Location Services Raise Privacy Concerns

megahurt writes "Location-based services are becoming more common, and the features they add to mobile devices can be useful and even fun. But the downside is that everyone who reads the posting will know the user isn't home. On top of that, some services, such as Foursquare, can be linked to Twitter feeds. Peter Eckersley, senior staff technologist, says there are many situations in which the location data that is kept could be misused. Many of the providers of services say in their privacy policies they will give up the data in cases where it is subpoenaed. That isn't always from law enforcement; sometimes the data can be used in civil lawsuits such as divorce cases."

Comments

You don't have to use these services

[Pete Venkman]

People don't have to use these services.

Re:You don't have to use these services

[phooka.de]

People are stupid (or rather they are uninformed).

That's what the law is there for (amongst other things): to protect the uninformed masses and the stupid so you don't have to be an expert in every field you encounter in your daily life.

Re:You don't have to use these services

[Rogerborg]

Civil law deals with fraud, malice and bad faith. I'm not so sure that it's there to give any reasonable, educated person of average intellect (which is what the law calls the "uninformed masses") with an Undo button for their voluntary actions. That's certainly not how it works in criminal statues.

Oh, I thought I could just sell this iPhone I "found". Undo. Wait, getting into a consensual bar fight means we're both guilty of affray? Undo. The speed limit here is 30, officer? Undo.

If ignorance of the law is not an excuse, general purpose ignorance probably isn't either.

Re:So...

[gstoddart]

If only there were some kind of sense, possibly a common one, that would help avoid these nasty problems.

You know, new technology creates new situations which previously hadn't needed to be considered.

We're talking a very small number of years that the exact location you were standing when you did something is a matter of electronic record.

Common sense being neither, and the total number of years in which people have had to contend with such issues is relatively low. While you can sound all smug and say "everyone should know that", the reality is that most people with a smart phone barely know what all it does, let alone the legal ramifications of carrying one around. And, the number of people who have had their location subpoenaed for a tweet they made as part of their divorce case? Probably a very small number.

Why is the Slashdot crowd so myopic about technology that they think all of these issues have been around for decades, or that everyone who happens to use what is now a fairly ubiquitous technology is fully dialed into all of the aspects of that technology?

Some of these are actually quite new social and legal considerations. Acting like you've known this forever makes you sound like a smug idiot.

Re:So...

[PatHMV]

Not to go all insensitive clod on you, but.... When I was a kid, a member of my immediate family passed away. The newspaper printed the obituary and noted (against my dad's instructions) that the funeral would be in another town, in a distant part of the state. When we returned home several days later, we found that burglars had broken into the house while we were gone. Eventually it was confirmed that the burglars had read the obituaries, saw we would be out of town, and used that information to decide to rob us. So, there are very GOOD reasons for people who are doing nothing wrong to also not want the world at large to know their location.