Big Brother in the bathroom?

Is this really necessary? Last week a semiconductor company showed off an open source wireless tracking system for following people around buildings. The creators of the OpenBeacon system sold 900 tags (at $13 each) to attendees of the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin who volunteered to be tracked during the four-day event. The idea of the technology demo was to analyze how, over the four-day period people moved and gathered together. And presumably how often they went to the bathroom or snuck out for a cigarette. While the creators of the technology boasted some high and mighty goals for the technology – they want to use the technology as a possible way to solve crowd control problems that often occur when millions of Muslim pilgrims visit Mecca each year – one has to wonder what the system would ultimately be used for.