The BBC is set to roll out vans that will drive around and capture information from our Wi-Fi networks, so they can catch people who aren’t paying their TV licenses but are still using iPlayer. Snakey.
From the first of September, UK law is changing to require people who watch iPlayer to have a license for any content, and the BBC has been given permission to use Wi-Fi intruding tech that can see if you haven’t got one.
The Telegraph reported:
“The corporation has been given legal dispensation to use the new technology, which is typically only available to crime-fighting agencies, to enforce the new requirement that people watching BBC programmes via the iPlayer must have a TV license.”
Details of how the company will get the information hasn’t been released yet, but a theory is that detectors in the vans will get access to Wi-Fi traffic and use timing and the size of transferred data to work out if your network is carrying iPlayer traffic.
Although stealing iPlayer isn’t that much of a big deal, who knows what the technology could be used for in the future?