Cell Phones: Tracking Devices That Happen To Make Calls

An anonymous reader writes "An article in the NY Times argues that the devices we call 'cell phones' should instead be called 'trackers.' It would help remind the average user that whole industries have sprung up around the mining and selling of their personal data — not to mention the huge amount of data requested by governments. Law professor Eben Moglen goes a step further, saying our cell phones are effectively robots that use us for mobility. 'They see everything, they're aware of our position, our relationship to other human beings and other robots, they mediate an information stream around us.' It's interesting to see such a mainstream publication focus on privacy like this; the authors say that since an objects name influences how people think about the object, renaming 'cell phones' could be an simple way to raise privacy awareness."

Comments

Nope!

[Greyfox]

The cellular network has to know where you are to route calls to you. Back when they first came out, someone published an article about using cellular information to locate a person with his cell phone to within 36 feet. There is a wealth of information that can be found out about you using your cell phone even if it's a 10 year old completely dumb phone (My parents are still using one of my hand-me-downs from the '90s!)

Morale of this story is when you go off to murder that guy, leave your cell phone at home (Or stick it in the wife's glove box!) Bin Laden's courier would take the battery out of his until he was in the next town over.

Re:Nope

[symbolset]

You don't have to make a call to be triangulated. That bars signal level indicator, what is it doing? It's pinging every tower in range.