Could it be used as a sort of fingerprint to identify phones? I'm imagining using a scanner to create a list of phones in the area. You walk through the halls of congress to compile a list of devices. Do this every few days or over the course of a month, to eliminate visitors.
Now that you have your fingerprint, you can leave a few scanners around where you're trying to track the congressmen. IE, if you want to blackmail, put it around strip clubs.
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Could it be used as a sort of fingerprint to identify phones? I'm imagining using a scanner to create a list of phones in the area. You walk through the halls of congress to compile a list of devices. Do this every few days or over the course of a month, to eliminate visitors.
Now that you have your fingerprint, you can leave a few scanners around where you're trying to track the congressmen. IE, if you want to blackmail, put it around strip clubs.
Seems like a major security hole to me.
That's definitely possible. There are already a few startups that use the same method to track analytics and repeat customers.
iOS 8 somewhat mitigates this through using random MAC addresses when scanning
Due to the extremely narrow circumstances [1] under which the MAC address randomization is actually used, the feature may as well not exist.
[1] http://blog.airtightnetworks.com/ios8-mac-randomgate/