[Air-L] Your Cell Phone Can Let Everyone Know Where You Are

[Ben Anderson]

Barry Wellman raised this in the mobile society group earlier this  
year vis:

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/cellphone_forensics

there are some interesting issues here such as

- the prevalence of calls being made by others on one's mobile - esp.  
for some social groups
- the fact that it is the device not the person that is being  
tracked... Younger siblings swap/share cell phones.
- the awareness of traceability and the response = to switch phones  
off /leave them on but at home/or give them to someone else beforehand  
- the perfect alibi

You don't need GPS - many phones can triangulate themselves using the  
transmitters they can 'see' and google are now offering a beta  
location service based on this.

http://www.google.co.uk/gmm/mylocation.html?hl=en_GB

Ben

On 19 Dec 2007, at 17:54, Charlie Balch wrote:

> I've been reading some recent buzz in the popular press about the
> implications of GPS enabled cell phones.
>
> Modern phones allow for some fascinating possibilities. The location  
> of a
> cell phone can be accurately and historically tracked with the  
> possibility
> of notification to other parties of excess speed or passing  
> boundaries. For
> instance, I'm not sure how the court case ended but there was a recent
> conflict over traffic radar and the more accurate cell phone GPS speed
> tracking. I'm sure the possibility of tracking persons of interest  
> is not
> lost on law officials and know that such options are marketed to  
> parents.
>
> By the way, http://www.bitpim.org/ is cool cell phone software that  
> I don't
> think has anything to do with your location.
>
> Charles Balch
> Professor of Computer Information Systems
> Arizona Western College


----
Dr Ben Anderson
Director
Technology and Social Change Research Centre
University of Essex
+44 (0) 7710 187 806
http://chimeraweb.essex.ac.uk/tasc