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Theres a story on SeatlePI.com about an issue with cell phones that's going to get bigger before it gets solved.
Basically it's about cell phone networks releasing information to police without a warrant. Specifically location information. All that the police need do is say that it's a life or death situation and they're handing out whatever location data that they have for the person's phone.
Now I realize that this sort of thing has apparently been kept to urgent situations but still, I have to say that this is a really big, ugly lawsuit just waiting to happen. All it's going to take is a case of some law enforcement agency getting caught abusing this capability without benefit of a warrant or even a 'good cause' kind of story. With the controversy over domestic spying and the ever increasing level of paranoia and the fact that it's becoming more and more reasonable these days to wonder if there really *IS* a audio/video pickup over there in the wall sconce.
Now add to this the fact that cell phone networks (and face it, probably others) can locate the phone and thereby whoever has it with the GPS information that so many of them have these days.
Let's take another step, how about the alleged capability of a phone to be silently activated by remote control, turning it into a live microphone without anyone's knowledge?
Sure seems to me like Big Brother is watching and listening more and more.
Technorati Tags: cell+phone, gps, location+information, cell+phone+network, gps+information, missing+persons, big+brother, domestic+spying
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