Juergen,
I don't want to fuel paranoia, but what this is about is a commercialisation
of an already existing service. Almost all Telco's will keep VERY detailed
logs on your movements (in Tokyo this would be down to a cell of about 20 by
20 meters (if I'm wrong on this I'm sure someone with knowledge on the
Japanese solution will correct me). There has already been court cases in
Europe where logs (sometimes older than 6 months) has been used to "track"
"criminals" and pinpoint their movements. Most Telco's will deny this
possibility, and most of the court cases have been closed sessions. I think
the concept is - since we already do this, why not make money on it. This
solution is active, as opposed to accessing logs (passive), and thus require
some additional HW (not much). The Telco's that offer these services (mostly
in Scandinavia) require the user to "switch on" the service prior to
accepting position requests relating to that specific number.
Kristian
Once again, these opinions are my own, and do not in any way reflect the
opinions of my employer.
(I'm getting fed up with having to put that line in, Mika - can't you put it
in by default when feeding the mails out?)
-----Original Message-----
From: Juergen Specht [mailto:js@anima.de]
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2000 17:48
To: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
Subject: (keitai-l) Privacy concerns contra usability?
Hi Folks,
by reading this article about Position-Locating Systems Services
for Mobile Phones:
http://www.nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/asabt/fw/109903
I wonder about not to hear any privacy concerns...the technology of
mobile phones makes it very easy to trace a mobile phone at any
location...by collecting these data and combining them ONLY to the
time/date you can create a simple user location profile showing
somebody (read: police, goverment, secret service and other
paranoia/curiousity driven organizations) when do you go where.
More collected information are more useful and even more
combined information like requested sites (I-Mode/Web/others),
called numbers or 'switch off times' makes this a powerful tool
to look into someones behaviour.
This is completly contrair to what a user gets for giving
out these information: calls whereever he/she goes, mobile
internet access everywhere, more services like 'show me
a good restaurant near my position'.
Is there possible any discussion about privacy versus usability
in an japanese spoken forum? My soon to be finished lack of
japanese makes it impossible for me to find these information
somewhere...
Juergen
Received on Mon Aug 21 17:04:33 2000