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Cell Tracking on the Rise
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is reporting that with the recent advances in cell phone tracking tech more and more companies are using it to keep track of their employee's movements. From the article: 'The gains, say the converted, are many, ranging from knowing whether workers have been "held up" in the pub rather than in a traffic jam, to being able to quickly locate staff and reroute them if necessary. Not everybody is happy about being monitored, however, and civil rights group Liberty says the growth of tracking raises data privacy concerns.'"
Just because you have a mobile doesn't mean that it has to be turned on.
I'd gotten very used to always having a mobile on, being able to be contacted anywhere and at anytime. But I got rid of my mobile 3 years ago and haven't bothered getting a replacement, and it's been very refreshing to have to make appointments to meet people and so on.
More realistically, if you have your own mobile, you can leave it on and have it with you 24/7. But a mobile from your job should be set to turn on at 9 and off at 5, if those are your hours. I'm shocked by how many people I work with allow their bosses to make them work outside of office hours by ringing them up and getting them to do errands in their own spare time. It's bad enough with European companies slowly moving towards the American model of unpaid lunch breaks that aren't even 30 minutes long, without also copying the 24/7 worker ethic.
It's one thing for the police to locate you, it's another for employers to do so.
I'm not concerned with people getting busted for doing things on work time that they should not, but it's the precedent it sets.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
This wouldn't be such a bad thing if I could track the cell phones of the people who are tracking me. I really don't see what's so bad about letting my boss track me as long as I'm able to follow him around. It's the imbalance of power that's the main problem with typical surveillance. Want to track my movements with a camera? Go ahead.... but only if I get to know who's watching me and I have the ability to watch them back. An open and transparent society can make the world both safe and free. As it is now the powerful, well-connected and criminal can invade your privacy any time they want... privacy laws only prevent us from spying on them.