NYT article on wireless locating devices.
March 4, 2001
Locating Devices Gain in Popularity but Raise
Privacy Concerns
By SIMON ROMERO
Wireless systems capable of
tracking vehicles and
people all over the planet
are leaving businesses aglow with
new possibilities, and some privacy
advocates deeply concerned.
Companies seeking to tap the
commercial potential of these
technologies are installing wireless
location systems in vehicles,
hand-held computers, cell phones —
even watchbands. Scientists have
developed a chip that can be inserted
beneath the skin, so that a person's
location can be pinpointed anywhere.
One early user of this technology is
David Hancock, the owner of a
small company in Dallas that installs
automobile alarms. Mr. Hancock
uses a wireless tracking service to monitor his fleet of six Dodge Dakota
pickup trucks, and the equipment alerted him recently when one of his trucks
turned up in the parking lot of the Million Dollar Saloon, a strip club.
"When I signed up for this service I told my guys, `Big Brother's keeping an
eye on you, and I'm Big Brother,' " Mr. Hancock said. "After I fired that one
fellow, you bet they all believed me."
These technologies have become one of the fastest-growing areas of the
wireless communications industry. The market for location-based services is
already estimated at nearly $600 million and is forecast to approach $5 billion
within three years, according to IDC, a technology research company.
A federal effort to make it easier to pinpoint the location of people making
emergency 911 calls from mobile phones means that by next year 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.
But while 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, we're opening the door to
a new realm of privacy abuses," said James X. Dempsey, senior staff
counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology. "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. In the 1999 novel "All Tomorrow's Parties" by
William Gibson, the writer who coined the term "cyberspace" back in the
1980's, malfunctioning eyeglasses with location- based technology suddenly
flash up street maps of Rio de Janeiro just when other, more crucial
information is needed.
And 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 G.P.S. chips that can be
embedded in wireless communications devices. G.P.S. uses satellite signals
to determine geographic coordinates that indicate where the person with the
receiving device is situated.
Real-life improvements in the technology have come largely from research
initiatives by start-up companies in the United States, Canada and Europe, and
from large companies like I.B.M., which recently formed a "pervasive
computing" division to focus on wireless technologies like location-based
services.
"Location technology is a natural extension of e-business," said Michel
Mayer, general manager for pervasive computing at I.B.M. "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., or 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. So Professor Zhou, the chief scientist
for Applied Digital Solutions, a company in Palm Beach, Fla., that 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," said Professor Zhou,
a scholarly man who used to be a research scientist at the Max Planck
Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. "But that doesn't mean a system capable of
tracking people wherever they go won't have great value."
While Digital Angel is still in the prototype stage, Applied Digital Solutions is
planning to make it commercially available later this year.
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.
Some of the world's largest wireless carriers, like 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, Colo., 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, while Cell-Loc
Inc., a Canadian company, is already testing a wireless service in Austin,
Tex., 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 $50 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 150 million 911 calls made last year 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 this year 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.
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, while other carriers
including Sprint PCS, Alltel and Nextel favor handsets equipped with G.P.S.
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, we'll be able to tell which
intersection you're at," said Mark Flolid, executive vice president of
SignalSoft, a company that developed early versions of E-911 systems for
wireless phone companies in Europe.
While 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 last year, 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," said Albert Gidari, a lawyer with the Seattle firm of
Perkins Coie, who advised the industry association on the creation of the
proposal. "We need to assure them that there is no conspiracy to use this
information in an underhanded way."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company |
