Slashdot Mirror
Privacy, Mobile Phones, and Ubiquitous Data Collection
ChelleChelle writes "Participatory sensing technologies are greatly expanding the possible uses of mobile phones in ways that could improve our lives and our communities (for example, by helping us to understand our exposure to air pollution or our daily carbon footprint). However, with these potential gains comes great risk, particularly to our privacy. With their built-in microphones, cameras and location awareness, mobile phones could, at the extreme, become the most widespread embedded surveillance tools in history. Whether phones engaged in sensing data are tools for self and community research, coercion or surveillance depends on who collects the data, how it is handled, and what privacy protections users are given. This article gives a number of opinions about what programmers might do to make this sort of data collection work without slipping into surveillance and control."
While lawyers and social scientists work on structural changes to help ensure privacy in participatory sensing, many of the initial and critically important steps toward privacy protection will be up to application developers. By innovating to put participants first, we can create systems that respect individuals' needs to control sensitive data. We can also augment people's ability to make sense of such granular data, and engage participants in making decisions about that data over the long term. Through attention to such principles, developers will help to ensure that 4 billion little brothers are not watching us. Instead, participatory sensing can have a future of secure, willing, and engaged participation.
Since when is it up to the application developer to determine what they're going to develop?
I think the real solution to this is royalties. Every single time anyone in government or as a private interest accesses your information, you get paid a dollar (and that doubles every decade). If they profit in any way from accessing your information, you must be given half the profits. This would mean, of course, a record of every time your personal data is accessed, and that wouldn't be a bad thing either.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We need an Open Source mobile phone - not just a Nokia running Maemo or a Neo1973 but one that was built and designed from the ground up to be open source. Have the firmware for the baseband & the OS all readily available and modifiable and use only off the shelf commodity components, no questionable 'black box' transceiver IC's. I am no overzealous RMS fanboi but I know this is the only way to be sure
I am sick of seeing stories on here about how De Police may or may not be able to activate the Mic on your phone and spy on you but nobody really has any idea how - trojans were mentioned, as well as people claiming this is some obscure part of the GSM standard.
Of course as soon as you transmit something using radio waves the source can be tracked, you can mess around with timing advances to let on you are further away but if you got a van with an antenna after you it won't help you much
If you use a phone or a computer you are susceptible to the same"invasion". I am not going to stop using my computers or my phones.
If you ever walk outside your house/apartment, you're susceptible to the same "invasion", too. I mean, you can't shut off your presence. Not unless you plan on being a hermit in your own house for the rest of your life.
I'm with you. Caring about privacy within reason is one thing. Not trusting anyone, anywhere, for any reason, and actively seeking reasons not to trust is another. I mean, are you sure your compiler isn't putting tracking stuff in your code while you're not looking? Are you sure? How about the compiler that built the compiler you're using from source? What about the hardware? Is there something in the circuitry you don't know about? It can be madness talking to the tinfoils.
Simple solution: don't use a mobile phone. I haven't owned one for years and to be honest I wouldn't use/carry one if you paid me - not being forever tethered to a communications network and always available to whoever might want to call (or feeling guilty for not taking calls if the phone is turned off) is a truly amazing and freeing experience.
I had exactly the same thought. While it may have been a movie bit, it's already been proven to be possible to tap into someone's cell microphone. I can only imagine it's a matter of time to tap into the GPS and cameras on these phones.
When everyone has a camera, you tend to end up in photos you didn't intend to be in - sometimes without even noticing.
More phones have GPSes now, and may be able to automatically geotag their photos.
There are providers that offer online photo storage plans right off the phone.
So with those in mind, all it would take is one warrant to search a mobile photo host and run face recognition software, and you have an easily compiled database of who was where and when, and with enough data, the ability to plot your daily habits and location trends, who you know, who they know, areas you and your friends tend to frequent, and by extension what your interests and motives may be, etc.
It's not really a panic about what could happen if we let this get out of hand, as much as it is an observation of what could be done cheaply with practically off the shelf software on a common PC today.
... sleep under a bridge tomorrow.
> Me, I could care less if someone is tracking where I am or what I am
> doing. What difference does it make?
You've obviously never had to lay-low for a while. Ever been stalked by a psychotic ex? Or the ex-bf/gf of a recent break-up?
Some of us haven't made exactly stellar choices in life. And sometimes when people are in an extreme emotional state, it's nice to give them time to cool off while not giving them more information than what's prudent.
The potential for someone to google my cell GPS makes the hair on my neck stand up. Even though I make better choices these days, not everyone forgives-and-forgets.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org