in Park City
Is Your Privacy Dead? An Interview with Blyncsy’s CEO.
You may remember an earlier post on Blyncsy, the company that has installed cell phone sensors around Park City in order to help monitor traffic. I raised privacy concerns over the capture of cell phone signals and had the chance to chat with Mark Pittman, the CEO of Blyncsy today about those concerns. I was able to ask questions regarding privacy, as well as those submitted by the broader community.
My conclusion after the call is that Mr Pittman seems to be a very nice and genuine individual. Blyncsy seems to have considered privacy and have tried to incorporate that what they are doing. That said, the fundamental nature of what they are doing will likely be viewed as “creepy” (as one reader put it) by some. People who are against a third party collecting any information on them will likely be very disturbed by this. And the majority of people probably just won’t care.
So, what are some examples of how this information could be used to invade privacy? Here are a couple of examples:
- Perhaps you are in a nasty divorce and your spouse has cheated on you. Your lawyer convinces a judge to create a request for Blyncsy to produce documents detailing your spouse’s location through town during the last 2 years. Blyncsy would likely be forced to comply and tell the court where you drove around town, how long you stopped, etc. You could extrapolate that example in a number of different ways.
- Perhaps you want to dig up dirt on someone. You find the person’s phone MAC address. You then pay someone with access to the Blyncsy database or find a way in to it. Though this is highly illegal, since the information exists it becomes a target. Think of the extent paparazzi go to to follow and take pictures of celebrities. This isn’t that different.
These examples rely on getting someone’s MAC address from their phone. The MAC address is a unique identifier for a phone’s WIFI and Bluetooth operations (two different addresses usually). They are unique in the world and perfectly identify your phone. Mr Pittman spoke of the MAC address as if it was purely anonymous. The problem is that it isn’t completely anonymous. I mentioned in my previous article that I would explain how to get the MAC address of someone like the Mayor. Effectively you would use readily available software programs to see what MAC addresses were being used during a City Council Meeting. You’d then happen to show up at a coffee shop where the Mayor is and see what MAC addresses were being used. Cross reference the two lists and the anonymity is gone.
Is that a little unlikely? Yes but so is having two candidates each spending $50,000 on an election for the Mayor of Park City. You just never know. And that’s the problem with protecting privacy. Once you give someone the ability to track you via sensors, then your privacy is gone. The only question is how is someone going to use your information.
You may not care about this at all, and I can see that. You may care a lot, and that makes total sense to me too. The problem is that your data is being scooped up and stored by a third party. Your only protection is your trust in Blyncsy and what they say. That’s true, even if you fill out their opt out form. In some ways Park City has enabled a process that requires absolute faith.
That’s a bit strange to find in Park City.
Here are the questions and the gist of Mr Pittman’s responses:
Park Rag: What does Blyncsy’s system do?
Mr Pittman: Blyncsy enables real-time traffic studies. They use WI-FI and Bluetooth signals from cell phones, watches, tablet, cars, etc. to be able to tell what is passing by the sensor. Blyncsy turns people’s cell phones into actionable information by city personnel.
Park Rag: How many sensors will Blyncsy have around Park City.
Mr Pittman: In the near future there will be 23.
Park Rag: How is privacy protected by Blyncsy?
Mr Pittman: Park City never sees individual people’s information. City personnel log into a dashboard and see information that lets them make transportation decisions based on aggregate data. There is no personally identifiable information like names or phone numbers transmitted. There is only the device’s MAC address (Machine address) for the phone transmitted. In addition, Blyncsy just created a privacy policy and has an opt out page.
Park Rag: How does that opt out page work?
Mr Pittman: People enter their name, device information, and agree to be excluded.
Park Rag: What happens then?
Mr Pittman: Blyncsy will delete the MAC address data from its database each time it is received.
Park Rag: Is there anything else than can be done?
Mr Pittman: A person could turn off bluetooth and WI-FI on their cell phone and tablets. However, people should also realize the potential long term benefits from this traffic data. If they opt out or turn off wireless, then Blyncsy can’t help Park City incorporate their data into analyses. Also, in the future things like traffic lights may automatically be controlled by Blyncsy, and if a person isn’t included, they may not influence things like the traffic signals to their benefit.
Park Rag (from citizen question): Does law enforcement have access to this information?
Mr Pittman: The contract with Park City says they cannot request individuals’ data. That means that law enforcement could not either. Mr Pitman did clarify that if a federal judge ordered them to reveal the information they would. In that case, Blyncsy would do everything in their power to notify the person who was the subject of the request.
Park Rag (from citizen question): How does Blyncsy account for people on buses, cyclists, and bikers?
Mr Pittman: Blyncsy can use speed and other statistics to filter out people moving slowly. Right now, bus data is not removed or filtered out, but it should be possible to do in the future. In the future they may want to work with UTA to provide data about riders.
Park Rag (from citizen question): How long is data stored?
Mr Pittman: It is stored indefinitely. Park City may want to incorporate previous years information into analyses.
Park Rag (from citizen question): Is data ever sold?
Mr Pittman: Not right now. Mr Pittman says that in the future they may try to help businesses better understand their customers.
“Somebody Must Want It”
On Wednesday, County Deputy Attorney Dave Thomas provided an overview of how the Mountain Accord came into being, shifted its organizational structure, and major decisions it made. In some ways I felt like I was watching the trial of a mafia family… and I say that in a good way.
The topic of the connection between Big Cottonwood Canyon and Park City came up and Mr Thomas said four words that made so much sense.
SOMEBODY MUST WANT IT
His point was that Park City has made it clear they don’t want a tunnel. Summit County has made it clear they don’t want a tunnel. If no one else cared, it would have been completely removed from the Mount Accord Blueprint by now. But it hasn’t been removed. Therefore, someone must want it.
Who is that someone? That would be pure speculation, since I haven’t attended all meetings and heard all discussion, but I’m not above making reasonable guesses. So let’s play follow the money:
1. Sandy City: They have cheaper hotel rates than Park City. With a tunnel to Park City, people can stay in Sandy and take a train right over to Park City to ski and then come back to Sandy to stay the night and for a delightful evening of eating at Chili’s or Red Lobster.
2. UTA (Utah Transit Authority): I’ve come to believe there may not be a more powerful organization in the State of Utah than UTA. Perhaps they, or their executive leadership, think this has to be done. I won’t hazard a guess on the reasons for that as it could be very complex.
3. People who would likely be involved in building a tunnel. Tunnels aren’t cheap and whoever manages it, builds it, and supplies equipment for it would likely rather have the business than not. There’s nothing illegal about that. We all want business but knowing if those groups were applying pressure would be helpful.
4. It was said that some members of the Mountain Accord Board don’t have an opinion on the tunnel but they think everything should be studied. I would call these people more proceduralists than supporters of a tunnel. I would hope they are equally in favor of helping us study transportation up I-80 and around the 224/248 loop.
The interesting thing was that after Mr Thomas’ remarks, the Mountain Accord project manager, Laney Jones, and others who sit on the Mountain Accord Executive Board started making remarks that Sandy City’s Mayor doesn’t care at all about the tunnel. They said he was only interested in his fiefdom and couldn’t care less about a connection. They said that his statements were misrepresented. As these “defenses” were continually repeated all I could think was, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
I keep coming back to what Mr Thomas said. Somebody must want it. Until we understand who that somebody (or somebodies) is we don’t know what the game really is. That makes me a bit nervous.
Is the Mountain Accord Legally Binding?
Yesterday’s Summit County Council meeting on the Mountain Accord presented a number of interesting angles on the Accord. I’m going to try to cover a few of those today. Perhaps the most interesting, and overarching, was the discussion over whether the Mountain Accord process is legally binding. “Legally binding” can take many forms but a simple example would be if Summit County and/or Park City sign onto the next part of the Mountain Accord, and the Mountain Accord Executive Committee ultimately decides they want a tunnel (through the consensus process), are we legally obligated to allow the tunnel.
The problem seems to be that no one really knows if it is legally binding. Deputy County Attorney Dave Thomas seems to believe parts of it likely are binding. He stated that given the structure of Mountain Accord, that Executive Decision Memos issued by Mountain Accord are likely binding. Yet, Laney Jones, Program Manager for the Mountain Accord said there was no intent by the Mountain Accord to have any of it (besides a funding agreement) be legally binding.
So, is it binding?
No one really knows.
The danger is that what Laney Jones thinks doesn’t really matter. As she has said multiple times, she implements what the Executive Committee wants. So, if the Executive Board ultimately wants a tunnel, and there are a few players (like Sandy City) that are willing to push the issue, they could sue Park City or Summit County to comply. That doesn’t mean they would win. Deputy Attorney Dave Thomas said he would counter that argument by saying Summit County did not agree to the original charter.
Yet, that would mean we are embroiled in another lawsuit. However, this time it wouldn’t be over a movie studio or a parcel of land. It would be a battle, in some ways, for our way of life and our ability to choose our own destiny.
It seems like a very thin tightrope we are walking.
in Development
You May Want To Put June 17 on Your Calendar
If you have concerns over development in the Snyderville Basin, you may want to attend a County Council meeting at the Kimball Junction Library on June 17th at 6PM. They are holding a public hearing to get citizens’ input on what we want the Basin to look like, how we feel about open space, whether we want affordable housing, how transportation should be viewed, etc.
For instance, during a meeting of the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission almost 175 Jeremy Ranch residents showed up to say they didn’t want a developer to have expanded entitlements on a hill across from the Jeremy Store. The Planning Commission and Community Development Department heard the concerns and worked to alleviate those by adding some language to the General Plan to address that.
However, recently the County Council received their first official glimpse at the General Plan and they have concerns over the language that would limit increased entitlements like that Jeremy Ranch parcel. Unless the community speaks up, that language may be removed.
Likewise, there are people within the community who are concerned with limiting development. They see large developments like Canyons and Silver Creek and say “they get to build these huge developments” why can’t I? If that’s how you feel, you’ll want to make your concern heard as well.
Either way, big changes could be coming to the Snyderville Basin. The meeting on the 17th is your chance to help shape those changes.
Today’s County Council’s Mountain Accord Discussion
Today the County Council discussed the Mountain Accord and specifically how they want to participate in the program. It was a very interesting discussions that brought up a number of topics I hadnt heard before.
The discussion is below: (more…)
Park City May Begin Monitoring Your Cell Phone Signals Soon. Do You have Questions About Your Privacy You’d like to Ask the Monitoring Company?
During last week’s City Council meeting, we learned Park City Municipal had engaged a company called Blyncsy in a pilot to monitor cell phone signals from drivers. According to the city, these cell phone signals will be used to “better understand how our population, employee base, and visitors flow throughout town.” My concern is how our citizens’ privacy is protected.
How this type of technology typically operates is that it uses a byproduct of how your cell phone works in order to record where you go. If you have a smartphone, it usually includes WIFI and bluetooth. Your phone uses these technologies to do things like get on the internet and play music over your car speakers. Each phone, for both bluetooth and WIFI, has unique identifiers that are specific to your phone. For instance your phone’s WIFI identifier, called a mac address, looks something like this 00:0a:95:9d:68:16. Your phone’s bluetooth would have a similar looking but different address. Again, these addresses are unique in the world to your phone.
Because of the way phones work, these identifiers are broadcast fairly frequently from the phone to the outside world. Cell phone monitors then can record those addresses at various sensors along the road and track where the phone goes and where it’s currently at.
Therein lies the issue. Unless specific and proper steps are taken to anonymize the information at the right point in the process, your location information may be trackable. Furthermore, unless privacy policies are in place that define how citizens’ information can be used, your information may be used in ways you do not approve of (perhaps even sold). Finally, unless there are contracts in place that prohibit changes to how the monitoring company uses our data, allows for auditing of the monitoring company’s processes and data centers, and ensures that Park City receives annual updates on audits performed, we don’t even have minimal assurances over our citizens’ privacy.
Park City’s document on the plan says that information collected will be anonymous. Yet, that’s one of those statements that is often used but the devil is in the details. With that in mind, I have contacted Blyncsy and am planning to have a call with them on Thursday to understand their privacy policies and how our information is protected. From what I’ve heard this will be one of Blyncsy’s first installs of its kind. It will be interesting to see if they have all their ducks in a row.
Even with all of their answers, you may not like your phone being tracked. After I talk with the company, I’ll explain what you can do to avoid being tracked (you’re not going to like it). I’ll also give an example of how someone like the Mayor Jack Thomas’ phone could be tracked specifically back to him and his location monitored.
I hope Blyncsy has taken all the right steps to ensure our privacy. If so, we may have nothing to worry about (other than just the concept of being tracked).
If you have questions you’d like me to ask, please email me at or post them here. I’ll make sure I ask them when I talk to the company’s CEO on Thursday.
in Schools
The Little School House That Couldn’t
As part of the new development that is going on at Silver Creek (the 1200 units being put in by Home Depot), the developer was required to build a school. At face value, that sounds like a good deal and probably made sense in someone’s mind when the agreement was being made. I can hear the statement, “wouldn’t it be great to have a school for the children who live in this development?”
Yet, we are now in 2015 and the reality has come home to roost. The development agreement originally gave 2.5 acres for a school and 2.5 acres for recreation. The County Council, recognizing that 2.5 acres was too small for a school, was able to work with the developer to use the entire 5 acres for the school (the land has to be used as a school). Yesterday in a meeting, school board member Moe Hickey ran the numbers and calculated that this would be big enough to hold about 350 elementary school students. Yet there could be as many as twice that many students (maybe more) in the development due to a number of factors. Also keep in mind this school is in the South Summit School District. So, how is that going to work if half the elementary school students go to the new Silver Summit school and the rest go to… Kamas or Heber?
Now they are contemplating whether the new school could me a charter school. It’s frankly a mess.
It’s also a cautionary tale. I’m sure that the school sounded good years ago and the concept was probably hard to argue with. Yet, now we are left with what seems a wasted development. Five acres of open space, or off leash dog park, or sports fields, or almost anything is probably preferable to what will likely happen.
I hope today we are smarter with our planning, agreements, and foresight so that in 2025 we aren’t wondering how we all collectively could have been so short sighted.
What Mountain Accord has to do With California Pistachios
One of the Mountain Accord tenants I am surprised no one is talking about relates to water. As part of the Mountain Accord, the ski resorts in the Cottonwood Canyons get more water for snowmaking. I’ve not seen documented how much extra water they are getting.
I was recently reading about the California drought and how agriculture accounts for 80% of the state’s water usage but is rarely talked about. That is starting to change where articles like this one in the Daily Beast are titled, “How Growers Gamed California’s Drought.” My favorite quote from that article is:
“‘I’ve been smiling all the way to the bank,’ said pistachio farmer John Dean at a conference hosted this month by Paramount Farms, the mega-operation owned by Stewart Resnick, a Beverly Hills billionaire known for his sprawling agricultural holdings, controversial water dealings, and millions of dollars in campaign contributions to high-powered California politicians.”
While it has been a wet spring, our winter in Utah was abysmal. I can envision a time when normal Utahns are required to ration water (like California today) but we’ve guaranteed extra water so that ski resorts can profit. We may look back and say”how did that happen? Only 5% of Utahns ski. There are scientists that say by the end of the century Park City will have zero snowpack.” Yet, we are willing to give up our most valuable resource…water… and for what? So that resorts can fight mother nature and survive as long as possible?
Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that many times people have said that the Mountain Accord is all about the watershed. Yet, it appears we are willing to give some of that up (how much?) for the resorts. What if there isn’t much watershed in the future? Who gets what remains?
I think the question of water isn’t getting the attention it deserves. If we don’t start paying attention, in 10 years we may have wished we did.
Are Mountain Accord Phase 2 Ambiguities Big Trouble Waiting to Happen?
The anonymous citizen who provided us with the Draft Mountain Accord document included a number of his/her concerns with the new agreement. I would summarize that person’s concerns in a few of statements:
- The tunnel between Big Cottonwood Canyon and Park City is still on the table.
- If “studies” done as part of the next phase of the Mountain Accord recommend a connection between Brighton and Park City, it will put intense pressure on the citizens of Summit County and Park City for a connection.
- The environmental monitoring, adaptive management, restoration, and trails sections have barely 1 line each in the document. The citizen says it “probably reflects the reality of how minimal they have been all along, given the vast majority of the lands [Mountain Accord] seeks to cover are already federal wilderness and USFS roadless areas.”
One of the overall concerns is that the same plan that has always been in place, still appears to be in place. It appears that they will now “study” the tunnel between Brighton and Park City. If they really want that tunnel, what do you think the outcome of that study will be?
What has been changed is the messaging. It has been formalized in this document that the plan is allegedly first and foremost about the environment, with transportation used as a tool to achieve that. Yet, as one community member told me a few weeks ago, if they really wanted to limit the impact of humans and improve the “environment” in the Wasatch they would limit the number of people going up Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon. Instead, they are trying to make it easier to get as many people into the mountains as possible. Does that sound like an environmental plan?
Instead it looks like this plan has been built to be ambiguous and provide plausible responses to questions that the community has been asking. If you question the connection between Big Cottonwood Canyon and Park City, now the powers that be will say, “are you again studying it?” What are you going to say to that? Are you not a reasonable person?
Perhaps the answer is that you are against THEM studying it.
Will the New Mountain Accord Agreement Force our Representatives to Support the New Agreement?
Early Friday morning I received a copy of an outline of the newest Mountain Accord agreement.This document is likely the predecessor to the next Mountain Accord Blueprint and was what was being discussed at a Mountain Accord retreat yesterday.
As previously mentioned, there are a number interesting aspects to the outline. One of the most interesting however is in Section 3. It says:
“To accomplish the above, we [the organizations signing it] agree to support the Accord publicly and within our constituencies.”
To me this says that organizations’ that sign this will have agreed to not criticize any part of the Accord publicly. Since policy decisions must legally be discussed in public, that would mean that there could not be criticism (constructive or otherwise) of the Mountain Accord. Should Roger Armstrong continue to not support a connection between Park City and Big Cottonwood Canyon, he would be legally bound per his position in the Summit County Council to only support the Accord.
I brought this up with a member of the Summit County Council and that person’s comment was that he/she felt that most Council Members would not sign onto any agreement that would limit the Summit County Council’s ability to make sure our area’s best interests was served.
My concern is that, looking at the language of the outline, it does seem designed to be an agreement. I as a citizen of Summit County don’t want to wonder whether every council person’s comment supporting the Accord agreement is because they agree with it or because they HAVE TO AGREE with it.
I frankly can’t believe language like that is being considered at all (or even legal). It’s one thing to work for a company and have to sign a non-disclosure document. It’s a far different thing for an agreement to regulate our elected officials free speech on a topic of great controversy.
That in of itself tells you a lot about the Mountain Accord process.
Parkrag
We believe in citizen journalism. We believe there are stories to tell that can help to shape our community for the better. We believe tomorrow's Park City can be better than today's.