Automatic Surveillance Via Cell Phone

Bruce Schneier always has interesting things to say about privacy and security. Today, he points to a research project carried out at MIT in which volunteers allowed their cell phones to report back tracking data. The aggregated data was mined to reveal interesting insights into the individual phone users.

Schneier on Security: Automatic Surveillance Via Cell Phone:

"...This is worrisome from a number of angles: government surveillance, corporate surveillance for marketing purposes, criminal surveillance. I am not mollified by this comment:

People should not be too concerned about the data trails left by their phone, according to Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

'The location data and billing records is protected by statute, and carriers are under a duty of confidentiality to protect it,' Hoofnagle said.

We're building an infrastructure of surveillance as a side effect of the convenience of carrying our cell phones everywhere."

There's some interesting discussion in the post's comments, too.