John in AR
10-15-2005, 06:04 PM
http://enews.earthlink.net/article/...051015836818039
It's merely tracking where you are and where you're going; they promise "there's no Big Brother agenda". Really. They promise.
From the article:
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Driving to work, you notice the traffic beginning to slow. And because you have your cell phone on, the government senses the delay, too...
...In what would be the largest project of its kind, the Missouri Department of Transportation is finalizing a contract to monitor thousands of cell phones, using their movements to map real-time traffic conditions statewide on all 5,500 miles of major roads.
...Officials say there's no Big Brother agenda in the Missouri project - the data will remain anonymous, leaving no possibility to track specific people from their driveway to their destination.
..."Even though its anonymous, it's still ominous," said Daniel Solove, a privacy law professor at George Washington University and author of "The Digital Person." "It troubles me, because it does show this movement toward using a technology to track people."
Cell phone monitoring already is being used by transportation officials in Baltimore, though not yet to relay traffic conditions to the public. Similar projects are getting underway in Norfolk, Va., and a stretch of Interstate 75 between Atlanta and Macon, Ga.
But the Missouri project is by far the most aggressive - tracking wireless phones across the whole state...
...In fact, it would be the biggest system of its kind in the world, said Richard Mudge, a vice president at Delcan Corp., the Canadian company that won the Missouri bid.
The contract is expected to be completed within several weeks, and a cell phone monitoring system tested and implemented within six months after that. The cell phone provider for Missouri hasn't been disclosed, but Delcan uses data from Cingular Wireless LLC phones in the Baltimore project.
"...almost everyone has a cell phone, so you have a lot of potential data points, and you can track data almost anywhere on the whole (road) system," said Valerie Briggs, program manager for transportation operations at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
Although most new cell phones come equipped with Global Positioning System capabilities that can pinpoint their exact locations, the tracking technology used for transportation agencies does not depend on that.
Instead, it takes the frequent signals that wireless phones send to towers and follows the movement of the phones from one tower to another. Then it overlays that data with highway maps to determine where the phones are and how fast they are moving. Lumping thousands of those signals together can indicate traffic flow.
...The Baltimore project began this spring as a pilot program that monitors Cingular users over about 1,000 miles of road, but Maryland officials hope to eventually create a statewide version. (A Delcan competitor, Atlanta-based AirSage Inc., has an agreement with Sprint Nextel Corp. to monitor phones for its projects in Georgia and Virginia.)
...Missouri expects to spend less than $3 million a year on the service, Rahn said, although the exact price won't be known until the contract is finalized. Maryland is spending $1.9 million, although the entire Baltimore project costs nearly $5.6 million, said Mike Zezeski, director of real-time traffic operations for the Maryland Department of Transportation.
...The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) suggests that someone should notify cell phone owners that their phones are being monitored for traffic data.
...Privacy experts also worry that the traffic monitoring could later evolve into other uses - perhaps to catch speeders or fugitives.
That's because each cell phone has a unique serial number, in addition to its call number and a code that indicates its service provider. A cell phone company must always be able to track the location of its phones in order to know where to route a call.
"It's a mission creep issue that would be of most concern to consumers," said Lillie Coney, associate director of Washington, D.C.-based EPIC. "They may start out saying we want to know if there's a traffic problem and then take that information and start using it for different purposes."
It's merely tracking where you are and where you're going; they promise "there's no Big Brother agenda". Really. They promise.
From the article:
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Driving to work, you notice the traffic beginning to slow. And because you have your cell phone on, the government senses the delay, too...
...In what would be the largest project of its kind, the Missouri Department of Transportation is finalizing a contract to monitor thousands of cell phones, using their movements to map real-time traffic conditions statewide on all 5,500 miles of major roads.
...Officials say there's no Big Brother agenda in the Missouri project - the data will remain anonymous, leaving no possibility to track specific people from their driveway to their destination.
..."Even though its anonymous, it's still ominous," said Daniel Solove, a privacy law professor at George Washington University and author of "The Digital Person." "It troubles me, because it does show this movement toward using a technology to track people."
Cell phone monitoring already is being used by transportation officials in Baltimore, though not yet to relay traffic conditions to the public. Similar projects are getting underway in Norfolk, Va., and a stretch of Interstate 75 between Atlanta and Macon, Ga.
But the Missouri project is by far the most aggressive - tracking wireless phones across the whole state...
...In fact, it would be the biggest system of its kind in the world, said Richard Mudge, a vice president at Delcan Corp., the Canadian company that won the Missouri bid.
The contract is expected to be completed within several weeks, and a cell phone monitoring system tested and implemented within six months after that. The cell phone provider for Missouri hasn't been disclosed, but Delcan uses data from Cingular Wireless LLC phones in the Baltimore project.
"...almost everyone has a cell phone, so you have a lot of potential data points, and you can track data almost anywhere on the whole (road) system," said Valerie Briggs, program manager for transportation operations at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
Although most new cell phones come equipped with Global Positioning System capabilities that can pinpoint their exact locations, the tracking technology used for transportation agencies does not depend on that.
Instead, it takes the frequent signals that wireless phones send to towers and follows the movement of the phones from one tower to another. Then it overlays that data with highway maps to determine where the phones are and how fast they are moving. Lumping thousands of those signals together can indicate traffic flow.
...The Baltimore project began this spring as a pilot program that monitors Cingular users over about 1,000 miles of road, but Maryland officials hope to eventually create a statewide version. (A Delcan competitor, Atlanta-based AirSage Inc., has an agreement with Sprint Nextel Corp. to monitor phones for its projects in Georgia and Virginia.)
...Missouri expects to spend less than $3 million a year on the service, Rahn said, although the exact price won't be known until the contract is finalized. Maryland is spending $1.9 million, although the entire Baltimore project costs nearly $5.6 million, said Mike Zezeski, director of real-time traffic operations for the Maryland Department of Transportation.
...The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) suggests that someone should notify cell phone owners that their phones are being monitored for traffic data.
...Privacy experts also worry that the traffic monitoring could later evolve into other uses - perhaps to catch speeders or fugitives.
That's because each cell phone has a unique serial number, in addition to its call number and a code that indicates its service provider. A cell phone company must always be able to track the location of its phones in order to know where to route a call.
"It's a mission creep issue that would be of most concern to consumers," said Lillie Coney, associate director of Washington, D.C.-based EPIC. "They may start out saying we want to know if there's a traffic problem and then take that information and start using it for different purposes."