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Google Maps To Add 'Friend' GPS Tracking
Henway writes "Google is adding the option to Google Maps to
place your whereabouts either via cell phone towers or GPS. Think 'locator beacon.' Paraphrased: This would be good for people wanting to let their friends know where they are or for parents wanting to know where their children are at all times."
Sorry, I already have this. I just log into my bank account's website, look at the recent charges, and that tells me where my wife is.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
How the article reads:
What it really means:
This would be good for girlfriends wanting to know where their boyfriends are or for parents wanting to know where their children are at all times.
Sounds remarkably similar to the services offered by Brightkite.
Oh man, I hope my girlfriend gets on this! It will make it SO much easier to track her. I am so sick of hiding in the bushes across the street from her house for three hours just to find out she wasn't even home! And this is going to save me a fortune on text messages...I won't need to text her every 3 minutes asking where she is if I have Google Maps to tell me!
Seriously, this is going to revolutionize our relationship. I know we're going to be so happy with this new tracking technology! The restraining order says no, but your Google Maps icon says yes!
Does anyone see the irony in allowing a 3rd party to keep sophisticated data on your and your friends' whereabouts? Given the government's predilection for snooping and the current lack of openness in government, it seems somewhat frightening to allow even the overly-beloved Google this sort of power over your friends.
Don't kid yourself. The women who know where their men are are called widows.
when I get a phone call or text message from my wife, I have to drive back to work before answering it and giving her my location? Awesome. The bar won't be happy :-)
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the engineer enjoys it.
As long as my wife doesn't use it to track my girlfriend. Then I'd be really f00ked.
drawing smiley on google maps with my friends and our GPS
Sadly I think most of today's generation has forgotten why 1984 is scary. Especially if you wrap it up in pretty colors and throw a 2.0 and a medallion that says "BETA" on it.
Can I have my location copywritten? I want NO ONE to have access or the right to use my location in any manner without my explicit approval. Feds and local law enforcement included.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
We didn't even have cell phones when I was a teeneger. Of course, there were no child molesters or terrorists. All we had to fear was Russia throwing nukes at us.
Yes, there were probably as many pederasts as today, and anyone in Great Britain knows there were terrorists then, but the media didn't hype them like they do today. I'd bet kids are SAFER now than we were then, but you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media.
Free Martian Whores!
There are many applications that do this for people already. I would rather go out of my way to turn this functionality on, rather than go out of my way to turn it off.
Who needs friend tracking? What we need is Foe Tracking (tm).
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
.
So the first thing we need is a google application that can update this "lie" info in real time. I want to type in a start address, an end address and have it automatically update the lie with intermediate locations that correspond to a realistic speed. Then even if your boss is watching you, it'll look like you are following instructions (even though you are at the bar).
That way, when it is inevitably used by assholes, we can salute and chime "Sure thing, boss!" then ignore him with impunity.
Can I have my location copywritten? I want NO ONE to have access or the right to use my location in any manner without my explicit approval. Feds and local law enforcement included.
"Copywritten" is the past participle of "copywrite", a verb meaning to compose text for an advertisement. This has nothing to do with "copyright", a verb meaning to secure exclusive rights in a work of authorship. Besides, your location isn't a work of authorship, so you can't copyright it either.
That said, local privacy law may give you some rights to exclude use of your location. Case law in the United States, for one, recognizes privacy rights based on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But still, based only on the text of the article, I would guess that the subject (or possibly the minor subject's parent) has to opt in before the subject gets tracked: "Google is doing its best to avoid a backlash by requiring each user to manually turn on the tracking software and making it easy to turn off or limit access to the service."
Get back to us when Google sends you to Room 101 for refusing to use there service. Until then the comparison falls a wee bit short.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
No, if you're really paranoid you DON'T CARRY A CELL PHONE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Think about it: if you don't have a phone, you can't be tracked through it, period.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Except on Slashdot, where 1984 has to be referenced regardless of whether or not it's applicable. (For the record, I don't recall it being the case in 1984 that the whereabouts of citizens were tracked at all times.)
I'm not entirely sure what the concern is here? Is grandparent poster thinking that the government will be circumventing the requirement that people enable the "Track Me" service? That Google will allow them access to or retain the data contrary to their policies? (That at least seems more likely.)
You are aware this is already quite possible on the individual level, yes? The technology is not such that it's convenient to track the movements of everyone, unless with this new service, Google gave them that information.
Since using GPS in this way can be a contentious issue, Google have given Latitude users the ability to restrict location information on a contact-by-contact basis; alternatively it will let you enter a false position manually
--AndroidCommunity
I wonder what they mean by "false position" exactly.. hmm.
Current location:
Your mom.
This company is beginning to honestly frighten me. I was a fan when they were an up & coming search engine, but I started to get concerned about the near monopoly they're getting in search... and the tentacles are spreading. Gmail, Google Maps, AdSense, Android, Analytics... now this crap? I think it's time for me to begin using alternatives.
I find it odd that it'll work on Blackberries and other phones, but not the G1 phones yet. Must have been something that's been in the works for a while and they haven't had time to rework it for the G1.
The G1 actually already has an app (on the market, Locales I think it is) that will watch your location and enable and disable features on the phone. I use it to set my phone on vibrate at work automatically, and turn it back on afterwards. It turns my Wifi on at home and off everywhere else.
It shouldn't be too hard to make another app that replicates the 'friend gps tracking' functionality on the G1. And if you lose your phone, you know where it was last time it was on. :D
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Current location:
Your mom.
Yep! Google confirms it. Since my mother is 60, I appreciate you paying attention to her. And even though she considers you to be only a small appetizer, you do keep her from calling me for about 3 minutes.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I doubt my parents would have been happy to discover I was in the Downtowner buying cigarettes instead of third period social studies. . .
What?
It saddens me that none of you have mentioned APRS. It's a long-standing and open protocol for doing positions reporting.
Slashdot needs more HAMs. ~KB1PNB
SIG: HUP
Oh I don't fear the government taking advantage of this, they can already find your location via cellphone if they want. What scares me about this is the abuse potential by employers, or people turning it on for family/lovers without them knowing it ("I think Bobby is cheating on me, he's in the shower, this is my chance to turn on Latitude!"). Most insidious though is that this could make surveillance seem "fun" and by getting people used to the idea it could open the door to all kinds of stupidity.
See, I would recommend actually reading 1984, rather than quoting a single line from it and saying, "Seems to me...".
This would be good for girlfriends wanting to know where their boyfriends are or for parents wanting to know where their children are at all times.
Because we ALL know there are no obsessive, jealous, and insecure males of the species, right?
There is alot of people who will just love this. We all know the type. They are the same type who change their facebook status 50 times a day, and twitter about every stupid thing they do. The ones that think everyone cares they are catching a bus to the grocery store, or getting off said bus, or debating what type of juice to buy at grocery store, or almost done shopping at grocery store or ... no I still don't fucking care.
Alot of people don't want privacy, they want the opposite, and they will love this.
"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a mailbox here."
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
The women who know where their men are are called widows.
Or stopped being lovers when they became wives.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"if you were tracking your best friend" ... and in time, if most people tracked their best friends (and family), then Google would literally have the power of Big Brother to monitor the movements of almost everyone. Sounds exactly like they want to play the six degrees of separation game.
This also sounds like a dream come true for the world's governments (who do get data from Google). (Plus even if it just grew over a few years until it was say 10% of the population they tracked, there is huge statistical value in approximating the movements of that many people).
But anyone signing up to this or signing up their friends better be careful they don't visit any part of a city while a government protest is going on (or even visit the home of someone who was at a government protest, or even visit someone who was friends with someone who was at a protest).
People in power get into power because they seek power over others and they are constantly seeking ways to gain power and influence over others. (Their greatest fear is the loss of power and they spend sometimes decades learning how to gain power and influence over others). The simply act of seeking power over someone else is to seek to dictate terms to that person. That is why democracy is constantly undermined and why democracy has to be defended by each generation. Just because we have democracy now doesn't mean we keep democracy as there are people who seek to undermine it for their own gain. Ironically it is the very nature of seeking power over others that undermines democracy. So they end up distorting the society they control out of all proportion until their minority in power can control, manipulate and dictate whatever they want for their own gain.
People in power don't care about individuals but they do care about controlling and manipulating groups of people (as groups of people can stand against governments points of view). But before they can manipulate and influence a group, they need to profile everyone into groups, to then know how and where best to apply their influence. Ultimately they wish to play a divide and conquer game to undermine any group which can stand in the way of their goals. So they end up continuing to bias laws and controls in their favor, until the society they control is a nightmare vision for the majority of people in their control.
Knowledge is power and this new move by Google is a level of power way beyond the capabilities of any government in history. If the majority of people fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, we are all doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Knowledge is power and people who seek power see a book like 1984 as something that is good, as they are the ones who seek to control and use that level of power over others for their own gain. The people who seek such power never see their own actions as wrong, as they are too busy seeking power over others and ignoring anyone who suggests they cannot have ever more power.
We all need to stand up and speak out against moves like this before the level of control is so great that no one can speak out, for fear of what the people in power will be able to do to anyone standing up and speaking out. Democracy has to be defended by each generation and the more this level of power grows, the more we are all going to be forced by their actions to stand up and speak out against the ones who seek such power over everyone.
Why in the world would they need a GPS?
They want to tax people on a per-road and time basis, to combat high way traffic jams in peak hours. Odometers won't work for that, plus, they can be tampered with. With a GPS-signal, you can crosscheck it with license plate registration camera's (they use them for speed checks). Difficult to fool the system, plus, they're going to put insane fines/jail time on tampering.
Or, of course, they can simply tax the gasoline which essentially does the same thing, or maybe they already do that :).
They already do that. In fact, I think we have the third highest gasoline prices in the world (diesel is cheaper). And that is next to the annual road tax and a special car tax on top of the sales tax.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
In my opinion you're insane if you allow anybody to track you. It ***WILL*** get abused by somebody.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
See, I would recommend actually reading 1984, rather than quoting a single line from it and saying, "Seems to me...".
Let's see:
Original claim - 1984 didn't advocate tracking the whereabouts of the citizens at all times.
Single line quote - refutes claim.
More proof (contained in the link)
"She's furniture with a pulse"
GPS tracking should scare the shit out of people. I don't think many people see just how easy it will be for governments to grant themselves access to this information. All it will take is a single incident for the courts to decide that it is acceptable to subpoena these companies to find out who was within X meters/miles of X/Y coordinates at Z time.
Make sure you never walk within 1000 meters of any crime, for you may wind up becoming a prime suspect for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A single incident is all it will take to open these flood gates. Most likely a "think of the children/what do you have to hide" when a child goes missing or somesuch.
Really, GPS may have some cool possibilities, but you're fooling yourself if you think using any GPS tracking service is not going to be subjected to the possibility of all your tracking data being handed over to the authorities whenever it is deemed necessary to solve a crime/prevent terrorism, etc.
But of course, giving up privacy for "national security" is worth it, right?
The old "parents wanting to know where their children are" trick!
It wouldn't surprise me if media suddenly start to emphatize missing child cases...
What would you be teaching to your kid if you did that? Only that it is OK for an authority to know where they are/what they do, anytime... You'd be stripping away their right to privacy before they realize how important it is.
If I need to hear from him, I'll just call him.
I think you are trying to show that my script idea would be bad because it could be used against me. And then I couldn't rely on google maps to track my wife. However, if you think I believe having the ability to track my wife is a good thing (or, indeed, anybody being able to track anybody), you are wrong. In fact, wanting that ability is surely the sign of some mental defect.