying to optimize processes when possible and provide useful information. This contrasts strongly with the attitude that one normally associates with airports, which is that the entire travel process is insanely uncertain and no one working there gives a shit about you. This improves both passenger and staff morale (as staff are the obvious targets of undirected passenger anger and frustration) and makes the process feel more seamless.

rtkwe• 11 years ago

There's also some psychological tricks you can play with the time estimates. When it takes less time than was estimated people don't mind the wait as much and can come out way happier. Disney is one of the kings of these kinds of tricks in their parks it's really interesting.

amenod• 11 years ago

I wonder how long before they can do the same with cameras? A bit of computer vision and you have more complete data... Not sure if there is still need for better completeness though.

joaq3• 11 years ago

Should be quite easy to implement, actually. Some stores have this kind of technology to track traffic. I think the problem is installing the cameras and the software, but that's trivial for an airport.

beamatronic• 11 years ago

September 29, 2003

http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/29/nation/na-facescan29

csense• 11 years ago

Based on the headline, I thought they were displaying the queue time on monitors held by life-sized mannikins of the former President.

Read the article, was disappointed. It's still interesting tech though.

joaq3• 11 years ago

Awesome, this kind of technology should be used in ALL waiting lines. I read that the average person spends months of their lives just waiting in lines. This is ridiculous and should be fixed. Every store should have an average waiting time and they should try to minimize it.

forgottenpass3• 11 years ago

When a device passes the beacons, its non-personal unique ID—called a MAC address—is recorded, encrypted and time-stamped.

Blip, you make me laugh. You know this will raise privacy concerns and say the sweet nothings that placate the general public, but inspire no confidence in people who know what those words mean.

I'm not here to say that as a JFK traveler I'm unhappy with the privacy considerations. I just want to point out you're pretending your design is good on privacy when simple tweaks would show the security minded you gave half a shit. I don't mind this monitoring if it is limited to the uses described, your maneuvering simply makes me giggle.

A MAC may not be in whatever bucket you're calling "personal" but is certainly more personal than "non-personal" implies. Encryption is effectively a "we're doing it right" buzzword to the general public. What are your authorized uses for the data? What's your KMI? What data minimization techniques are employed? Do you purge old records? Replace the MAC with an identifier that can't be tied back to MAC once the target has left the line? Hash MACs on entry in a way that is both time-costly to bruteforce and results in a different hash every day?

omouse• 11 years ago

Aren't MAC addresses supposed to be globally unique? That's the most personal it can get, right?

riffic• 11 years ago

"supposed to be", but not really. There are no measures to prevent MAC collision other than a manufacturer assurance they won't duplicate the addresses.

heatish• 11 years ago

Yeah that same line made me laugh a bit as well. "Your non-identifying, SUPER personal, burned onto your phones hardware, is never going to change Mac Address is recorded as you walk by."

I think the idea is a great one, it's unfortunate there isn't a better way (that I can think of atm) to do it, or like you said just some transparency on what they do with it. As simple as: "At the end of each day the encrypted mac addresses are completely erased from our system."

Seems like they do keep the info though, it says the Cincinnati airport kept it and used it for data analysis. In the end, I think this kind of thing most people will be okay with foregoing a bit of privacy for.

Edit: Interesting article on mobile MAC addresses down the comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10097882#up_10098108

mlaretallack2• 11 years ago

I work in the traffic industry and over the last 8 years I have seen the rise of WIFI and Bluetooth journey time monitoring kit and after looking at every solution, I have found that the method of "encrypting" the data has always been just a MD5 hash, or SHA if you are lucky. With with result Hash just been http'ed over to a server on the internet. This usually leads to to question, "OK, so I can just hash the victims MAC address and the look for that in the data stream to find out where the person is insteadvof just using the MAC directly?"

mlaretallack2• 11 years ago

sixothree• 11 years ago

I suspect this statement is just as innacurate

The BlipTrack solution ... detects Bluetooth or Wi-Fi devices in “discoverable” mode

misnome• 11 years ago

I was under the impression that iOS devices now use a random MAC address when searching for WiFi access points - so although you could still make estimates, at least based on people not using iPhones, wouldn't this alleviate the privacy issues?

dperfect• 11 years ago

I understand the concern, but isn't your face effectively just as personally identifiable, recorded in far more locations, and arguably much more personal because it can't be easily replaced/changed?

That doesn't make either situation okay for privacy-conscious people like you and I, but I personally feel like MAC address tracking is a relatively minor concern when it comes to privacy.

jschwartzi2• 11 years ago

There aren't any commonly available tools that let me search a large dataset for a face.

justinlardinois• 11 years ago

Just to be clear, they're using encrypted in a layman's sense; according to http://www.blipsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/BlipTr..., it's hashed with SHA256.

wyager• 11 years ago

For those unsure, SHA256 is worthless here. There are few enough MACs and SHA2 is fast enough that it's easy to reverse.

Thriptic5• 11 years ago

Another simple thing that could be done to increase efficiency is have notices upstream in the security line instructing people to remove their shoes / belts and store their personal items like phones before they get to the conveyor belt used to feed items into the x-ray baggage scanner (assuming this is still a relevant bottleneck). A lot of time is needlessly wasted by people who start this process when they first hit the front of the security line.

jschwartzi2• 11 years ago

I'm not going to take my shoes of in a common area until I absolutely have to. I think it's a stupid law anyway, and my not disrobing early is a form of protest at the indignity.

tedchs• 11 years ago

Nitpick: these are not "beacons", they are "sensors". The product page linked from the article doesn't even contain word "beacon". Beacons are unidirectional. But, beacons are hot right now, which presumably the author sought to capitalize on.

vigneshv_psg2• 11 years ago

I am just curious. Wouldn't it be more easier to do this with specific devices than using the phones?

Each passenger can be given a smart card along with the boarding pass (or embedded in the boarding pass). The sensors could merely check for the smart card at certain points and determine how long it took for the passenger to clear security, etc. The airline can then collect the smart card back just before boarding when they scan the boarding pass. Seems like a simple solution that would work without much privacy concerns.

ISL• 11 years ago

It's not easier than using a thing they already have.

vigneshv_psg2• 11 years ago

yes, but using a thing they already have comes with privacy concerns. it also depends on their wifi/bluetooth being in "discoverable" mode.

hammock• 11 years ago

I've seen this done in airports before, only using a plain laminated card that you carry through the line - the low-tech solution. The card was used by the TSA to internally track wait times

evan_• 11 years ago

They used to do this at theme parks as well

morgante• 11 years ago

Sounds like a giant pain. Nobody (passengers or airlines) wants yet another card to carry around when we already have perfectly usable devices.

anonymousDan• 11 years ago

London Luton was displaying similar wait times when I traveled through it last week, and I was wondering how they did it. I thought they might be doing some kind of face recognition using the cameras at entry/exit to the hall.

jazzyk• 11 years ago

Perhaps, just perhaps... they should be spending money on additional stations to NOT have lines in the first place?

You know, fight the cause rather than the symptom :-)

duderific• 11 years ago

They will only spend enough money on staffing, to keep customer frustration just below the boiling point. You see that in every industry, not just at the airport. Although in industries with little or no competition (I'm looking at you, USPS), I would say have even less incentive to care about customer satisfaction.

jonemo• 11 years ago

One of the photos shows the system in use at the DHS immigration line. Aren't there notices all over this place telling travelers that cellphone use is strictly prohibited before passing the checkpoint? It seems strange that the airport relies on people breaking the law to provide better service...

a-dub• 11 years ago

Good. I suspect that many people aren't aware that most smartphones in common/default configurations leak a unique identifier that can be passively sensed and monitored. Products like this will help raise awareness as to how privacy invasive simple consumer devices have become.

JFK Displays Actual Wait Times Using Beacons That Monitor Mobile Phones

Related Stories