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December 11, 2000
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Someone to Watch Over You
Do you really want your cell phone to tell the world where you are all the time?
By ALLANNA SULLIVAN
In many ways, it's a godsend: a phone that knows where you are at any time, and can direct you to the nearest store, restaurant, movie -- whatever you need. It's the ultimate in convenience, advocates say.
But others have a different name for it: stalker.
Privacy advocates say the ability to track users -- the crucial element for many visions of mobile commerce -- is the No. 1 privacy concern related to the growth of the wireless industry.
"This is as close as we've ever come to Big Brother," says Andrew Shen, policy analyst for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "It creeps people out."
Wireless carriers and the tiny companies making up the fledgling wireless-location industry are hoping that phone customers won't have the same concerns as Mr. Shen. But however they feel, development of the technology will proceed, driven by a mandate from the Federal Communications Commission requiring wireless phone companies to be able to locate the origin of 911 calls by October of next year. Law-enforcement officials have been frustrated by 911 calls from cell phones because they frequently can't locate the caller -- something they have been able to do with wired phones for years.
Business Opportunity
Adding this location capability will cost at least $1 billion. So to help defray the added expense, the wireless industry is delving into a plethora of new location-based businesses, such as concierge-type services, directory and mapping services and tracking the movement of truck fleets. Right now, carriers can locate a cell-phone user to within a few miles. But by late next year, wireless carriers will be required by the FCC to pinpoint a caller's location within 50 to 100 meters, depending upon how they go about it.
Triangulation, one technique that will be used, locates callers by measuring how far they are from at least two or three communications towers, by tracking the length of time it takes for the signal to reach the different towers. Another technology matches patterns created as radio waves are emitted by cell phones and then bounce off buildings and other obstacles to a communications tower where the waves are matched against a database of thousands of pattern variations that can indicate the origin of a call.
A third technology, patented by SnapTrack Inc., a San Jose, Calif., subsidiary of Qualcomm Inc., San Diego, uses the global positioning system of 24 satellites that orbit the Earth -- the system originally set up solely for military use and still employed by the Pentagon to launch cruise missiles. A chip built into a cellular phone receives signals beamed down from at least one of the satellites, allowing the handset, in conjunction with a carrier's computer system, to analyze the caller's position.
The problem is that while these technologies will help you locate places more conveniently, they also will allow others to track you. SnapTrack Chief Executive Steve Poizner says even the most well-intentioned carrier can't always control disgruntled employees, overzealous police or even hackers who may misuse the location data. "All you need are a few incidents of misuse and the general public will be very upset," he says.
So far, though, only SnapTrack's technology is addressing this privacy concern, Mr. Poizner says. A feature on phones using his company's technology allows the caller to shut down the implanted chip, cutting off receipt of the satellite's signal, except when the user dials 911.
"Obviously, when someone punches in 911, they are giving permission to the police to track their whereabouts," Mr. Poizner says. "But otherwise, if that privacy button is shut down, it's not possible to be tracked."
Indeed, consumers should always be able to control who sees their location information, says Ben Linder, vice president of marketing for Openwave Systems Inc., a Redwood, Calif., designer of software for the wireless-carrier industry.
Mr. Linder adds that if users want to take the next technological step and receive services of value, they have to be willing to give up their privacy. But they also have to be able to believe that they can trust the carrier. A user will always have to give the carrier permission to release his location.
He believes that one way of controlling the use of location information may be to give permission for one transaction at a time. For instance, if a user wants to know about ski sales in a certain part of town, he gives permission for the carrier to provide vendors with his location only on that day.
People whose carriers use the network systems based on triangulation and pattern-matching, he adds, will have to depend on their carriers to protect their privacy. That's because carriers do the tracking, and users have no control over whether or not they are tracked unless they turn off the cell phone. Federal law prohibits a carrier from releasing the identity and location of a customer to a third party without permission.
Yet while there is a law banning the disclosure of such information, right now "there is no there is no technology to prevent a release," says Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp., a Green Brook, N.J., activist firm trying to preserve privacy on the Internet. He says there is always someone out there ready and willing to violate the law, and the assumption is that in some cases it will be violated.
Building a Profile
Mr. Catlett says that once location systems are up and running, location companies and carriers "will be able to build an enormous profile of a person's physical movements. And if you couple that with the browsing and purchasing profile Web sites, such as DoubleClick [Inc. of New York] or Amazon.com [Inc. of Seattle], already have, it could be an Orwellian nightmare." |
