Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 22:55:58 -0500

December 21, 2003

Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs

By AMY HARMON

n the train returning to Armonk, N.Y., from a recent shopping trip in Manhattan
with her friends, Britney Lutz, 15, had the
odd sensation that her father was watching her.

He very well could have been. Ms. Lutz's father, Kerry, recently equipped his
daughters with cellular phones that let him see
where they are on a computer map at any given moment. Earlier that day, he had
tracked Britney as she arrived in Grand Central
Terminal. Later, calling up the map on his own cellphone screen, he noticed she
was in SoHo.

Mr. Lutz did not happen to be checking when Britney developed pangs of guilt for
taking a train home later than she was
supposed to, but the system worked just as he had hoped: she volunteered the
information that evening.

"Before, they might not have told me the truth, but now I know they're going
to," said Mr. Lutz, 46, a lawyer who has been
particularly protective of Britney and her sister, Chelsea, 17, since his wife
died several years ago. "They know I care. And they
know I'm watching."

Driven by worries about safety, the need for accountability, and perhaps a
certain "I Spy" impulse, families and employers are
adopting surveillance technology once used mostly to track soldiers and
prisoners. New electronic services with names like
uLocate and Wherify Wireless make a very personal piece of information for
cellphone users — physical location — harder to
mask.

But privacy advocates say the lack of legal clarity about who can gain access to
location information poses a serious risk. And
some users say the technology threatens an everyday autonomy that is largely
taken for granted. The devices, they say, promote
the scrutiny of small decisions — where to have lunch, when to take a break, how
fast to drive — rather than general
accountability.

"It's like a weird thought I get sometimes, like `he definitely knows where I am
right now, and he's looking to see if I'm
somewhere he might not approve of,' " said Britney Lutz. "I wonder what it will
be like when I start to drive."

Still, personal location devices are beginning to catch on, largely because
cellular phones are increasingly coming with a built-in
tether. A federal mandate that wireless carriers be able to locate callers who
dial 911 automatically by late 2005 means that
millions of phones already keep track of their owners' whereabouts. Analysts
predict that as many as 42 million Americans will
be using some form of "location-aware" technology in 2005.

Wireless companies and start-up firms are weaving the satellite system known as
G.P.S., or Global Positioning System, which
was begun by the United States military in the 1970's, into the cellular phone
network and the Internet to sell products and
services that provide location information.

After fixing an individual's location relative to a network of G.P.S. satellites
orbiting 12,000 miles above the earth — or, more
crudely, by the time it takes signals to bounce off nearby cell towers —
personal locator services transmit the constantly updated
information to a central database, where customers can retrieve it through the
Internet, telephone or pager.

Until recently, one of the main civilian uses of G.P.S. was in devices issued by
the criminal justice system to track offenders as a
condition of their parole or probation. The new generation of tracking devices
has moved well beyond that population and now
takes many forms, from plastic bracelets that can be locked onto children to
small boxes with tiny antennae that can be placed
unobtrusively in cars.

"We are moving into a world where your location is going to be known at all
times by some electronic device," said Larry Smarr,
director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information
Technology. "It's inevitable. So we should be talking
about its consequences before it's too late."

Some of those consequences have not been spelled out. Will federal investigators
be allowed to retrieve information on your
recent whereabouts from a private service like uLocate, or your cellular
carrier? Can the local Starbucks store send
advertisements to your phone when it knows you are nearby, without your explicit
permission?

Because the new electronic surveillance services are still in their infancy,
there are few answers, but the debate over the
boundaries of privacy in a more transparent world is already taking shape.
Teenagers in particular tend to be skeptical of the
new technology's value.

"Cellphones would lose their appeal if they became tracking devices," said Nate
Bingham, 16, of Seattle. "I think if your parents
really care that much they should just put a leash on you."

Mr. Bingham's parents use an AT&T service called Find Friend that lets them see
his general location when his cellphone is on,
based on the company's nearest cellular tower. He said his mother had at times
asked him where he was and then used the
service to see if he was telling the truth. He admits to turning the phone off
occasionally when he doesn't want to be found.

That won't work in the Pratt household, in Garden City, N.Y., where Jason, 13,
and Ashley, 11, were given new Nextel
cellphones on the condition that they be kept on at all times. With uLocate, Tom
Pratt set up his account on the company's Web
site to establish a "geofence" around his home and his children's school. Every
time the kids leave a 400-foot radius of either
place, he gets an automatic e-mail alert: "Ashley has exited Home at 08:18 AM,"
read a typical message last week.

Jason Pratt said there were advantages to being watched. He no longer has to
call his mother to let her know where he is.
Instead, she can press a "locate" button on her phone and see for herself. So
long as Jason's phone is running the uLocate
software, it transmits his location information every two minutes. Jason's
17-year-old brother, Matthew, however, kept his older
cellphone — even though it had poor reception — rather than submit to the new
deal.

Howard Boyle, president of a fire sprinkler installation company in Woodside,
N.Y., presented his employees with no such
choice. The five workers who have been given company phones with the G.P.S.
feature have not been told that Mr. Boyle can
find out if they have arrived at a work site, and whether they are walking
around in it or sitting still.

"They don't need to know," said Mr. Boyle, who hopes the service will help him
determine the truth when clients claim they are
being overbilled for the time his employees spent at their location. "I can call
them and say, `Where are you now?' while I'm
looking at the screen and knowing exactly where they are, just to make sure
they're not telling me they're somewhere else."

But it is not just the unnerving effect of uncovering small lies that has some
users of the technology worried. Like caller I.D.,
location devices lift the curtain on a zone of privacy that many Americans
value, even if they rarely have anything serious to hide.

"Think back to when you were a teenager and your mom or dad said, `I don't want
you do to this,' and you said, `yeah, yeah,
yeah,' because you knew you could do it and they wouldn't know," said Graham
Clarke, president of National Scientific, which
makes several G.P.S. tracking devices. "Those days are gone now, because they
actually can know."

Mr. Clarke recently installed a tracking device called Followit in the Jeep
Wrangler of his 17-year-old son, Gordon. It alerts him
if Gordon has exceeded 60 m.p.h. or traveled beyond preset boundaries.

Advocates of location-aware technology insist that its safety benefits — like
locating a 911 caller or a stolen car — outweigh the
privacy issues.

And for Donna Phillips, 66, whose husband, Hubie, has Alzheimer's disease, the
ability to lock a G.P.S.-enabled bracelet from
Wherify Wireless around Mr. Phillips's fanny pack when he goes out has meant an
end to panicked searches when he fails to
come home. Now her granddaughter can help her find her husband on the Wherify
Wireless Web site, which displays the
location information transmitted from the bracelet when an authorized user logs
on.

About two weeks ago, Mr. Phillips, 90, boarded a bus near his home in Rancho
Park, Calif., and traveled several miles before
switching to another bus. Because he was moving too fast for his wife to catch
up, she called the police, who were able to
pinpoint his location through the Wherify Wireless service to pick him up.

Critics of the new technology do not dispute its usefulness, but worry that it
will become ubiquitous before legal guidelines are
established.

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission turned down a request from the
cellular phone industry's association and
privacy groups for guidance on such matters. For the moment, the questions of
trust and tracking are being raised largely in the
sphere of family and personal relationships, rather than in the public arenas of
government and business.

Jerold Surdahl, 40, an administrator in a building management office in
Centerville, Ohio, said he started using the uLocate
service to communicate with colleagues. Now, he is intrigued by the possibility
of stashing a location-tracking phone in the trunk
of his wife's car.

"I'm not expecting or hoping or wanting to find something, but I would just like
to explore the possibilities," Mr. Surdahl said. "I'd
tell her about it later."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/technology/21WATC.html?ei=5062&en=86b03b0a5e51b6ad&ex=1072587600&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=

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