Electronic Footprints ..... Fred O. Williams -- Sept. 26, 2005
Now the technology is proliferating - GPS is standard equipment in most new cell phones - bringing
location tracking into the mainstream and fueling fears about inroads on privacy. Eventually all 182 million U.S. cell subscribers will carry some sort of tracking technology, thanks to federal emergency requirements. In addition, prices are plunging for non-phone GPS gadgets, now available for a few hundred dollars.Privacy concerns aren't stopping people from snapping up the tracking devices in droves, either as a navigation aid or to keep tabs on each other.
"People are worried that other people are watching them - which they are, but there's a need for that," says Chris Vattimo, general manager of Nextel's Western New York office.
At Nextel, which is leading the GPS push among wireless companies, location services are a hot feature with customers, Vattimo said, spurring sales of new handsets. He uses his phone's GPS feature to navigate during trips around the region. With his destination typed in, a service that monitors his location can keep him on track.
"A woman's voice will actually read you directions," he said.
All Nextel phones, which start at $50 with a rate plan, are GPS-capable, Vattimo said. Subscribing to a location service adds $10 to $20 a month to the rate plan. The wireless company recently merged with Sprint but continues to market products under the Nextel name.
Other cellular companies are preparing to launch similar tracking services, taking advantage of the location technology already embedded in the phone.
The ubiquity of location technology is sparking fears about inroads on privacy. Federal authorities can obtain a warrant to read your location from your cell phone, or put their own tracking device on your car without court permission.
"There's not a statue out there that says, "thou shalt not,' " said Chris Hoofnagle, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in San Francisco. As long as a vehicle is in public, there's little privacy protection for its occupant, he said. Police are more frequently getting warrants to "ping" GPS phones in order to locate suspects, and some cities are considering tracking the movements of sex offenders. In Connecticut, a car rental company charged customer James Turner a $450 fee for speeding, based on GPS data, in a widely reported case in 2001.
"For many years it's been generally accepted that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place," said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. The reasoning is that anyone could follow you while you're in public, with or without GPS. "But in the last 10 to 15 years, people question whether that's the right answer," he said.
Tracking someone's every move for days, as electronics can do, is fundamentally different from following someone down the street, privacy advocates argue. What's more, GPS tracking logs can create a record of your movements. "People think "Who wants to track me?' " not realizing that a service provider may preserve a record of their movements for posterity, Tien said.
The law is murky on just who can track you. Private investigators say they and other private citizens are free to put a GPS device on a vehicle. But anti-stalking groups say that state stalking laws contain language against "following" and "surveillance" that apply to GPS trackers. "Cyberstalkers" are taking advantage of GPS technology, according to the state Attorney General's office.
But for law enforcement, the spread of GPS is a benefit. Said Special Agent Paul M. Moskal, spokesman for the FBI in Buffalo: "OnStar, your cell phone - everybody has GPS these days."