Oops, I spoke too soon. Google is doing the same as Apple. Ethical? Moral? Even legal? No to the first two at the very least. And let's deal with the third - now!
I guess you know I was be facetious in my last entry when I said that Google wouldn’t spy on your location as Apple has now been exposed as so doing. In fact, I had no doubt whatsoever that Google wouldn’t pass up such an opportunity, and now the Wall Street Journal has verified this fact. My reaction is the same. Shame on you, Google. Evil? Indeed.
I’ve said enough on this point, and my previous posting on the subject of privacy still stands. While I heard Congressman Markey say on TV that for a carrier to track someone’s location without that someone’s permission is clearly illegal, Apple and Google are not carriers, and it’s possible that we may all have opted in to such rubbish simply by using our handsets, which of course should be as illegal as it is already unethical and immoral.
I call on all purveyors of goods and services to stop and think about this issue. Yes, it’s still true that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, and we will most certainly forgive Apple, Google, and all the others out there who abuse our privacy if for no reason other than we have no choice but to do so. But once again I think new legislation is the only reasonable answer here. The US Constitution does in fact refer to privacy somewhat vaguely in the Fourth Amendment, but keep in mind that the Constitution is all about the relationship between a citizen and the government, not that between a person and a supplier of goods or services to that person. We should nonetheless have a federal law describing exactly what about an individual and their behavior any non-governmental entity can track without explicit permission, and how the whole op-in/opt-out process must work. Such was already done with credit cards and such, although I’ve not tracked how well this has actually worked out. Nonetheless, we’ve got precedents.
And let me say this again: IMHO, anything about an individual should be private unless that individual explicitly puts such information into the hands of another or into the public domain. Period. I believe that while many have assumed that GPS, Wi-Fi, and other wireless technologies can be used to determine and even track our location, such information would remain our confidential property unless we explicitly chose otherwise. Apple didn’t even bother to encrypt the data they were gathering! Such arrogance! Slap those buggers silly, I say.
Or let me play devil’s advocate here – is the government actually complicit in all of this? From the days of OJ being tracked in the white Bronco, I’m pretty sure law enforcement agencies, through CALEA, have the right to find out where we are, but I’m also pretty sure that a warrant is required to do so. On the other hand, consider the case of the poor fellow whose (granted, unsecured) Wi-Fi link was used by another to download porn, and whose home and person were subsequently violated by law enforcement officials using the finest of stormtropper/gestapo tactics on the assumption that the owner of the Wi-Fi link was in fact the criminal. The man says he’s not going to sue; I certainly would, as the law enforcement folks involved in this one clearly violated the man’s Constitutional rights. Anyway, location information can be of great use to law enforcement even when they bother to act within the law, so don’t be surprised if the government drags its feet on this one.
Me? I leave my cell phone off most of the time. Conserving battery life and all.
