Posted on 03/26/2011 3:19:40 PM PDT by decimon
A favorite pastime of Internet users is to share their location: services like Google Latitude can inform friends when you are nearby; another, Foursquare, has turned reporting these updates into a game.
But 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. Unlike many online services and Web sites that must send “cookies” to a user’s computer to try to link its traffic to a specific person, cellphone companies simply have to sit back and hit “record.”
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Tracking a customer’s whereabouts is part and parcel of what phone companies do for a living. Every seven seconds or so, the phone company of someone with a working cellphone is determining the nearest tower, so as to most efficiently route calls. And for billing reasons, they track where the call is coming from and how long it has lasted.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I suspect but cant prove that there are RFID in currency.
You could track money easily.
Another example of the collusion between big government and big business. Here in the US being able to locate a cell phone beyond just what cell it was in for technical reasons, was justified for our “protection” in case of a 911 call. And to be honest, some kidnapped children have been found thanks to the location information. However, it could have been implemented with a function button on the phone: whenever you wanted to allow your exact location to be known, the button would have to be pushed giving permission. Notice that option was never raised to the level of a public discussion. No, the FCC just imposed a mandate to the cell phone companies to keep track of the location within I think a 200 foot circle. That of course is now supplemented with GPS information when the phone can resolve a GPS coordinate.
I may just opt for a WiFi-enabled Google voice phone, so I control exactly when I reveal my location and when I don’t.
True.
“How many ways are you being monitored?”
Yes, I know the technology is there.
I was in the mobile phone business, before cellular, and later the first BellSouth agent in my county.
Radio technology was my life from childhood.
I have, however, left the once great USA, with no plan to return.
I have no car, and my mobile has no name association.
If I use it at all, it is maybe a short text msg maybe on an average of once per day.
If the US feds want me, they can find me here on Free Republic, or they can stop my social security payments, haha.
It is also possible not to have a phone with a GPS chip in it.
If you are not on a call it does not track.
Of course if you want all the latest gadgets, bells and whistles that mean that you have to be connected at all times, then your privacy is pretty much gone.
“Evil Alice” posts on FR!
LOL!
Dain bramage:....Beer Store
Dain bramage.....Home
Dain bramage:....Work...............
You just gotta be scared of people who needed a multi-trillion dollar network
of satellites and computers to figure out your habitual routine doncha? LOL
your position... recorded... every 6 minutes.
of course, that’s assuming the samples were evenly distributed through time.
if i created the system, i would only record a new location, if it had changed since the last reading. otherwise, i would just update a field in the existing record. therefore, each sample would have the gps coordinate, t1 and t2. t1 and t2 being the times through which the gps reading was valid.
this would allow me to essentially ignore all the samples of the phone remaining stationary (ie: nighttime) and get a finer time granularity on the samples.
“Of course if you want all the latest gadgets, bells and whistles that mean that you have to be connected at all times, then your privacy is pretty much gone.”
_________________________
Yes, I was much into the latest in communications during
my younger years, and if not for the internet, I would not have lived in Europe for some years, and would not be where I am today, but after age 60, you stop to wonder what it is doing for, and to your life.
If anything, it is destroying the society.
The thought of being watched in public by a camera at most any moment is quite creepy.
You forgot the second battery inside:
4. Wrap in tinfoil.
5. Submerge in salt water (concentrated nitric acid also good)
6. Now exhale.
Yes you can. Re-inserting it is a problem, though...
I went on-line looking for new auto insurance. Put in my ZIP code and up popped a picture of my car in front of my house with mileage pretty darn close - and the question, “Is this the car?” Information obtained during annual auto safety inspections in Texas is part of the open record.
Let's say John Doe was murdered on 1/1/11 at 01:01:01 and his body was found at 30.00.00North by 90.00.00West. What cell towers serve that location? What SIM cards were attached to it at the time the deceased was killed? What other cell towers were those SIM cards attached to and when? Simple database query.
Replace "John Doe was murdered" with "AlexW attended a Tea Party rally".
Call it paranoia if you like.
Turn it off. Wrap it with foil or put it in a metal case.
I actually have a net10 phone so this isnt a problem.
Thanks...not that song’ll be stuck in my head for a couple of hours. At least it’s a “memory song.”
:-)
Till the man come and take you ay-way. ;-)
Or suppose that at the time in question, your phone is somewhere else and your PC calls your number and someone else answers it. Might that be “cover”?
Cover? If the phone has been stolen. Otherwise, who is answering your phone and why? Sounds like trouble to me.
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