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The Telecom Digest for July 17, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 173 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
That's No Phone. That's My Tracker. (Monty Solomon)

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Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 09:25:08 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: That's No Phone. That's My Tracker.
Message-ID: <p06240828cc29b768386c@[10.0.1.6]>

That's No Phone. That's My Tracker.

By PETER MAASS and MEGHA RAJAGOPALAN
July 13, 2012

THE device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone - 
guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. 
Let's stop calling them phones. They are trackers.

Most doubts about the principal function of these devices were erased 
when it was recently disclosed that cellphone carriers responded 1.3 
million times last year to law enforcement requests for call data. 
That's not even a complete count, because T-Mobile, one of the 
largest carriers, refused to reveal its numbers. It appears that 
millions of cellphone users have been swept up in government 
surveillance of their calls and where they made them from. Many 
police agencies don't obtain search warrants when requesting location 
data from carriers.

Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these 
devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy 
it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what 
Web sites we visit, how and where we travel, what time we go to sleep 
and wake up - and more. Much of that data is shared with companies 
that use it to offer us services they think we want.

We have all heard about the wonders of frictionless sharing, whereby 
social networks automatically let our friends know what we are 
reading or listening to, but what we hear less about is frictionless 
surveillance. Though we invite some tracking - think of our mapping 
requests as we try to find a restaurant in a strange part of town - 
much of it is done without our awareness.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/thats-not-my-phone-its-my-tracker.html






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