Ever Get the Feeling You’re Being Followed?

That lovely app you have on your cell phone… showing you where you are and maybe even offering a navigation system to help you find your way… may have a darker side. Oh, you can smile at the GPS functionality that allows you to know where you teenager might be at any given moment, or smile as you approach a store and get an instant coupon in that store than might save you a pile of money, or Google Latitude can let your friends know you are in the neighborhood… but exactly who knows where you are at any given moment… and may in fact create a permanent record to track your movements… information that can be used later, just in case… by someone… for some reason… that might not matter now… but might really matter then.

So to decrease the initial feeling of paranoia that may be coursing down your spine right now, let’s start by looking at how this little GPS capacity has been used in other countries. The March 26^th New York Times takes this non-touristic visit to Germany for an example: “[As] German Green party [left-leaning] 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.” Spitz had to jump major legal hurdles to get that information, since Germans still treasure their privacy big time, but the results were startling. Yet tracking is hardly new; for years, cell phone companies h ave used that tracking information to switch mobile customers from tower to tower – to maximize signal strength on a moving customer and determine billing charges – but where exactly is all that information stored… and who gets access to it?

For criminal enforcement, even before GPS functionality, the ability to triangulate locations based on movement patterns across cell phone transmitters has allowed the police to verify or challenge alibis based on whereabouts… but with GPS technology and intensive tracking records, it now can get down to which building you are in… and there are even ambient noise tracking systems that can deliver information within a building, even when you are out of satellite range, simply based on the ability to recognize pre-recorded white noise reference standards. Feeling safer… or just a little creeped out? Beware nasty criminals, philandering spouses and teenaged rapscallions… for we can find you!

So like really, what do phone companies in the U.S. actually do with that information? “In the United States, telecommunication companies do not have to report precisely what material they collect, said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who specializes in privacy. He added that based on court cases he could say that ‘they store more of it and it is becoming more precise.’… ‘Phones have become a necessary part of modern life,’ he said, objecting to the idea that ‘you have to hand over your personal privacy to be part of the 21st century.’

“In the United States, there are law enforcement and safety reasons for cellphone companies being encouraged to keep track of its customers. Both the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration have used cellphone records to identify suspects and make arrests… If the information is valuable to law enforc ement, it could be lucrative for marketers. The major American cellphone providers declined to explain what exactly they collect and what they use it for.” NY Times. You know they use the data on an aggregated basis for market research, and if you really want to see what they can do contractually, read that “privacy policy” you “accept” when you sign up with a carrier. And if that information gets in the wrong hands… Do you care?

I’m Peter Dekom, and is that a mini-big brother you’re carrying in your pocket or purse or are you just happy to read my blogs?