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Phone or Tracking Device?
Red Wolf writes "The first major commercial service that traces people's locations using their mobile phones -- mapAmobile -- is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
I find the wording of the press release ironic.
;)
<paraphrase>
This device isn't really for spying, it's more to allow parents to spy
on their children, and employers to spy on their employees.
</paraphrase>
They of course fail to mention that if the technology were available, a judge
could easily grant a warrant to allow authorities to observe your
movements without notifying you.
In many ways this is worse than Orwellian, because at least in
Orwell's vision, you could still hide from the cameras or escape to
places that didn't have cameras on them. With this device if you had
it on (assuming it works as well as they claim (doubtful)) they could
pinpoint your location all the time. I guess you could just leave it
in your office while you went to play that round of golf and say you
were in a meeting.
Still this technology is simply a herald of more instrusive technology
to come. Move over Orwell, the future may be worse than you imagined.
As someone said in an earlier story, doubleplusungood.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
I wonder how this works since SIM cards are pretty small. Regardless, I like it.... to a point. Where I work, we have a lot of people who drive a lot of miles in their own cars. At $.365/mile, this adds up quickly (almost $1200/month). Even still, almost all of them cheat padding their monthly miles, or taking a very long route to get someplace. If they KNEW that they could be tracked, it might give honesty a kick in the pants. Where I don't like it is when someone is spied upon and never told. That's just not cool.
Sorry, but "easing the mind of a suspicious boss" is still "unauthorized spying" by any reasonable definition of the term.
"Unauthorized Spying" : Spying or other surveliance upon an individual or target without legal authorization to do so.
Seems to me that a suspicious boss can have "legal authorization" to find out where their employees are. Espeically if the boss is giving the cell phone.
How do you know that just because you can't make calls or see anything on the screen the phone is really off? It might even have a small internal battery that charges off the main battery and powers the tracker when the main battery is disconnected.
Jason
ProfQuotes
is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
/., we say it's alright to use the Xbox as a home PC even though that's not what it was designed for. For that very reason alone, I am 100% sure that this will be used to infringe on at least one person's privacy.
And Kazaa is really just designed to transfer information back and forth. It's not Sharman Network's fault that it gets used to infringe on an incredible number of copyrights.
Let's face it, just because it was designed to ease parents and bosses, that's no guarantee whatsoever that they will not be used to violate one's civil liberties. RFIDs are designed to help stores keep inventory and make checkouts easier, but they can be easily abused to "see" what someone is wearing on his person.
We champion the right to use products in nonstandard ways all the time here at
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
AT&T Wireless has had this for quite some time. It's called find-a-friend, and it lets you locate and be located by other AT&T GSM customers that you specify. I do have a GSM/GPRS phone with AT&T and I've read a little about the feature, but never used it.
... for location tracking always include the ability to have someone else get ahold of this information. This is why I don't have a cell phone. In theory, they could track what cell tower I was connected to anyway, and get a rough idea of my location. Granted, a normal POTS line has a definite endpoint, but it's not one that is carried around.
I can see benefits to this technology, since 911 operators will have an easier time dispatching emergency personnel, and it might even be useful for delivery drivers to know if the destination is legitimate. Other than that, though, I see so much possible abuse that I don't want to see this technology in use.
I would be cool with a cell phone having a GPS receiver built in, so I could find out where I am and tell the caller, but they should not be able to gain that information without my approval.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Does too. If you're supposed to be at place X during company time, you've better be there. Say you're at place X but have a phone signal that says you're in place Y, you've got some explaining to do. Ask Jayson Blair.
"Unauthorized Spying": Survelliance without prior explicit or implied consent of the surveilled.
Obviouslly the OP had your definition in mind; my point was merely that employee surveillance is generally obnoxious (with exceptions) even at the corporate level, as are drug tests (for most professions), email monitoring, etc.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Assume for a moment you are part of a group of sysadmins who must rotate 24/7 support coverage by carrying a company cellphone. Now lets add cellphone tracking to the picture. You now have a situation where although in theory you are on your own time, you must carry the phone, and have it on, and thus be tracked.
The biggest question I have, is can you get a report for where the phone HAS been, not where it is. Can you get information going back say 24 or 48 hours? If you can't now, I'll bet you will be able to shortly. Great potential for abuse here.
Let's say your boss is not religous and you are (or vice/versa) he can see if you do/do not go to church, what denomination you are etc. This is just one of many examples of potential abuse. If you deviate from the norm in any way those deviations can now be noticed, tracked and acted upon.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Dont want the cops to know where you are? Dont call 911.
Dont want anyone to know you went to City X? Then dont take your cell phone to City X, or dont use it when you're in City X.
Noones tracking you, they're tracking the phone. If its the bosses phone, he has every right to know where it is. If he doesnt want you taking his phone to City X, then thats up to him. If you dont like your boss and his rules, quit and find another job.
People hear the suggestions of responsibility, and immediately start whining about lost "freedoms".
(Btw, Why in the hell would you call 911 for assistance and NOT want emergency services to know where you are? What kind of dopey logic is that? "Please help me I'm shot I think I'm dying... Where am I? None of your business you ORWELL BIG BROTHER!"... Anyways, dont worry, I work in that very industry, phase III is decades away from working, no matter what you read in press releases.)
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
For the cellphone manufacturers: Make phones with tracking/etc as an option. If you generally prefer privacy, but have an accident of sorts (and are, one would hope, at least coherent enough to push of button) allow the "trackable mode" on the cellphone to be an option
For cellphone users: There's a big button the phone called "off." As long as you're not expecting a call, you can just turn the damn thing back on when you need to dial out. If you're still paranoid, yank the battery or get a lead-lined case/signal-scrambler or something.
AC: The Friendly Troll?
Yes, they do have rights. As do I. And one of my rights is to know where they are. To reiterate - as a parent you are responsible for your kid.
If a parent raises their kid right, they shouldn't need to worry about them doing crap they shouldn't be doing. If the trust is there, you don't need this capability. But having it isn't a bad thing. It's a mutual trust thing.
"I'm studying with my friend like I said I was. Besides, Dad can check up on me if he needs to."
"She said she's over at her friend's, and I trust her, so I don't need to check up on her."
You don't have children, do you?
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
I have an idea. Just make this tracking info accessible to general public. Imagine web site with query form. Enter phone number and get name and location of cell tower nearest to this phone.
Nice. Then let people pay to get hidden from general public.
My Sanyo 4900 has a location service. The paper instructions and phones internal help system claim if I shut the location system off, only 911 facilities will be able to know my location. What this really tells me is that it is always on from the phone end but Sprint will only pass the signal to the 911 system, not anyone who wants it. I also assume that the police will also have access to this also if needed or wanted. There is NOTHING that prevents law enforcement from going to Sprint or any other carrier and requesting a list of all users that were in a certain area at a certain time. This IS what the system is really being pushed for and why the Office of Homeland Security is the government department responsible for this E911 service implementation.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
>Sure, they can track us with our phones. Big fat >hairy deal. You don't want them to track you? Then
>don't carry a -transmitting- radio in your pocket!
That's the choice isn't it? Use a cell phone and have your movements tracked or don't use a cell phone. But remember, choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without. Apparenly, those with power want even more power -- the power to track where eveyone goes and when and then put all the data into sophisticated data mining software. Sounds mighty oppressive to me.
in the old world.
Over in Europe we've had services like this for at least two years.
Some just show your location based on the current base station you're connected to, and some are more sophisticated and uses some kind of triangulation (maybe based on what base stations you have been in contact with the last minutes? I don't know).
I've tried it a couple of times, and it's seems to be quite accurate give or take some fifty meters.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
It seems the general consensus here is opretty negative on this technology due to it's potential for abuse. However I can't help but feel if a couple of Uni students rigged up the same thing in their dorm room with a couple of pringles cans and aan empty pizza box, everyone would be applauding at how cool it is and how it has the potential to save the world.
Just a thought...
GM's Onstart system already does this quite nicely. A friend of mine has it and when he works late his wife can make a "toll free" phone call and verify the exact position of his car. Fortunately, he is not a cheating husband, but still she can find out what road he is on and the speed he is travelling. In short, if you have a cell phone, you can be tracked...the system is not completely activated yet...comrade.
That just perpetuates the slavery of employment... if you are the kind of person who can't garner trust and respect from your employees, you deserve what you discover... Paranoid maniacal "CONTROL" breeds environments where everyone spends 6 hours a day trying to appear real-busylike, covering their ass and trying to "look good". Trust is contagious.
meh