Creepy-Tech
Sprint is now marketing a service whereby people can ping the location of another person who is carrying a GPS-equipped Sprint cellphone. They’re aiming it at parents, who can use it to spy on their children, and at families with possibly-disoriented eldery parents (so you can get back at your parents in old age for what they did to you as a kid, I guess). As “Neuroscience and Law Blog” points out: “It is also easy to imagine scenarios where a tracking-enabled cellphone is surreptitiously placed in the possession of, say, a spouse suspected of adultery or a witness to a crime who may provide incriminating evidence to police.” NLB also raises the question of the subtle psychological effects of keeping children under permanent surveillance, including, plausibly, “loss of freedom and possibly stunted opportunities to develop responsibility”.
Sprint is quite creative in finding uses for the service, however:
Using the Global Positioning System, the service allows parents to track up to four cell phones over the Internet or on their own wireless device. Parents can periodically ask the service to find the child’s phone, displaying the location on a road map.
Parents can also set alerts, automatically warning the parent if the child isn’t at a certain place, such as school or soccer practice, at a specific time.
The child’s phone also displays a text message, letting the child know they’ve been searched for and found.
. . . and in euphemizing them:
Sprint officials insist their service isn’t a “Big Brother” tool.
“It’s not about tracking. It’s not about monitoring,” said Dan Gilmartin, Sprint’s marketing manager for location-based services. “It’s about giving parents and caregivers peace of mind that they’re able to find their children’s location.”
How is finding someone’s location at any time, continuously reminding them they’re being watched, and issuing alerts if they aren’t at prescribed locations at the right time, not “tracking” and “monitoring”? (Oh, right – because it’s for the children.)
I recall some years ago one of the big tech firms – I believe Microsoft – devised a tracking system based on the electronic access cards the employees carried: it would track you wherever you were in the building and deliver your email to the nearest terminal, and let colleagues find you on a building map if you weren’t in your office. They scrapped it in a big hurry when employees complained about being monitored. That was then. A Google search on “RFID tracking” now returns an amazing array of applications already in use or development – mostly for product tracking but many with personal-identification components as well (not to mention the numerous implantable RFID-chip projects on the drawing boards or already in testing). This kind of intrusiveness is not merely becoming more common, it’s becoming impossible to resist. Like shopper purchasing profiles linked to credit cards, it happens silently and as part of an almost-unavoidable component of the purchasing procedure, so consumers are subject to it whether they choose or not.
The cellphone thing is just another manifestation of the surveillance culture we’re building, but an especially worrisome one. NLB is right about the obvious potential for abuse – this service essentially turns any cellphone into a “tracking device” like the “bugs” in the old spy movies (and almost as small). Stalking someone? Tuck a cellphone under their car cushion and the phone company will tell you where they are 24/7. (They conveniently provide a roadmap for your enhanced kidnapping efficiency.) Want some extra-judicial spying power? Just call 411 – who needs a search warrant? Want to creep out your victim? Keep pinging them with “I know where you are” messages and watch them slowly go crazy (or, at least as crazy as your kids already are).
Concerns for privacy have temporarily blocked implementation of planned RFID-equipped passports (easily readable by terrorists at up to 100 feet!). There appears to be no organized opposition to the phone-spy program, however. What we really need is some kind of general, robust privacy protection built into law, covering as much of private life as possible. We are already behind the cusp of a technology wave that may make any such protections impossible if we do not move now.
If I could choose between allowing the sale of location-transmitting cell phones and the sale of handguns, I’d pick the cell phones.
Both both can serve a useful purpose, both can be used in an improper way. But only one will kill you.
>What we really need is some kind of general, robust
>privacy protection built into law, covering as much of
>private life as possible.
Including economic privacy?
Define economic privacy, SD.
The principle that, absent probable cause of wrongdoing, one’s economic transactions should be as protected from government monitoring as one’s other activities.
absent probable cause of wrongdoing, one’s economic transactions should be as protected from government monitoring as one’s other activities.
I’d certainly think so. I have no real problem with income-tax withholding or reporting 10-99 earnings, but your general financial transactions like purchases and money transfers should certainly be private, from both government and commercial prying. It’s one of the most pervasive privacy intrusions, and there ought to be protections against it.
Here’s a thought: If you don’t like someone’s services, don’t purchase them. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
SD
The devil, as always, is in the details. Does “wrongdoing” include discriminatory practices? Would things like income tax withholding be allowed? If it does, then I am 100% behind you.
If you don’t like someone’s services, don’t purchase them. Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
I didn’t really think it was going to be hard for someone who didn’t want to spy on anybody else. I was afraid it was going to be hard for someone who didn’t want to be spied on.
As I noted, the problem is that [t]his kind of intrusiveness is not merely becoming more common, it’s becoming impossible to resist. . . . [I]t happens silently and as part of an almost-unavoidable component of the purchasing procedure, so consumers are subject to it whether they choose or not. . . . [T]his [cellphone] service essentially turns any cellphone into a “tracking device”.
Reading comprehension: that isn’t so hard, is it?
Deal onlt with money. No checks. No credit cards. They can already tell where the ‘bad guys’ used their cell phones when they made a call. They caught internet badguys by triangulating in on their cellphone calls. The government can sneak and peak.
Damn, I used my computer, now they know about me.