Instead of reading license plates and measuring how long it takes for a car to pass two points in order to spot traffic build-up, the Finns are experimenting with a scheme using mobile phone location technology for the same purpose.
(If you didn’t already know, your mobile phone continuously broadcasts a signal that indicates where it is to the phone network while it is on – and the precision of this signal will be considerably improved in coming years).
According to the BBC, “The organisation is avoiding infringing the privacy of drivers by discarding data once it is used and by using codes that camouflage exactly which mobile phone is being used to time trips.”
