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Bell Labs Demos Cell Phone Location Software
mateub writes "AP via Yahoo reports that Bell Labs will soon announce cell phone software to reveal the owner's location to interested parties. To alleviate privacy concerns they say the software will 'let cell users be as picky as they choose about disclosing their whereabouts' but the article goes on to mention 'the ability for restaurants and other businesses to send a solicitation by text message to a cell phone when its owner wanders within range of those merchants.' Oh, wonderful, cellular popups..."
It would be interesting if there were some software switch that could be triggered by the provider if they were forced to do so by eg FBI or some other form of law enforcment. If you have committed a crime flick of a swtich your position is lit up like a christmas tree. I would prefer telling people where I am rather than having the phone tell them my exact location. Some of the newer technology is interesting and good, But some will bring in a new era of Big Brother. Just my thought..
If I get spammed by someone identifiable because I happen to be in their vicinity, I'll be demanding to see the manager and collect my dime refund, just to be a PITA. If enough people do it, that will be end of that kind of spam in the US.
In the past, the only way to tell where a person was located while talking on the phone was to detect which cell tower they were connected to. Considering that coverage was several square miles, it wasn't a very good way of tracking someone. However, this method of location has been used by police to solve murders where a person said they were somewhere when they called home after they murdered their spouse.
There have been times when I've been wondering where the nearest {insert favorite exotic food} restaurant is.
- Grab Mobile
- set "restaurants only"=true
- turn on location announcing thingy
- wait 5
- turn off location announcing thingy
- read ads from local restaurants
Wire them up with an electronic compass and it should even be able to give you (updated in realtime, even) directions from where you are.Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
This is exactly why open source is important. We need to be able to program our own phones to prevent these sorts of things from being a bother.
Well, childeren's groups, and some parents, are
in favor of the idea, as it will undoubtedly
improve children's safety. It also has many, rather
mundane applications, and there are already
subcription services offering this.
However, privacy advocates rightly point out that
there is much potential for abuse. However, the
ability of the operator to locate users is built
in to the network. All this story about, is making
that info availiable to end users.
However, as an aside, your question implies
a false dichotomy - no thing is entirely good,
or entirely whack. Every thing is part good,
part whack, young padwun learner.
An answer to 911 problem? I also read an article about cell phone companies in Japan having a "personals" system on the phone. e.g it gives you a list of "singles" next to you on sidewalk.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
In particular, I don't want the restaurants (or other stores) to even know I'm nearby until I ask the phone to poll for that information.
" somehow see the phone in the dumpster as a big clue that something is up."
So would not phoning home from a friend's house, or not coming home at all.
The cell phone in a dumpster is useless as an indicator, Q.E.D. So that "use" is a farce.
So what is the real use?
1. Selling ads.
2. Tracking law abiding citizens.
3. Locator service for the user. A selling point, but 1. and 2. are the winners here.
its illegal to call a telemarketer to call a cell phone, so couldnt it be argued that this is illegal too?
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Most likely, the ads will be initially used to provide ultra-cheap service ($5 - $10 / month). Eventually, they'll become "standard" and you'll have to pay extra to not be annoyed.
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"...as it will undoubtedly
improve children's safety."
how so? Are you saying the kidnapper won't through the cell phone out the window?
How about this, the kidnapper tosses the childs phone into a different vehical going in another direction?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The way I see it, always-on tracking means using your receiver to find today's victim.
Sure, having a phone that knows where it is is a good thing. Telling everyone in the world that 555-1212 has been standing at the bus stop for 15 minutes, and that all the other cell phones in the area have moved on to somewhere else is most certainly not good. Not even close. And if they're going to let the restaurant down the street know where 555-1212 is, they're most certainly not aiming at the privacy I'd want for MY kids whereabouts. (I suppose I could teach my kid to say "no" to the cell phone tracking message when it comes up for everyone but me, if they really do implement that feature of letting people choose)
No, if I was going to give this to my kid, it would have to be on demand, with a password. I call 1800findkid, enter the cellphone number, enter my pin, and then it contacts the cellphone, some form of challenge authentication against the pin I had entered directly into the cellphone and the cellphone responds with its location.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
It sucks that stuff like this could be so cool but that we can't trust that the providers won't take advantage of the huge marketing potential. Add to that the fact that most Americans think that the Constitution applies only to them personally and observance of any particular article is completely optional as long as it fits within their narrow mindset and its easy to see the potential for government abuse of the wealth of information that could be available.
That said, if I could be guaranteed that the locator service information was only good for the time of the query and wasn't logged in any way and that I could, from my phone, turn the feature on and off at will, I think I would try it.
sure, i think a variation of this based on GPS would actually be useful. in that scenario your device tells *you* where you are and you can pull up directories/services/info/whatever relevant to that area.
the scenario they describe though has *others* know where you are, and advertise at you against your will.
i don't use it much - maybe it's time to throw out the cell phone too...
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
A professor whom I TA for actually is involved in a venture business to do just this, and he bounced the idea off of us (his TA staff) about a year ago.
But it wasn't location based advertising, per se. It was location based coupons, eg, you walk into a Foot Locker, and get a message that will give you 10% off any Reebok for the next 20 minutes. Another use was instead of having to wait in line at the DMV (or taking a number and waiting to be called), go in, register your phone, and recieve a text message when you near the beginning of the queue.
There are some positive sides to this technology, although I do hope that there is some option to turn it off.
A Cell Phone advertisement may increase the amount of deadly car wrecks, especially in larger cities.
Cell phone users are already dangerous enough on the road when they are speaking to their step mother's sisters's daughter's best friend about what colour they should get their nail polish.
Example:
A person is in their car driving happily along, paying attention to the road and making a slight effort at being a safe and defensive driver. They drive right past their favourite McDonalds restaurant and their cell phone begins to beep off the hook. They rush through their stuff (females through their purse, even scarier!) and take their eyes off the road. Someone in front of them slams on their brake and their nice ride ends in a catastrophic crash over an ad about a $.99 value meal.
There are some good points to it... but I honestly hope that I have the option to disable the GPS or whatever system they use in the phones they give us. The benefits do not outweigh the risks.
.. using handset independent cell method in Australia using national Carrier.
Our applications gave total control to user with global on/off and selective sharing of generated PIN with friends on list.
Even now in 2004 network based positioning systems not precise enough to beep door-by-door for that available single right next to you so can stop worrying about that.
Also here in Australia there must be a different assumption as to marketing and ads fears expressed - everyone from telco to providers to businesses here realise big time spamming will kill such services cold.
We did 80 categories of content too and they were really popular to pull up relevant locations at any time, near you or somewhere else.
Our latest generation services allows for free text searches as well so users are again in total control in roaming through our content with or without positioning.
Alex.
www.findmap.com.au
And it ain't "us".
Repeat after me.
"We are not the consumers. We are the product. Advertisers are the consumers."
One of the original reasons I became completely wireless in the first place was to get rid of telemarketers entirely. Although I do believe there are some fairly good used for this technology, there are far too many ways to abuse it. Anybody can say, this is good for parents whos children have cell phones, but that is ridiculous. Billy is supposed to be at Jimmy's house but instead he is at the mall. (Billy is going to leave he cell at Jimmy's) I think there should be no problem with setting up a massive set of rules per user. Cell phones now are becoming more like small computers anyhow, we should be able to set up privacy rules about who, where, when, and how the messages are received. I can do this with my email, including spam, why not with a cell phone? I can use a proxy server with my regular internet connection, can I do this with a cell phone to thwart potential spam? Obviously there is much more work, time, and consideration that has to be done in order for this to even remotely be good for the majority of users, if Ms Brittney Spears wanna be high school girls loves the fact that gap can send her a discount before she walks in the door great, but leave me the hell alone!
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
...but then again, this could be really useful if my cell phone ever gets lost or stolen. I just don't like the idea of my daily wanderings being sold to other companies. I'm sure they'll promise not to do it, but later on will start giving the data up.
If you get a company cell phone, does the company have the right control the rules on who may locate you?
Yes, during your "normal" hours of work. If your company requires you to carry a cellphone outside of your normal working hours you should make sure you have a contract that limits what they can do or find another job.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Obviously, you know all, so care to share that statistic with us? Or, were you just making a highly uninformed statement to try and cover up the fact that you have no clue what you're talking about?
Never mind, I hit the nail on the head, so I'll give you a sample: typically, the number of unsolved murders has hung around 20-30% of cases according to various FBI statistics. Since that covers everything from someone blowing someone away in broad daylight in a fit of rage to premeditation, that's not a particularly good number for supporting your assinine charge of stupid criminals.
At one point (2000), the FBI actually reported that FIFTY PERCENT of violent crimes go unsolved.
Where are all these stupid criminals, again, when most of the criminals jailed now are jailed on nothing more than minor drug possession offenses?
Go look up the actual stats yourself. You can find them in FBI "Uniform Crime Reports". You need the practice.
"Crime doesn't pay" is an empty adage. If you treat crime like any other business opportunity and work your ass off doing the smart thing, you can get to a motherlode and retire young, rich, fat, and happy.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
There have been some attempts to create text message based services, but apart from little kids downloading ringtones they haven't been very popular. However now the cell phone can do something at least I am very bad at doing: describing my location accurately. For example meeting someone in a new city, it would be very useful to be able to give your location to that person rather than try to explain. Personally I get this rather uncomfortable feeling when the other person asks, when I am in a completely unknown place "hey where are you now?".
"umm I can see a big flower shop near me and umm..." Describing your location by landmarks is easy if you happen to stand next to the big ben or eiffel tower, but mostly there is nothing much to describe and it's unlikely that street names would help much either, unless you're talking to a taxi driver. I welcome wholeheartedly the opportunity to simply beam my location to the other person than try to explain. Yes, it will cost. But how much does it cost when you spend a long time trying to explain your location?
Location-based services will be one of those things that will seem like an obvious feature of mobile phones in the future. Not only that, but there might come other location based services which are useful. I don't think we will get personalized advertisements from shops, unless receiving advertisements would have some benefit for the consumer as well, possibly as reduced phone bill.
No, rather I would predict a service that would allow me to actively seek information than be fed information. Example? Alright, you are at a bar and it's closing but you still feel like continuing your round. So you take out your trusty mobile and check the list of currently open bars sorted by their distance to you. Or perhaps you aren't feeling so good, so you want to know if there are any pharmacies near you.
Yes, it will require that a list of companies and their opening hours is available. This is not a problem. Such lists exist even now on the web, it is simply a problem of adapting it for comfortable cell phone use. Oh yeah, if I turn out to be wrong and none of these services ever appear, I guarantee you it will be because of poor implementation rather than there not existing a need for such a service.