Posted on 03/01/2002 5:16:24 PM PST by truthandlife
The nation's cell phone service providers will soon know exactly where every one of their customers is, at all times, and privacy rights groups are asking what they plan to do with the information.
All U.S. carriers are under Federal Communications Commission orders to make it possible for police to locate cell phones calling 911, something police can't do now. Carriers plan to use the same systems to sell services like helping stranded motorists even if they don't know their location, or finding the closest restaurant.
Because people with cell phone generally always carry their phone with them, the FCC regulations give the thriving market for personal information something its never had a chance to get: the exact locations at all times of more than 140 million people.
"There are some things you don't mind other people knowing, but your location isn't one of them," said Gary Laden, a privacy program director for BBBOnline, a Better Business Bureau subsidiary.
Private details that become public knowledge every time people visit Web pages and leave information, every address that the U.S. government sells, or every ATM transaction that dutifully records the time are just some of the ways that technology has been tracking individuals. But knowing someone's location at all times adds a significant new twist to tracking information about people.
Sprint is already offering an Enhanced 911 (E911) system in Rhode Island and sells a pair of phones that work on the system. In a year, Verizon Wireless says nearly half of all new handsets activated will have this capability. The FCC expects 95 percent of the cell phones sold in the United States by 2005 will meet the FCC guidelines.
Neither AT&T Wireless nor Verizon Wireless offer any E911 or related services yet. But both say they do not sell the information they already collect from their subscribers, such as a home address used to send a monthly bill. And they don't plan to do anything different with the location information once they do offer those services.
"We already know where you live, but we haven't made that available to anyone," Verizon Wireless representative Nancy Stark said.
Travis Larson, a spokesman for the wireless trade group Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association said the worry isn't so much the carriers, but the independent companies that provide the commercial services.
"Not all companies in this space will be CTIA members," he said. "Then you have a group of businesses unregulated."
So far, backers of two consumer privacy initiatives say they've begun talks with carriers about what they plan to do with the information they collect.
On Wednesday, AT&T Wireless spokesman Ritch Blasi said the company is the first U.S. carrier to have its privacy policies reviewed and approved by Truste, a coalition that approves online privacy policies, whose sponsors include AT&T Wireless, AOL Time Warner, Intel, Microsoft and others.
Truste and AT&T Wireless are also working together to create a uniform policy for what carriers should do with the information they collect. Blasi and a spokesman for Truste said they want carriers to tell subscribers that their location can be tracked, and what plans, if any, they have for the information.
Also Wednesday, supporters of a recently approved privacy standard known as P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences) say they've also begun a dialogue with wireless carriers.
Some versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer use P3P to automate the process of deciding if a Web site's privacy policies are good enough for a user. People can pre-load their Web browsers with preferences, such as whether they want a Web site to accept a browser's cookies filled with personal information. If the browser is directed toward a Web page, it'll seek out the privacy policies and determine if they match the preferred ones. If not, the Web page doesn't load.
Josh Freed, a spokesman for the Internet Education Foundation, said backers of P3P want to offer the same type of function to cell phone customers. "This way, every time there is an exchange of data, the phone alerts you if there is a conflict," he said.
The effort is very new, Freed and others warn, and is preceding even the existing technology.
"We have a blank page in front of us now," said J. Walter Hyer, AT&T Wireless chief privacy officer.
"During the more than 3,600 indoor and outdoor, suburban, rural and highway pre-service tests, the Geometrix system provided wireless caller location accuracy which substantially bettered the FCC’s accuracy requirements. The FCC requires a network solution to be accurate within 100 meters for 67% of the calls and 300 meters for 95% of the calls. The Geometrix system’s test results showed it to be accurate within 53 meters (174.9 ft) for 67% of the calls and accurate within 132 meters (435.6 ft) for 95% of the calls. Grayson Wireless installed, tested and activated the Geometrix system in St. Clair County in less than 60 days."
Who the heck is Pablo Escobar?
I made a blanket statement. My bad. MY cell phones (all 5 that I have had) are incapable of transmitting when turned off. This is shown by watching current draw when inactive. The current draw is ZERO, indicating that nothing is drawing current, ergo, nothing being xmitted!
Do you have EVIDENCE to the contrary?
In another side note, I find it interesting that people are always saying we are being watched, monitored, spyed upon, overheard, recorded, taped, and othewise having out "privacy" intruded upon. I worked on a space project back in the 80's and much to the consternation of the high scientific mucky-mucks, the amount of data amassed would take 100 years to analyse.
I am currently involved in legal investigation of hard drives. It takes hundreds of hours to analyse the corrupted data on a HD even by trained law enforcement gurus.
Does anyone actually think that multiple agencies are gathering gigi ^to the gigi - bytes of data with no hope of analyses? Doubt it. I coould be wrong but I welcome reasonable challenges.
"The feds will fill it in."
Boy Howdy is that ever the truth!
Actually, that was his secod post on this forum.
Look at his profile and do a FIND IN FORUM search.
His first post was just to call Sean Hannity an uneducated redneck.
He is only here to ruffle feathers, and doesn't have the guts to support his statements.
I stand by my previous comment. If one reads the article, one refrains from asking stupid questions.
Conventional RDF from an airplane making a "running fix" as it flys along takes only seconds today to fix you within a few hundred meters, or closer with better gear located on the ground, after they have gotten your rough position.
It works much better in the country, where your signal is not reflected and "ghosting" all over the place, it's MUCH tougher to find you in a city where false images abound due to the abundance of ferrocement structures and electrical wires etc etc.
Really, I STRONGLY suggest you read "Killing Pablo" to learn about this subject.
Hmmmm?
Do your research next time.
heheheheh
"Q: Why can't Budddhists vaccum in corners?"
"A: Because they have no attachments."
That is Rich!
Are you serious? The multi billionaire leader of the Medellin Cartel, who became a fugitive within his home country Colombia in the early 90s, killed hundreds of police and soldiers, killed dozens of judges, assassinated presidential candidates, blew up a full jetliner to get one enemy, that Pablo Escobar. You really never heard of him? That astounds me.
We sent Delta and CIA secret US Army units to Colombia to help track him when he went fugitive. These trackers used all the cell phone and RDF tricks I have mentioned to find him. Read "Killing Pablo" by Mark Bowden.
I made a blanket statement. My bad. MY cell phones (all 5 that I have had) are incapable of transmitting when turned off. This is shown by watching current draw when inactive. The current draw is ZERO, indicating that nothing is drawing current, ergo, nothing being xmitted! Do you have EVIDENCE to the contrary?
Read the book and find out how they do it.
In another side note, I find it interesting that people are always saying we are being watched, monitored, spyed upon, overheard, recorded, taped, and othewise having out "privacy" intruded upon. I worked on a space project back in the 80's and much to the consternation of the high scientific mucky-mucks, the amount of data amassed would take 100 years to analyse. I am currently involved in legal investigation of hard drives. It takes hundreds of hours to analyse the corrupted data on a HD even by trained law enforcement gurus. Does anyone actually think that multiple agencies are gathering gigi ^to the gigi - bytes of data with no hope of analyses? Doubt it. I coould be wrong but I welcome reasonable challenges.
You are correct in the general, searching is the big challenge, but as computers have become more powerful and faster, setting up programs to pluck specific digital ID Codes from the cell phone transmissions becomes a trivial exercise. Once they have isolated target cell ID codes, tracking them in real or past time is a joke.
You assume too much. There are very good posters who have been banned for the mere fact that the moderators don't like what they have to say. In otherwords for their opinions.
Just because you happen to agree with one doesn't mean that they are all correct.
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