Wireless trackinggreenspun.com : LUSENET : Poole's Roost II : One Thread |
Throw in DNA finger printing and video monitoring and---voila, it's a Brave New World.
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-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001
As Wireless Tracking Is Born, Does Privacy Die? Simon RomeroNew York Times Service Monday, March 5, 2001
NEW YORK 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.
He uses a wireless tracking service to monitor his fleet of six pickup trucks. The equipment alerted him recently when one of his trucks turned out to be 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 estimated at nearly $600 million and is forecast to approach $5 billion within three years, according to IDC, a technology research company. A U.S. government effort to make it easier to pinpoint the location of people making emergency 911 calls from mobile phones will mean that by next year cell phones sold in the United States will be equipped with advanced wireless tracking technology.
Various plans include alerting cell phone users when they approach a nearby McDonald's restaurant, 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 Dempsey, senior staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group. "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."
Satellite-based Global Positioning System technology has been commercially available for some time for airplanes, boats, cars and hikers, but companies have only recently begun manufacturing so-called GPS chips that can be embedded in wireless communications devices. The technology uses satellite signals to determine geographic coordinates that indicate where the person with the receiving device is situated.
Improvements in the technology have come about largely from the research initiatives of several start-up companies in the United States, Canada and Europe, and from large companies like International Business Machines Corp., 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 IBM. "It's no surprise that a whole new ecology of small companies has been formed to focus on making it all more precise."
For example, Peter Zhou helped to create a chip called Digital Angel that could be implanted beneath human skin, enabling his company - Applied Digital Solutions of Palm Beach, Florida - 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 the commercial potential, though, revealed concern over the potential for privacy abuses. The device has been altered so it can be affixed to a watchband or a belt. The company plans to make it commercially available this year.
Some of the world's largest wireless carriers, like Verizon Wireless Inc., Vodafone PLC of Britain and NTT DoCoMo Inc. of Japan, are promoting location technology, in addition to dozens of small companies in the United States and Europe.
SignalSoft Corp., 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, while Cell-Loc Inc., a Canadian company, is testing a wireless service in Austin, Texas, and in Calgary, Alberta, that, after determining a caller's location, delivers detailed driving directions. Webraska Mobile Technologies, a French company, plans to map every urban area in the world and allow these maps to be retrieved in real time on wireless devices.
Late last year, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, a Washington-based group that represents several hundred wireless companies, submitted a proposal for privacy guidelines for location-based wireless services to the Federal Communications Commission.
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."
-- Anonymous, March 05, 2001
There are so many benefits to this technology -- and an equal number of concerns.
(I'm going to sound like a conspiracy-theorist here.....) I don't really think it's going to matter how many regulations are enacted and/or put in place; if companies (governments, agencies, etc.) want information on you or your whereabouts, they're going to get it, the laws be damned; at least if the privacy problems on the Internet are any indication. (They say they won't sell your info, but then they do.)
Then again, the day you were born and a birth certificate was filed on you, you pretty much lost any semblance of privacy. It just got worse when you got a Social Security number.
I just saw a piece last night about a suburban neighborhood (I forget where) in which the residents all contributed $250+/- per household and bought a video surveillance system. Some group (ACLU-like) was/is suing them, but the residents are adamant: it has resulted in a marked decrease in crime in their community. These people are willing to trade-off a little privacy for safety. Don't know if I can argue with that. A similar system is in place in Britain somewhere and from all reports, it also works.
I think as time goes on people become either more receptive or resigned to certain things. We tolerate much more now than we did in, say, the 1950s. But is that a justification? I really don't know.
Interesting stuff, Lars. I think I'll be following this one (as it were).
-- Anonymous, March 06, 2001
Well Pat, move on over there girlfriend, I'll be a conspiracy partner w/ya.In the insurance industry right now, we, the agents get ALL pertinent info via the net. Social Security number and presto:
1. Credit report
2. Clue report, how many accidents, how much paid etc..
3. Add = Additional drivers, and it TELLS ALL who live in house w/you along with their social security numbers.
4. Motor vehicle reports
A few states will NOT allow it, WV being one.
Too much info available, privacy? I dont really think there is such a thing anymore.
Sad, but we do tolerate it.
FWIW, insurance companies wont even write a simple tenant policy any longer IF credit is bad.
-- Anonymous, March 06, 2001
Sumer,I didn't know you worked in insurance! My wife and I ran the family agency back in NC for a few years before we moved out here to Birmingham. (One of many hats that I was wearing at the time just to make ends meet.)
I have to be honest, too: I don't miss it. One hurricane (Fran) was enough to cure me. :)
Clue report ...
My complaint isn't just about the possible invasion of privacy, it's that the darned reports are often inaccurate and it takes an act of Congress to get them straightened out.
I don't know if they've improved the Clue in the past few years, but they used to be NOTORIOUS for claiming an accident on a vehicle that had been purchased used (ie, the PREVIOUS owner had had the wreck, NOT the current owner).
I also strongly disagree with using credit reports in underwriting. Many states have passed laws to prevent that, and I personally agree with that.
But tell me: how many times a day do you have someone walk in, ask for auto insurance, claim that their driving record is "perfect," and you order the MVR and it's about three pages long? :)
If I had a dollar for everytime that happened to us, I could PAY for the Spring Fling all by my lonesome! :)
-- Anonymous, March 06, 2001
But tell me: how many times a day do you have someone walk in, ask for auto insurance, claim that their driving record is "perfect," and you order the MVR and it's about three pages long? :)If I had a dollar for everytime that happened to us, I could PAY for the Spring Fling all by my lonesome! :)
Now just how do you think I'm getting to the spring fling:-)
Actually the longest one I got was 7 pages I've been in insurance for over 12 years. Clue has not improved much, but now we the agents, must run reports from place called Choicepoint off the net.
you are correct, IF they are wrong, it takes an act of congress to correct it. We also now order the ADD, and I ordered mine, shoot, it revealed the person I purchased my home from as living w/me!!
Not very accurate and I do wish they would ban it in Ohio. We are taking a beating w/these reports. Gone are the days of 'sneakin' one thru!! I didnt know you did insurance either, I did claims for bout a year. I luved claims. go figure :-)
-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001
"ChoicePoint"? That wouldn't be the ChoicePoint whose subsidiary is Database Technologies, would it?
Hmmmm.....interesting.
-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001
Sumer,The problem is, they stopped trusting the local agents. A few bad apples (guys and gals who'd write anyone, anytime) made it hard on the rest of us. I'd NEVER write a choice policy on someone I didn't know and trust, but if it was someone that I DID trust, I wanted to place 'em with my best company.
And there we were, coming off the Bush recession. A lot of people had gotten into money trouble (this was the poorest part of NC, after all) and more than a few had filed bankruptcy. But I knew that they were great risks otherwise. Try telling that to the company, though ...
I wouldn't have minded claims, not if I was the guy who got to write the checks and make people happy. As an agent, though, all I got to do was listen to people scream aimlessly about why it was "taking so long" to settle their claim.
(The fact that there were 40 other claims with the same company, in the same county, many of which were catastrophic, requiring emergency service, didn't impress them. They wanted their refrigerator and VCR *fixed NOW*, by gum!)
Trish,
Insurance companies were among the first to use computers, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same company.
Shoot, Ross Perot made his mint off of computer programs that would generate standard forms for insurance agencies. (Or something like that.)
-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001
It *is* the same one, Stephen. Surely you recognize Database Technologies, don't you? Why, that's the company that "purged the voter registration rolls" in Florida. How amusing to have work done by their parent company identified by someone as being "error-prone".
And the funniest (?) part of all this is that if you go to ChoicePoint's web site, they are pretty damn proud of having testified before the Civil Rights Commission over all of that. The "announcement" is noted on the front page.
-- Anonymous, March 07, 2001
Pat: Thanks for the heads up, I didnt know that.I do know they are changing to a different set up here in about 8 more days.
I can tell you Stephen that times have changed, I work for an agency and I have to write new bus. that is my job. I am picky, to say the least.
If and when i see a clue revealing great $$$ on umbi, I am very hesitant to say the least. Now favors are one thing, but I have seen some shady real shady stuff transpire and I wont have notta to do with it as a matter of fact, I turned down a job becuase of that.
I studied hard to get my P&C, i'm NOT losing it for NOone.
I think i'll mosey on over to the non agent choicepoint site. and see what pat is talking bout. :-)
-- Anonymous, March 08, 2001