Majority of us in college have a cell phone and most likely it is a smart phone with apps on it. Whether you are carrying around a BlackBerry, iPhone, or a phone will Google’s Android platform. Since I believe that BlackBerry is being pushed out by the competition, I will be focusing this paper more on the Android and iPhone. I was using the Droid X for a while but since it was giving me all sorts of problems I decided to buy the iPhone 4S, and all my friends gave me hell because I said I would never make the switch.
However, what I want to bring to everyone’s attention is that “many people have no idea how much data their cellphones collect about them” (NYT). These types of phones come with many apps and there are other apps that can be downloaded on the phone’s respective “Market” (Android) or “App Store” (Apple’s iPhone) that can obtain information about the phone user. These phones are getting personal information about users without their knowledge and not just getting the location, but the person’s name and birthday.
So far we have seen that these apps and tracking companies have imposed our customer privacy by sending out a large amount of our data at any given time. This could get pretty personal to some people because now these app developers and tracking companies have access to our personal information that most of us want to hold private.
In a New York Times article they discuss how smart phones have helped make lives of everyone easier by making information accessible at the touch of a button or just screen. However, the law is not keeping up with the new technologies being produced. There was a case in the federal appeals court; it is a battle about “how much protection to assign to the information that phones gather about where their users have been and when” (NYT). The government wants to be able to access location information, when others do not want their locations to be known because of privacy and security issues. I believe that our locations while using our cellular devices should not be known to these tracking companies. However, with the court case in the appeals court, they are stating that the government could acquire location information by obtaining a search warrant per the Fourth Amendment. I just do not think that third party and tracking companies should be allowed to have some very sensitive information just by people using their cell phones.
The groups who are taking this to the courts “contend the Justice Department should be required to first obtain the equivalent of search warrants from federal judges in which they would have to establish "probable cause" that the records will actually yield evidence of a federal crime” (The Daily Beast, 2010). This is a vital push in the legal system in the United States to help establish a privacy protection for cell phone user’s information and especially locations.
Why am I writing about this in my blog well all this stuff about the location of people being found in the Phone’s ID information can help locate people easily. They just need to get access to the wireless provider’s information in the area. This could be a new way to locate people and all you would have to do is get people on the ground with a system that they can see a map with the locations of all these people on it. They can see where the crowds are and they can see where the people who are hurt are. Yes, sometimes the accuracy of some of the locating tools on cell phones put it in the middle of a city because of cell tower usage but it is a start sometimes when a disaster strikes.
I feel that there could be so much more done for the people in need of help during a disaster and that the current system is good to an extent. There seems to be no order between NGOs and I feel that they slow the process down sometimes. I believe that the United States Military is one of the best response teams in the world, yes it is government organized and funded but it is structured and they have the resources and the capabilities to get the job done when saving lives.
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