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German Politician Demonstrates Extent of Cellphone Location Tracking

Posted by Soulskill on from the validating-stallman dept.

frnic writes "Deutsche Telekom is tracking its customers' locations and saving the information: '.... as a German Green party politician, Malte Spitz, recently learned, we are already continually being tracked whether we volunteer to be or not. Cellphone companies do not typically divulge how much information they collect, so Mr. Spitz went to court to find out exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts. The results were astounding. In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times. It traced him from a train on the way to Erlangen at the start through to that last night, when he was home in Berlin. Mr. Spitz has provided a rare glimpse — an unprecedented one, privacy experts say — of what is being collected as we walk around with our phones."

11 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Christ ... by ScrewMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And they were worried about Google?!!!

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
    1. Re:Christ ... by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What if they share that info with insurance companies, and you end up paying more for life or car insurance because they flag you for buying alcohol in an amount they consider excessive? Or condoms, or pregnancy tests.

      --
      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    2. Re:Christ ... by Aristos+Mazer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > Then the insurer could rely on positive selection (as opposed to adverse selection of people who didn't consent) as well as monitoring to give you a better rate.

      Nope. If you allow positive selection for those who volunteer, that implies negative selection for anyone who refuses to volunteer, and it would be a short hop from there to assume anyone refusing to share has something to hide. Insuance companies have no "presumption of innocence" requirement.

      You have to ban all tracking of such data to avoid sinister.

    3. Re:Christ ... by davester666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Before 9/11, you were just a local prankster when you bought that stuff, having some fun.

      After 9/11, you would clearly be a member of a small, previously undetected cell which was controlled by an international terrorist organization.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  2. RMS by xororand · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "I don't have a cell phone. I won't carry a cell phone. It's Stalin's dream. Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop."

    1. Re:RMS by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Informative

      They can turn the phone on remotely without your knowledge. The FBI does it routinely... so it's not tinfoil hat stuff, it's real world, documented proof type stuff.

  3. Link to visualization by he-sk · · Score: 5, Informative

    The German newspaper Die Zeit who was given access to this data has a visualization of his whereabouts for the 6 months. Press play and adjust speed with the slider to the right. The data is annotated with short reports of his day glimpsed from his Twitter account and blog.

    http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-vorratsdaten

    --
    Free Manning, jail Obama.
  4. RMS calls the 'tracking devices' by SplashMyBandit · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Richard Stallman (of the Free Software Foundation) calls cellphones 'tracking devices' and the last time I heard him talk he refused to carry one. It can be useful if you think of cellphones in that way (they weren't designed as tracking devices, but they're certainly being used that way now).

  5. Re:I have news! by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. You're right, at the time of the ping the system needs to know where your phone is. It does not need to have a 6 month+ history of where your phone has been.

    2. Billing does not need to keep your lat and long.

    3. Just because a handful of people have been tracked in this manner doesn't mean that the 6.7 billion others should be.

    4. No, we as customers tell the companies how they will operate and not the other way around. If you want to operate as a government sponsored monopoly (by using spectrum purchased from the people) then you get to follow OUR rules.

  6. Re:Duh... by icebraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem is not that they know were you are, is that they know where you were. They definitively don't need six months of logs of your location to route your calls.

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    Dilbert RSS feed
  7. Deutsche Telekom was just complying with the law by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

    In a six-month period â" from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times.

    Germany had a data retention law requiring all phone data logs be saved for 6 months. It was ruled unconstitutional on March 2, 2010. So during the time period of the records in question, Deutsche Telekom was simply complying with German law.