MIT Researches Map Cell Phone Usage

stlhawkeye writes "MIT researchers with the Mobile Landscape Projects have mapped a city based on cell phone usage. The article includes a map of Graz, Austria with a color-coded overlay indicating cell phone usage in various parts of the city. Using call origin and destination data, they are able to not only reverse-engineer a topographic map of the geography and landscape, but one of phone usage as well. The implications of the research have practical applications in law enforcement, emergency management, and traffic management. There are also, of course, privacy implications."

Comments

Privacy implications?

[sploxx]

What are the privacy implications if the study only uses anonymized location data, i.e. "in this field of 100m x 100m", there is a cell phone which now moves to this field etc.?

I think there are none. At least not any new ones than those implications by using cell phones at all.
The data about who uses which cell when does exist already and it needs to exist, in the current state, at all times in the phone system (how would you route calls without this information?)

Privacy concerns can surely be raised about storing such tracking profiles attached to particular persons. But just anonymized usage patterns?