- Picture the scene. You are supposed to be attending a
sales conference in Crewe when you are woken from your slumbers by the
ring tone from your company-issue mobile phone. 'I'm there now,' you lie
to your boss from the comfort of your hotel bed, safe in the knowledge
that she will never know otherwise.
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- But, alas, your mobile phone uses a new technology which
means your boss can pinpoint your exact location. You are soon picking
up your P45 and handing back the phone.
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- It is the stuff of slackers' nightmares. But 'location-based
tracking' - to use the mobile phone industry's terminology - is about to
become reality.
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- Mobile-phone networks will soon be able to pinpoint the
precise location of a handset owner to within 10 metres or less. From the
middle of next year many phones will carry Global Satellite Positioning
chips, while another new technology, known as 'Triangulation', can pinpoint
a mobile-phone user's whereabouts by bouncing signals off three phone masts
to establish an exact set of co-ordinates.
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- The concept has already been warmly embraced by a number
of firms. 'It's popular with fleet and logistics firms who want to know
where their lorries are,' said Julie Ramage of mobile-phone consultancy
Analysys.
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- But the move has sparked huge controversy among civil
liberty groups who fear that mobile-phone companies will be able to play
Big Brother.
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- 'It's a very worrying development. The scope for the
misuse of this technology is enormous,' said Barry Hugill, spokesman for
the civil rights group Liberty.
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- At the heart of the issue is who should be allowed to
track a mobile phone. 'If you have a mobile phone, your network operator
must know where you are in order to provide a service. The issue is whether
they make that information available to third parties,' Ramage said. 'That
information cannot just be used by anybody. People have to sign up to have
the information shared.'
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- Some experts are worried that firms might make it a condition
of an employee's job specification that they give their consent for their
phone to be tracked.
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- 'It's a complex area,' said Hugill. 'If your company
issues you with a mobile phone, providing they tell you it can track you
it's probably within the law. If your company does it covertly, then our
view is that this would be illegal.'
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- And not everyone is convinced that this 'opt-in' system
is foolproof. There have been suggestions that the software has already
been hacked into by university students in Scotland who then tracked mobile-phone
users across the UK.
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- Hugill said: 'We all know that information gets passed
on and ends up in the wrong hands.'
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- There is further concern that mobile-phone users may
respond to spam messages sent to their handsets without really knowing
what they are signing up to. Children's charities have also expressed alarm
that paedophiles might be able to exploit such a system.
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- Some pro-privacy campaigners go as far as to argue that
the technology is part of a wider, more sinister trend to surveillance.
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- Simon Davies, director of campaign group Privacy International,
said that a recent change in the law has meant mobile-phone networks must
store a user's data for a year in case the police or the security services
need to access it. 'There is a trend in Britain towards absolute identification,
to a system of perfect tracking which eliminates the anonymity of movement,'
he said.
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- So worried are the mobile-phone firms at a possible backlash
that they have drawn up an industry code of practice designed to see off
the threat of legislation regulating the issue.
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- It is also something which concerns the European Commission.
This week the UK will adopt the EC's Privacy and Electronic Communications
Directive which decrees that a mobile-phone user can be tracked only if
he or she explicitly gives consent.
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- Even those in favour of tracking acknowledge the issue
needs to be handled sensitively. 'With any new technology, much depends
on how you sell it,' said Emma Hardcastle, managing director of mapminder.co.uk,
which recently launched an online service that allows people to track an
individual's mobile phone.
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- 'In the next couple of years there will be huge change
in this area. We need to make sure it doesn't invade anyone's privacy.'
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- Since Hardcastle's company launched the service a month
ago it has received hundreds of registrations. 'Most of it is coming from
companies, but not all. We had one person who wanted to be able to track
his mother who has Alzheimers,' Hardcastle said.
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- A similar service - mapAmobile - offered by the Carphone
Warehouse retail chain has also reported brisk interest.
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- 'We were targeting the service at children,' said a spokeswoman
for the retailer. 'It's a good way for parents to keep track of their kids
rather than phoning them constantly to find out where they are. But we've
also had some interest from taxi companies.'
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- The mobile-phone networks believe the location-based
tracking services - which will allow firms to target specific customers
when they enter designated loca tions - will become a major marketing weapon
in the future.
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- Edward Brewster, spokesman for the mobile-phone company
3, which this month launches a tracking service incorporating satellite
positioning technology, said: 'We already offer some location- based services,
but now you will be able to be guided to everything from restaurants to
the nearest cash machine via your mobile phone. This is going to offer
the customer a whole new experience.'
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,2763,1101730,00.html
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