Track People Using Their Mobile Phones

Richard W.M. Jones writes "A couple of new services have been rolled out in the UK recently which allow you to track people when they have their mobile phones turned on. Mapminder states 'It's important to know where your loved ones are for your own peace of mind'. 192.com asks 'Do you want to know where your children are?'. Of course the police have been able to do this for a long time, and evidence from mobile phone positions has been used in high-profile court cases in the UK. Silicon.com has an article."

Comments

Re:the moral is

[Zeinfeld]

if you're going to whack someone, first hide your phone in a restaurant a couple miles away....then you can "prove" you weren't at the crime scene.

A while ago, before 9/11 I was sitting in a bizare meeting with a bunch of wireless execs who were breathlessly telling us how great their new location finder service was going to be. They could send you adverts targetted at people in a particular location.

I was rather unpopular when I asked if the customers would buy a product if the chief benefit was going to be to enable a new kind of spam. "Perhaps they don't get the choice"

I was even more unpopular when I pointed out that the regulators in Europe would blast this type of thing on privacy grounds. "Oh the regulators tend to be more sensible than the general public".

I pointed out that my cousin, one of those regulators has survived two assasination attempts and may have an opinion about a technology that gives away his position. In Europe privacy is not something that you muck arround with.

Today the risk of this type of scheme would be obvious even to a US legislator. Now right to life will be able to stalk doctors who provide abortions by telephone, Saddam loyalists will be able to stalk senior Republicans and Al Qaeda will be able to stalk everyone.

So they are finally working out socially acceptable ways to package up the same technology. Was it really necessary to have the dotCOM bust before some folk got a clue?

complete government Know-You tools

[ciaran_o_riordan]

With a mobile phone, if your government ever suspects that you are a dissident, not only can they pull up a complete travel log for your life since you got the phone, but they can also check who you have been talking to, and the movements of those people too.

We must value our rights, such as privacy, before we accept technology. Electronic voting was the latest disaster. E-books will be the next.

Re:AT&T has had this for a while

[gotpaint32]

With the reception that my AT&T mmode phone has, tracking me by that thing is not going to be easy. I know that in DC my phone dies in the lobby of many buildings and is pretty spotty in many areas (subways, basements, parks). And even if the system does manage to get a signal, the accuracy of the system still leaves much to be desired if you are in a dense metropolitan area.

Re:the moral is

[SlashdotLemming]

then you can "prove" you weren't at the crime scene.

No, you can just "prove" that your phone wasn't at the crime scene.

tired of such arguments

[penguin7of9]

I'm tired of theses "this can save lives" arguments. Fascism "can save lives", too, but most people seem to agree that it just isn't worth it. Well, actually, they agree in the abstract, at least, but each individual step towards it gets justified with your kind of argument.

I think being able to track one's own location via GPS or cell phones is really swell. But when the police or employers can do it as a matter of course, then it fundamentally changes the kind of society we have.