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Privacy Group Calls Google Latitude a Real 'Danger'
CWmike writes "Privacy International is calling Google's new mapping application an 'unnecessary danger' to users' security and privacy. The criticism follows the unveiling this week of Google Latitude, an upgrade to Google Maps that allows people to track the exact location of friends or family through their mobile devices. Google Latitude not only shows the location of friends, but it can also be used to contact them via SMS, Google Talk or Gmail. 'Many people will see Latitude as a cool product, but the reality is that Google has yet again failed to deliver strong privacy and security,' said Simon Davies, director of London-based Privacy International, in a statement. The group's chief concern is that Google Latitude lacks sufficient safeguards to keep someone from surreptitiously opting into the tracking feature on someone else's device."
It's a rule. Whenever a change in the status quo is suggested people immediately jump to the most negative conclusions.
I remember, many years ago, my all knowing government banned "reverse lookup" electronic phone books, unless they had some restrictions in the code. Later, the products fells off the market as they were no longer useful. Before then, one could lookup the telephone number of their neighbor and give them a call if the "music" spewing out of their place at 3am was a bit loud. Now you just call the police or, gulp, go over there.
How we know is more important than what we know.
How someone knowing where I am is particularly dangerous for me if I'm not in the witness protection program? If they're going to do anything worse than a drive-by waterballoon then chances are they wouldn't bother with latitude and just WATCH ME.
We've all said it before: obscurity is not security.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
But the people who would use this probably don't care about these things anyway. Or if they do, they'll turn off their phone.
I'm hoping that this is some sort of software that you'd install on the device (an app for iPhone, a java applet for most other things, etc). What other method does Google have to get the information? I'm assuming that the Latitude server is talking to some software on the device that can retrieve the relevant location data. I can see people writing modified versions of the Google software that *hides* and can be used as a covert tracking device, without the bother of contacting the person's cell provider. Frankly, the whole thing bothers me too, and not just in that theoretical kind of way that DRM does...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Hold on, I'm working on tin foil case for my cell phone!
And I was quite concerned too.
See, it isn't like Google is tracking people by asking the phone company to track your phone. They are just tracking people by giving them an app to run on the phone that reports its location periodically.
So given that you have to install an app on any phone that is to be tracked, it's unlikely someone could trick Google into tracking your phone. At least, not unless they have access to your phone to install the app.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If you're concerned about people doing things on your X, don't let them use your X.
Where X is:
Pretty basic trust issues here, folks. If you don't trust someone, don't let them use your stuff.
If I understand TFA correctly, if someone else gains access to your phone and your google login, they can activate Latitude and use it to track you.
Their interpretation of that is: Latitude is dangerous. I'd interpret it as giving others access to your hardware and your account is dangerous.
But that's why I'm just a computer geek and they're a multi-national organization.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I figured a privacy group would say a product that tracks your position all the time would be a good thing, and a boon to humanity! That a privacy group would find it a "danger," that really shocks me to the core! Next thing you know, the NRA is going to start opposing gun control laws.
Comment of the year
I have a solution. I have location off on my phone, and no intent of installing Google Latitude on it.
Plus, I have a Motorola W755 through Verizon with no data plan. :-)
I too think they are three marbles short. But I think the idea they are attempting to get across is less, "if we can get access to your phone, we can pwnt you." as it is "we think Google's made it so people other than those you've authorized can snoop that data once you've made it avaliable."
Not quite as hairbrained, but still rather "Get off my lawn"-ish given this group hasn't provided a wit of evidence that something like that can happen.
Yawn, Loopt has been doing this forever.
I think the funny thing about privacy groups is that they're not in the business of acknowledging that less extreme viewpoints exist. So they don't even mention that Latitude gives you the option of setting who can see your location and who can't. If they acknowledged that then they might have to acknowledge that some people want everyone to know where they are and what they are doing. They might even find out that these people are in the majority.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Life is hard
Its even harder if you're stupid.
I don't know about TFA, but it is clearly dangerous to privacy to proliferate tracking technologies into the hands of typical computer users.
People who don't feel concern about privacy don't realize (or care) that their choices often have unintended consequences for others of us who do care.
Just for example, a user with a gmail account accepts the potential risk to their privacy that comes with having google store their emails _forever_. But they also put at that same risk everyone who sends them email, without their informed consent.
Given recent government use in the US of privately stored data, it seems obvious that there is a slippery slope here, not just some cassandra wailing and arthritic get-off-my-lawn whining.
Consider too that most of the world lives in countries that are not as benign as we like to hope the US is.
You practically have to opt into this already. Every phone I've ever seen has TWO options for the GPS receiver: "Location on" and "911 only". MOST phones I've seen default to on. However, just change this to "911 only" and the phone's GPS only activates when you dial 911. Problem solved.
Breaking News:
Since the launch of Googles "Latitude" program, murder rates have gone up 64% due to boyfriends and husbands tracking their girlfriends and wives and seeing they were actually with their best friends instead of "food shopping". Ouch, that's gotta hurt!
Back to you in the newsroom Willy.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
up with
plus a little hacking and amaze your friends and family as you wander along the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Just facilitate it more easily for others.
is an Assassin game based on this. Anyone else think that sounds like fun?
My 2 cents... Only the people who have past/present guilt about hiding something from someone will feel this is a horrible idea. Remember, this is Opt-in folks. People in relationships, you all better wake up, your gonna have to be honest by choice or by technology. The choice is yours. Get over it. Me, I have no guilt, and if I change. (which I have) I know how to do so with honor and integrity by way of honesty and no patience for lies. (from myself or from anyone else) Control freak, perhaps, content and secure with my principals and practices, you bet! Good Luck.
Facilitating features for smart people, facilitates threats for dumb people. Its a story as old as technology.
think of the children?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
So I'll wait until you're walking in a deserted area, and snag you. Normally I'd have to lie in waiting and hope you'd come by - remember that it is you specifically that I hate, other people's clothes wouldn't do. But now I can just follow you around virtually and when you're in a witness-sparse area I'll zip to your location and do my thing.
But they also put at that same risk everyone who sends them email, without their informed consent.
Nonsense. If you send an email without some sort of explicit contractual understanding , you implicitly forfeit any say over the disposition of the email. They can save it forever, they can forward it to another party (who in turn can store that email forever). They can post it on their website. And so on.
So far as I can tell, Latitude is no different from Buddy Beacon, Loopt, Whrrl, or any of a dozen other GPS-enabled "social networking" apps that'll happily send out your location to whomever you allow. But Latitude, specifically, and apparently only Latitude, is evil and dangerous.
I know hating on Google is the trendy thing these days, but come on.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
1984, Big Brother is calling.
Anyone who thinks Govts. around the world won't try to get and abuse this info is a fool!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
What if you install it and only let your friends know where you are, and then someone steals your friend's phone? You're being tracked by some strangers without giving others access to your hardware.
Dilbert RSS feed
I enabled Gears in FF to track my laptop by available wifis (the three options are that, phone, or manual update). According to earlier today, I was in Manhattan. Currently I appear to be in Maryland.
In reality I haven't left Minnesota. My poor stalker is going to snag the wrong girl!
How is this any different then say loopt or other apps like this that are all ready out? Because every watches what Google does and picks it apart. But does not look to see if any one else has all ready done it.
Unless google is going to send you an sms every 5 minutes stating your been tracking, i see a non issue with this. If someone can get to your mobile and enable it, without you know, then that is your problem, not Google's or anybody else's, From what i can see is that the app needs to be updated by the user and there are some time of reminders.
This is going so over board, it's really not funny. The General public reads articles like this, think it's blow out of proportion and aren't going to take anything similar as serious as they should, that really hurts ALL of us.
I am getting tired of hearing all these comments about loss of privacy, big brother, and other nonsense.
I installed the application. You have to actually give explicit permission to your friends in order for them to track you. Furthermore, for this to work, your friends should actually care to actually follow the instructions from Google, go through a set of menus, so that they can see where you are.
Apart from my mother when I was 12, I cannot think of anyone that would actually care to know where I am, 24/7. I am pretty sure that I do not care to know where even my closest friends are right now. They may be at home, at work, with their wives, with their mistresses, buying pot, or selling dirty bombs to arab terrorists. I do not care. And I am sure they think the same for me! Damn, I am not *that* important so that others need to know where I am!
Yes, it would be convenient to know where my friends are when I am trying to meet them. If they could send me an "sms-like" message with their location. But do I *need* to know where they are, 24/7? Hell no!
And to whomever worrying about privacy: You got a cellphone (so the cellphone carrier knows where you are by triangulation). Oh no, you actually got a smartphone, with an embedded GPS! (So, a hacker can install an application that sends an sms with the long/lat.) Ah, you also have a wi-fi! (So a hacker can stream the info easier.)
I see, you also installed the Google Maps application! And since you wanted to see how this Latitude things works, you also installed the latest version of GMaps? And you are *now* freaking worrying that a hacker will get your phone, and enable tracking??
Almost like being afraid of malaria and visiting malaria-infested areas during the rain season!
say i hang out with Suzy a lot,
and my wife thinks we're just friends but we're actually banging all over town,
and one evening Suzy and i go to Power Exchange as usual,
but unbeknownst to me she's made herself wildly trackable online,
and my wife idly discovers we weren't at the weekly meeting of the cartography association as i'd so conveniently had her convinced.
obviously this is far-fetched, since everyone knows it's bad form to have an affair with the indiscreet, but it illustrates the point. think about all the times you've been somewhere with someone when the fact of your being together isn't a secret, but your location should have been.
Sounds like Simon Davies has himself a call girl on the side. And he don't want no one to know where he be.
When Google Longitude comes out, then you can be really scared.
"Piter, too, is dead."
I think that the problem for me is the abuse potential here for controlling partners and parents. Making people install and use it. Sure, there were tools that would do this before, but nothing so cheap (free) and ubiquitous as this. What is you teenage daughter going to say to her controlling potentially abusive boyfriend when he guilts her into installing it and demands she leave it on? The problem isn't with the product it is with us, people, and not enough time to work out what to do with it to be responsible.
DID anyone here actually RTFA ?? Latitude s entirely opt-in, that is no-one may track a persons location unless that person loads the application in their phone, turns it on, and updates thier location information. Essentially unless someone actively announces "HERE I AM" then this service does have a location. So it would appear that Privacy International s trying to get some traffic from a non-story. FOAD!
I would equate the 'privacy invasion' of Google Latitude to having windows in your home. Leaving your curtains aside can let the neighborhood peep see your skivvies, but its still your prerogative to close them when you don't want to be seen.
Obviously windows are a dangerous privacy risk that leads to a totalitarian state, and we should all be housed inside metal cubicles to protect our personal lives.
Slashdot: Where opinions are just opinions until you have mod points.
The argument here is the mere existance of an application like latitude is a privacy issue because it can be installed without someone else knowing.
Newsflash -- this particular cat got out of the box many many many years ago so it makes very little difference one way or another if more companies offer the same service.
This kind of software has been around for quite some time -- some make a real effort to hide themselves and make it extremely difficult to remove or detect. Google shows up in the task manager process listing and Add/Remove programs.
Excuse me, but I didn't flail my arms on this one, and was quietly setting by the campfire and monitoring for hostiles too.
Move on, nothing here. You have more to worry about if your that paranoid that you cant control this application.
With all the phone taps, camera monitors, cell phone tracking by the government, you think you have to worry about your friends knowing where you are? I mean really, if I wanted to hunt you down, there are much easier ways, than coming and taking your cell phone, hacking the application on to it, then tracking you down later again?
Maybe their just drinking their own coolaid.
Ridiculous. As always - if you don't like the inherent privacy risks, don't use it. And leave alone the people who do want to use it - and those who provide the service.
and that is People-that-tell-us-what-to-do. Privacy advocates are so worried about being told what they can and can't do, but they want to tell us that we shouldn't use Latitude. I hate to break it to them, but this is isn't the first GPS tracker available that tells your friends where you are. I use one to let people know where I am on my solo motorcycle rides, so they don't worry. When I get home I turn it off. Simple and my privacy isn't violated. These guys spend so much time troubling over the slightest little things because they think people are idiots. Well if an idiot uses this incorrectly and his/her privacy is violated then just tell them RTFM.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Instead of going after the headline companies for minimal issues, the efforts of the so-called privacy group would be far more beneficial to all, if they did things like prevent state governments from putting personal information on the web. Or stop the feds from listening in on our communications.
Everybody knows that the unparalleled and unequalled security in Ninnle Linux and NinnleBSD provides protection against this. Join the Ninnle revolution now!
What's this guy's beef with Google?
I didn't RTFA, i'm not new here.
Anyone geeky enough to realise the privacy implications of this tool presents no threat to me out on the streets ;)
I'm pretty damn sure eventually this will get hacked and some one will use it to track down that hit they have been given/use it to serve search warrants, or worst yet bill collectors will use it to interrupt that meal at the 5 star restaurant, or that tryst at your local notel motel.
But with a few added features, this will rock, 10 of us on a business trip in DC, staying at various places, doing various things during the day. Add the ability to find us, submit a poll who wants to hookup, what time, what food, price, it automatically gives a list based on closeness to all who want to hook up, giving preference to ones fitting the most criteria along with average starting positions and distance to hotels.
is a myth.
in your mobel fone there should be option to turn off position sensor. look in settings. if no such option your fone suxx0rz. without position sensor enabled, googol cannot ditect your position unless they h4x0r the fone compania.
OK, so maybe you're concerned that some bad person could gain access to your teenage daughter's phone and turn this on? (Probably not too hard, actually, based on my experience of kids leaving their stuff all over the place).
Surely Google could have implemented some basic security, like you receive an SMS every day for a week after you've activated it, reminding you & asking to conifirm; or automatically disabling the service if it's not re-confirmed every month, or copying you by mail on every notification that it sends, and to whom, of your location...
Exactly right. Giving others access to your weapons is dangerous, too. They can hurt you with them. Duh.....
I never did like Google's latitiude.
Well I can't help but think of the stalking cases that made it on the news. Some of them went too great lengths to stalk their victims.
This Google Latitude gives them another weapon to use against their victims. You can't tell me they wont try to do it, because many said that they wouldn't use a car's GPS to stalk their victims but they did.
Give the stalker time, they will find a way to use it.
Im getting really sick and tired of SMS becoming a requirement to operate. I DO NOT like the fact that either I get charged for incoming texts, or pay a blanket monthly fee. INCOMING TEXT SHOULD BE FREE, or at least allow me to comfirm/deny. As it is now I have SMS completely turned off.
Good-bye
Why google love these things so much? What money is in it?
My bias: I am currently devleoping Xpsot which has similar features for Android/Iphone. My Xspot application uses an application password/Username auto lock in that user has to sign into application to use... Google could have used the same strategy.. My dev videos at: http://www.youtube.com/user/memine44 Google should have seen this coming given the challenge in growing Loopt user numbers over the same concerns
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
How the hell does that happen. Google Maps needs to be running. And when Lattitude is on, you've got a nice big blue icon showing you where you are.
Think someone might notice if that gets turned on on their phone?
If someone has access to your phone and enough privileges to install a Google app, that somebody could install anything. Notably a hidden tracker that doesn't show up at all on your phone or Google account.
Two months ago I turned down a job when I found out it was to work on software very similar to this. It was exclusively for cellphones and targeted to teens who want to find their friends at festivals.
I can see the uses but, whether stupid or not (what with the economy and everything), I just wasn't comfortable enough with it.
I like Google but that opinion is becoming strained because in many ways they have the potential to be much worse than a silly cellphone tool from a nondescript company. They already track a lot of information and due to their popularity and perceived 'coolness' they could cross that line (you know, that one) quite easily and so gradually that it goes completely under the radar at first. (Some might say they have already but personally I think they're some way off, yet heading in that direction fast.)
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
Like any other technology it would make sense to see if there privacy risks and if there are see what can be done to avoid them or just don't use the software.
"They might even find out that these people are in the majority."
The majority are a bunch of idiots.
And you seem to be one of the majority.
Any questions ?
I didn't think so.
...except when you realize that you have to agree to the terms of service (whatever they may be mind you) and that as far as friends are concerned, you have control over who can see you. And you can also set a manual position.
tl;dr: Nobody's FORCING you to show your position with the latest updates, and I want to stab every single privacy nazi ever born.
Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
Just send an sms notice to the phone when you are being tracked. It can be on a random basis, low frequency. Send an email alert as well.
Just something so that it cannot be a secret to the phone user what is happening. You can opt-out of these messages, if you reply to the first 5 with an opt-out reply.
Don't use it. Just like any other business, no?
As far as Search goes, has anyone done work on a P2P search engine? Search results could be gathered up by asking peers for information. Spidering is done in a highly distributed manner. Plus the serving up of content could be done through the P2P fabric as well, providing anonymity.
Just a thought..
Wired published an interesting article last month about the "good, bad and sleazy" of the location-aware future.
In other news, going outside seriously hampers your privacy. A spokesman from Real Privacy Concerns International. is quoted saying "When I go outside, anyone can easily recognize me, and track my location. Until this serious privacy concern has been addressed, no-one should go outside." He further suggests that a temporary measure would be to force everyone to wear matching long gray coats and ski masks.
Trust in Google not Microsoft, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Fox, Time Warner, or Viacom.
I just don't understand how Latitude can be considered a privacy danger:
a) YOU have to choose to install Google Maps.
b) YOU have to choose to turn it on.
c) YOU have to choose or accept friend tracking. (and to choose not to delete them)
d) YOU have to choose not to turn it off.
Google have put as many safeguards as is practical while still providing a cool service to those people that want it.
tbh the only real danger to privacy is modern government (esp. here in the UK)
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
They don't even need your Google login... they can use their own.
Simultaneously, it's useful by providing the location of stolen devices.
Any technology can be used or abused, anyway, but that shouldn't stop progress too much if the benefits far outweigh the costs or added danger.
Now that I've said that... What are the real benefits of this technology, anyway, other than tracking where someone is travelling on his holiday right now, and the above reason? I can't imagine.
I am not devoid of humor.