I like all the protesting that they can't track the IMEI code back to a person. They either don't want to, or they need better nerds.

With the {IMEI,time,location} that this produces and the {store,creditcard,time} that the credit card machines produce I could have reasonably reliable {IMEI,creditcard} mappings in two transactions, very reliable in three. (except for your friends traveling with you, I'll have to wait for you to shop without them to separate your identities)

It seems that phones also transmit a phone number along with the IMEI code; and a phone number certainly isn't anonymous.

Discussion is in the comments here: http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/mapping-computer-techniques-to...

This has been happening for some time, and you can build your own using gnuRadio if you wish to give it a try

I love how people feel that collecting data they're broadcasting into the open with no expectation of privacy is a privacy violation.

Think of it as your neighbors recording when the lights in your house are on or off. It may be weird, but it's hardly wrong.

"should the data fall into the wrong hands."

What sort of wrong hands could make use of data like this??? They would know that a certain IMEI code was in a certain shopping center at a certain time :/ wow.