MONITORING EVERYTHING

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A federal effort to make it easier to pinpoint the location of people making emergency 911 calls from mobile phones means that by 2002, cell-phones sold in the United States will be equipped with advanced wireless tracking technology. Various plans already under way include alerting cell-phone users when they approach a nearby McDonald’s, telling them which items are on sale, or sending updates to travelers about hotel vacancies or nearby restaurants with available tables. One Florida company wants to provide parents with wireless watchbands that they can use to keep track of their children.

Although the commercial prospects for wireless location technology may be intriguing, and the social benefits of better mobile 911 service are undisputed, privacy-rights advocates are worried. By allowing location-based services to proliferate, you’re opening the door to a new realm of privacy abuses. What if your insurer finds out you’re into rock climbing or late-night carousing in the red-light district? What if your employer knows you’re being treated for AIDS at a local clinic? The potential is there for inferences to be drawn about you based on knowledge of your whereabouts.

Until recently, location-based services belonged more in the realm of science fiction than to commerce. Although satellite-based Global Positioning System technology has been commercially available for some time for airplanes, boats, cars, and hikers, companies have only recently begun manufacturing GPS chips that can be embedded in wireless communications devices.[i] GPS uses satellite signals to determine geographic coordinates that indicate where the person with the receiving device is situated. (GPS monitoring technology will be discussed in much greater detail later in the chapter.)

Real-life improvements in the technology have come largely from research initiatives by start-up companies in the United States, Canada, and Europe as well as from large companies like IBM, which recently formed a “pervasive computing” division to focus on wireless technologies such as location-based services.

Location technology is a natural extension of ebusiness. It’s no surprise that a whole new ecology of small companies has been formed to focus on making it all more precise.

For instance, Peter Zhou helped to create a chip called “Digital Angel” that could be implanted beneath human skin, enabling his company to track the location of a person almost anywhere using a combination of satellites and radio technology. After all, he reasoned, wouldn’t the whereabouts of an Alzheimer’s patient be important to relatives? Wouldn’t the government want to keep track of paroled convicts? Wouldn’t parents want to know where their children are at 10 p.m., 11 p.m., or any hour of the day?

A review of Digital Angel’s commercial potential, though, revealed concern over the possibility of privacy abuses.[ii] So Professor Zhou, the chief scientist for Applied Digital Solutions, a company in Palm Beach, Florida, which makes embedded devices for tracking livestock, altered his plans for Digital Angel, which is about the size of a dime, so that instead of being implanted it could be affixed to a watchband or a belt.

Embedding technology in people is too controversial. But that doesn’t mean a system capable of tracking people wherever they go won’t have great value.”

Although Digital Angel is still in the prototype stage, Applied Digital Solutions is planning to make it commercially available in 2002.

That Professor Zhou found himself in the middle of the privacy debate is no surprise, given the growing interest in location-based services. Through the use of existing cellular communications technology or the Global Positioning System, researchers’ ability to track wireless devices more precisely is growing.[iii]

Some of the world’s largest wireless carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, Vodafone of Britain, and NTT DoCoMo of Japan are promoting the technology, in addition to dozens of small companies in the United States and Europe.

The SignalSoft Corporation, based in Boulder, Colorado, develops software that allows tourists or business travelers to use their mobile phones to obtain information on the closest restaurants or hotels in a given city.[iv] Meanwhile Cell-Loc Inc., a Canadian company, is already testing a wireless service in Austin, Texas, and in Calgary, Alberta, that, after determining a caller’s location, delivers detailed driving directions.

Some companies are even more ambitious. Webraska, a French company that recently secured $60 million in financing from investors in the United States and Europe, plans to map every urban area in the world and allow these maps to be retrieved in real time on wireless devices.

Yet while businesses around the world seek to improve the quality of location-based services, the biggest impetus behind the advancement of the technology has come from the federal government, through its effort to improve the precision of locating wireless 911 emergency calls. Nearly a third of the 260 million 911 calls made in 2000 came from cell phones, according to the National Emergency Number Association.

With the number of wireless users growing, the Federal Communications Commission has determined that by the end of 2002, carriers will need to begin equipping either cell-phones or their communications networks with technology that would allow authorities to determine the location of most callers to within 300 feet, compared with current systems that can locate them within about 600 feet. For example, Verizon Wireless and Western Wireless have chosen to develop a network-based system that pinpoints the signal on a handset using the existing cellular network to determine the location, whereas other carriers including Sprint PCS, Alltel, and Nextel favor handsets equipped with GPS chips. Supporters of the initiative, called “E-911” for “enhanced 911,” expect the technology’s precision to be even better than the federally mandated 300-foot radius.

If your cell-phone is on while you’re driving, you’ll be able to tell which intersection you’re at. Although the E-911 initiative has driven wireless carriers in the

United States to improve their location technology, industry groups have started to grapple with privacy issues. The Wireless Advertising Association, a group of carriers, advertising agencies and device manufacturers, encourages companies to allow consumers to choose whether they want location-based services. The association will endorse companies that adhere to the policy.

And, late in 2000, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, a Washington group that represents several hundred wireless companies, submitted a proposal for privacy guidelines for location-based wireless services to the Federal Communications Commission. The principles of the proposal suggested that companies inform each customer about the collection and use of location-sensitive information, provide customers with the opportunity to consent to the collection of location information before it is used, ensure the security of any information collected, and provide uniform rules and privacy expectations so consumers are not confused when they travel in different regions or use different kinds of location-based services.

People are justifiably concerned with the rapidity with which this technology is being deployed. They need to be assured that there is no conspiracy to use this information in an underhanded way.

[i]John R. Vacca, Satellite Encryption, Academic Press, 1999.

[ii]John R. Vacca, Net Privacy: A Guide to Developing & Implementing an Ironclad ebusiness Privacy Plan, McGraw-Hill, 2001.

[iii]John R. Vacca, Wireless Broadband Networks Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 2001.

[iv]John R. Vacca, i-mode Crash Course, McGraw-Hill, 2002.



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Computer Forensics. Computer Crime Scene Investigation
Computer Forensics: Computer Crime Scene Investigation (With CD-ROM) (Networking Series)
ISBN: 1584500182
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 263
Authors: John R. Vacca

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