TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Go Ahead, Just Try to Disappear

Go Ahead, Just Try to Disappear

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Mon, 3 Jan 2005 08:24:42 -0500

COLUMN ONE

Global positioning technology on mobile phones and other devices can
track errant workers, teens or even pets. The price is privacy.

By David Colker
Times Staff Writer

As her daughter enjoyed a weekend road trip, Donna Butler sat back
home 120 miles away at her personal computer and watched a blue dot
tick slowly across the screen.

But not slowly enough.

"They were going 85 on the interstate where the speed limit is 70,"
said Butler, who interrupted 17-year-old Danielle's getaway to let her
know, " 'I will personally come up there and drive you home.' "

It would have been easy to find her. Whenever Danielle is away from
her central Florida home, her mobile phone uses a global positioning
system to transmit her precise location, which her mother can track
online.

Developed originally as a military tool, GPS is used widely by
drivers, hikers and boaters to figure out where they are. A new
generation of relatively cheap GPS-equipped devices can tell others
too -- allowing people for the first time to keep constant tabs on
their rebellious teens, wandering spouses or loafing employees.

That prospect comforts mothers like Butler, but it concerns some who
see ever more powerful and invasive technology eroding a sense of
personal privacy.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gps27dec27.story

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