Smuggle Faux Contraband Through Airport Security With Blowtooth

[Lauren Admire]

Smuggle Faux Contraband Through Airport Security With Blowtooth

In a world where airport security becomes ever more intrusive, Blowtooth allows you to sidestep Big Brother and smuggle in contraband - the fake kind, of course.

Players who install Blowtooth on their phones will be able to take part in what resembles a faux drug running scheme. The Blowtooth application will automatically scan the area for Bluetooth devices, and the player can then dump or retrieve contraband onto other people's devices. Whoever you interact with become unwitting mules in your faux-drug running empire.The ultimate goal is to retrieve the contraband once you've passed through security. You get points for how many couriers you receive contraband from, and how quickly you retrieve it. The "contraband" ranges from harmless plastic sporks and unlicensed cheese products to Cuban cigars and a "10-spot" of an unspecified product.

According to the creators, Blowtooth is "specifically designed to exploit the affordances of a particular class of public space - namely international airports - in which people are subject to particularly high levels of intrusive surveillance and security monitoring. Even in everyday experience such surveillance can be both simultaneously thrilling and frightening; the possibility of harnessing these sensations in a game has great potential."

The entire game is trying to harness the potential of pervasive gaming, games that harness everyday objects and scenes in our life and turn them into gaming experiences. Unfortunately, Blowtooth only works on devices that support Bluetooth and Java, and since Apple doesn't allow applications to access Bluetooth, this iPhone user is not going to be smuggling anything across airport security lines any time soon. Blast, I really wanted to get my 101mL of orange juice through, too.

Source: Game Politics [http://www.blowtooth.com/]


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[Denamic]

I like the idea of integrating these kinds of games into 'reality'.
Sounds like a great thing to do for giggles.

 

[blackshark121]

This is going to get very bad, very quickly.

 

[lwm3398]

Quick! Everyone! Here comes Fox, hide!

So, a kind of virtual reality in reality game? Cool. If only I traveled more.

 

[samsonguy920]

Sounds quite fun. Just hoping it doesn't get turned into malware.
Didn't know that little detail about Apple's stuff not supporting bluetooth. One more reason for me to not bother wasting money on their junk.

 

[TheNumber1Zero]

I can see how this idea will cause less-than-pleasant results, seeing as I can already hear the Media yelling "Teaches about smuggling drugs" on many a Station.

*Reads own Post*

*Grabs "No ideas for game-bashing here" Sandwich sign*

 

[Jared]

I like the idea of integrating these kinds of games into 'reality'.
Sounds like a great thing to do for giggles.

Definetly! I just wish it would work on an iphone. That would make it epic lol. So much fun could be had!

 

[Rednog]

Sounds fun, but from my flight experiences in the last year both to and from the US, the airports don't allow you to have a phone on before or immediately after the checkpoints. If they see you with your phone out they tell you to turn it off and put it away, so most people would probably have their phones off and they'd probably be quite a distance away once you reach the point you can turn your phone on again for you to find them again with your "stuff".

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

This is going to get very bad, very quickly.

Yeah...I can see the Daily Mail and Faux News winding up as we speak.

 

[Therumancer]

Sounds silly to me. The kind of mentality behind all those pre-mainstream internet "text files" on how to beat "the man" that circulated around The Internet.

On the other hand I suppose it does present some interesting possibilities for data smuggling or whatever, should such ever become a bigger issue than it already is.

Also, to be honest it seems sort of like poking a badger with a stick. If at some point they decide "okay, no more cell phones and lap tops at all" people are going to scream and yell, but then some people are going to point at things like this (along with the actual reasons, for which I can think of some good ones why it might go this far) and say "were you, or were you not, asking for it?".


It's sort of like a bunch of 1960s liberals getting a bunch of pamphlets and deciding "hey let's pretend the FBI is following us to act all cool and subversive" and then eventually taking it to the point of "hey, pretending like non-existant FBI guys are following us is fun, but let's like build a REAL bomb and make plans to blow something up... but like we won't have to do it. Then we can like let a few people know what we're doing and they'll think were cool rebels". Then someone calls the FBI, who kicks down their door, and collects reports of them acting suspicious for months ahead of time when they really were just playing harmless games...

Sounds silly in retrospect, but stuff like that really did happen occasionally, and that's kind of what things like "The Anarchist's Cookbook" were all about.

The point I'm making is that as annoying as some things might want to be, screwing around with things like Airport security, even playfully and harmlessly at first (with something like this that they might not even notice) just isn't worth it, and tends to snowball.

I suppose many people won't agree with me, or see where I'm going, but well... this reminds me of that stuff for some reason.

 

[Sporky111]

It sounds like fun, but I imagine it would get old quickly. I do like the idea of pervasive gaming, but I don't think this is the way to go about it. I mean, a first step is a first step, but do we really want a drug-smuggling game at the forefront.

I would have imagined it would be 10 or 20 years down the line until we have to deal with a "GTA made me do it" style uproar.

 

[The Random One]

Hey, this would be pretty cool if there was an actualy game framework. Like, imagine there are two teams, the smugglers and the agents. The smugglers gain points from getting their things safely across borders, and agents gain points from intercepting them. Then there's an actual conflict and not a made-up one. Plus you don't have to hijack other people's devices to gain points (how does that even work? Don't people switch off their bluetooth...s? blueteeth? when not using? Or is my cell phone a jurassic example of it?)

You could even get a large metagame in which you have to send cargo to a certain real place and need to pass it along several players (or, OK, hapless bystanders) to gain massive points. That's certainly something to pass the time at an airport.

 

[Lamppenkeyboard]

I would rat out all of my contacts.

"Harmless" game to pass free time? How about gangland thriller that I orchestrate from behind the scenes?

 

[igotsakabob]

Also, to be honest it seems sort of like poking a badger with a stick. If at some point they decide "okay, no more cell phones and lap tops at all" people are going to scream and yell, but then some people are going to point at things like this (along with the actual reasons, for which I can think of some good ones why it might go this far) and say "were you, or were you not, asking for it?".

Any major airline that bans cell phones and lap tops would go out of business, so we don't really need to worry about that.

 

[DividedUnity]

Games like these would be great for killing time at the airport. I can just imagine getting myself arrested for being overly excited going through security though

 

[Jaded Scribe]

If I flew more than once a decade, I'd totally grab this.

And I don't think the political blow-back will be as bad as some people worry about. The biggest issue is if someone makes a similar product (as in how it accesses other devices) and is able to use it for malware.

 

[CoverYourHead]

Is... is this legal?

 

[shotgunbob]

If you travel alot this game would be fun

But it seems like it could easily be turned into a program that could spy on people

 

[Blimey]

Sounds quite fun. Just hoping it doesn't get turned into malware.
Didn't know that little detail about Apple's stuff not supporting bluetooth. One more reason for me to not bother wasting money on their junk.

*facepalms*

It says that it doesn't allow applications to access its Bluetooth. This is for security reasons, so people don't fuck about with your phone. So....yeah.