Tracking Big Game

In the news lately is a heated discussion of cell phone tracking.

On the one hand, it is a handy tool to help you locate where you are, where a nearby restaurant is, to get directions, and so on.

But for most of these applications, there is a requirement on the part of the user to accept the tracing. But then there is the more questionable tracking. Read this from the Daily Beast's Cheat Sheet:

"Big Brother may not be watching you, but your cellphone carrier is. Mark Spitz, a German Green Party politician and privacy advocate, was curious about exactly what his cellphone company, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts, so he took them to court. The results were eye-opening: During a six-month period, from August 31, 2009, to February 28, 2010, the company had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates a whopping 35,000 times, tracing his every move. Experts say Spitz has provided an unprecedented look into how cellphone companies track their users. About every seven seconds, your cellphone company will determine the nearest cell tower to efficiently route calls, and then, for billing purposes, track your location and how long the call lasted. In the U.S., telecommunications companies don’t have to report the material they collect, and both the FBI and DEA often use cellphone records to pinpoint suspects. “I want to show the political message that this kind of data retention is really, really big and you can really look into the life of people for six months and see what they are doing where they are,” said Spitz."

The issue, of course, isn't that the technology exists, indeed it does. The issue is whether there is an invasion of privacy implicit in the use of the technology.

I was an early adopter of EZPass, that neat little gadget that allows you to speed through the booths on the Thruway. Of course, I also realized that it would make it so easy for the Thruway Authority to know that you're, er, exceeding the speed limit? Of course, the old ticket and payment method also makes this possible, but not with out a lot more work - probably not worth the effort. But the EZPass system records your car as it enters and exits the Thruway and the whole thing is on a database.

And of course, people are now becoming concerned, for both righteous and not-so-righteous reasons, that wherever they go with their cell phone - somebody knows it, and can use that information.

I'm not sure what my opinion is of this yet, but I will be paying attention.

Comments

Popular Posts