Are they watching us?

Eweek today has an editorial about the use of GPS enabled cell phones that will enable 911 calls to located you when you are having an emergency. This is very similar to the concerns with OnStar the service provide with most General Motors vehicles.

You're out on the road. Suddenly you get a sharp chest pain, radiating to your arm. You can fight the pain just enough to dial 911 on your cell phone, but that's all you can do, and you sure as hell can't speak.

If you were on a land line phone (other than maybe a VoIP line; that complicates things), they would know exactly where you are, because the phone number you called from is associated with a specific address. But the 911 dispatcher doesn't know where you and your cell phone are, and in fact it's not obvious to which 911
dispatcher your call should be routed.

But already you can see privacy issues, even if you want to track your kids. If the network providers (Verizon Wireless, Cingular, etc.) are logging that data then it could fall into the wrong hands. Or perhaps it could fall into the right hands, but in an unpleasant way, such as into your spouse's attorney's hands during divorce
proceedings.

Much as network vendors look on this sort of potential to pay for the upgrades they have made to comply with the E-911 requirements I'm sure they are anxious not to get into the middle of such matters and would probably be happy to require user consent before recording and using any location data. The marketing opportunities bring their own potential for privacy lawsuits and other legal problems, especially the first time someone claims a cell phone ad distracted them into a car accident. It's a tricky dance of convenience vs. trouble, typical of modern technology.

The problem is some future individual or organization is going to take this tracking too far, and crossing line to begin associating specific user information in their marketing and demographic analysis. Then it becomes easier to begin to track individuals on a very large scale. The problem is, the future is probably not far off.