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?