Your Cell Phone Is Tracking You

PollGuy writes "I had never heard until this article in the New York Times (sacrifice of first born required) about services that let regular people track the locations of other regular people via their cell phones. Nor this: 'A federal mandate that wireless carriers be able to locate callers who dial 911 automatically by late 2005 means that millions of phones already keep track of their owners' whereabouts.'"

Comments

not new.

[1lus10n]

this service isnt really new, i bought my phone about a year ago (samsung a500, sprintpcs) and it had this feature. I disabled it, but i think that only turns off the ability for joe schmoe to track me, not the gov't.

i personally see a good use for this (911) and dont see the big deal since you could just not carry your cell with you for that ultra-top-secret-underground tinfoil hat clan meeting.

i am more worried about things you cannot opt out of, like face scanning in public places. or non-approval required phone taps etc ....

Triangulation

[cRueLio]

they have been able to do this for a long time by triangulating on your location from 3 or more different cells. Every criminal knows not to leave their cell phone on exactly for this reason.

That argument's not new either

[fm6]

As so many people do, you've assumed that you have to be up to something illicit to care about privacy. Simply not true. Here's an not unlikely example: You say to your boss, "I need the afternoon off. Gotta take my kid to the doctor." "Sure!" your boss says, then runs back to his office and order a location trace on your cell. It turns out the address you go to is for a specialist in childhood leukemia. "Christ!" your boss says, "Our insurance costs are through the roof already! If this kid needs a bone marrow transplant, forget about any end of the year bonus! Better downsize this guy, stat!"

Of course this technology has legitimate uses. If you'd bothered to read the article, you would have noticed that the privacy advocates were not objecting to the technology itself, but to the absence of control over who gets access to the data.

This doesn't bode well

[ortholattice]

More and more parents are going to be pressured into keeping 24 hour tabs on their teenagers, due to fear of lawsuits if their kids get in trouble as well as fear due to media-hyped crime stories. I see this as a bad thing. Kids will grow up used to constant 24 hour surveillance, fully prepared to become zombies in the Big Brother society of the future where their every movement will be tracked.

I'm sorry, but an important part of growing up is getting at least a taste of true freedom and yes, sometimes the risk that it entails. . When I was a teenager I probably did a few things my parents wouldn't have approved of, and I that was an important part of my experience.

I can't imagine imposing this on my own teenager, except (1) when he actively wants it, if say he goes into a strange part of town, or (2) as punishment if he gets into trouble - part of the punishment might be that he would be monitored for the next two months or whatever. If he wants to be monitored all the time,

Re:This just in... Well, in for a while now...

[TygerFish]

Okay, when I originally got my sprintpcs-capable phone, a Sanyo 4900, I read up on the location feature and it essentially told you that if you turned it off, the only ones who would have access to your location info would be the police. I didn't like the way it sounded, and between the bad ears and Big Brother, it went back to The Shack inside a day.

I later bought the same phone again and decided to use a headset for the hearing problem.

The real problem with the technology is not that the cops can track you. As far as I know, they have *always* had that ability: the machinery knows that the signal from your phone is strongest between n points on the network and if you make a call, your approximate location is knowable by the system in realtime.

Another problem, of course, are what they keep mentioning on 'Law and Order,' your LUDs or 'Local Usage Details.' It's a record of everyone you call and everyone who calls you.

Big hint, before calling anyone for a criminal transaction from your own cell phone, try on some bright-orange clothing and make sure you look good in it. It is one of the stupidest things you could possibly do--especially when you can buy anonymous, 'pay-as-you-go' cell phone service for minor amounts of money.

The real problem that the 'Law-and-Order' people, the ones who never met a form of privacy they didn't loath, is not that the cops can track you, illegally search you, or sweat a false confession out of you. All in all, American police can be great, but they can and have done all these things at one time or another.

The problem with technology is that the law is a game and it has to be a game for it to work. It would be bad for society if it were possible to automatically find someone guilty and technology is bringing us closer to the day when that will be possible in more and more areas.

From traffic-cams to face-recognition software, technologies are bringing us closer to a national security state where you don't do only good things because you want to, but because common sense tells you you should be scared shitless of doing anything else.