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Phone or Tracking Device?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the one-for-the-paranoids dept.

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."

3 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. Worse than Orwellian!! by dtolton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  2. Riiight... by Phoenix823 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."

    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 /., 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 I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

  3. Not the first. by davetrainer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.