The Future
Though use of personal GPS technology is widespread, it hasn’t yet integrated itself so deeply into our lives to be accurately described perfunctory. Parents still react when they hear one of their child’s classmates carries a GPS tracking device so her parents can know her location at all times. (Though it’s likely that the technology is prevalent enough for those parents to wonder if they should be doing the same.) When a criminal is apprehended because of a GPS signal, that detail still leads the subsequent news story. And when a person’s home is robbed because of an update made to a social-media application that functions by utilizing GPS, the outrage at this so-called dangerous technology is palpable.
This may not always be the case.
As personal GPS technology becomes more integrated with our lives, we’re likely to see a shift in attitudes. It may become commonplace for parents to monitor the whereabouts of their children using tracking devices. The use of GPS in criminal justice may become so commonplace that it’s not worth more than a mention in news reports — if that, even. And the plight of a homeowner who opened themselves to robbery by posting their whereabouts on a social-media site could elicit no more than, “What did you expect?” For that reason, it’s important to scrutinize how this technology is currently becoming entwined in our lives — and how it will likely impact personal privacy and other parts of society in the future.
Privacy concerns
What began as a military application is likely to move more and more into the realm of consumer-grade applications, like social media and games. But as we share more about ourselves online, we also stand to lose privacy, something that’s harder and harder to come by lately.
University of Iowa researcher Marc Armstrong wrote about this threat in 2002, when personal GPS technology was just beginning to debut on a consumer-wide scale. His article titled “Geographic Information Technologies and Their Potentially Erosive Effects on Personal Privacy” sums up the situation this way:
“There is a significant potential to collect, synthesize and disseminate information about the personal spatial behavior and revealed preferences of individuals who use these services. The effort of these geospatial technologies on individual privacy have not been widely discussed, even though their potential threat is substantial.”
Indeed, the media has taken a pop-culture approach to covering privacy concerns associated with personal GPS use. The topic is certainly given ample attention, but coverage tends to revolve around error on the GPS user’s part, such as a Four Square user who updates that he’s away from home, then returns to find his house was robbed while he was out. This particular concern was thrust into the limelight when the site pleaserobme.com was launched in response to the sudden popularity of Four Square. The site streamed tweets that showed people were away from home in an attempt to bring attention to how loose people are with this valuable information.
The creators of the site explained their philosophy about location-based privacy issue in a guest post in a Center for Democracy and Technology blog post in 2010:
“The issue with location-based information is that it exposes another layer of personal information that, frankly, we haven’t had to think much about: our exact physical location at anytime, anywhere. If you’re comfortable being a human homing beacon, that’s fine, we just want you to be fully aware of what that means and the potential risks it might involve.”
Also often discussed is the possibility that GPS technology, specifically that associated with cellular phones, could be misused by law-enforcement agencies when tracking people suspected of committed crimes or other offenses. Similar to criticism of credit card use, some believe citizens give up a certain amount a freedom by using this technology, as it can betray their location at any time.
It’s worth noting that law enforcement does in some cases obtain data from service providers. Agencies have found that obtaining court orders for larger data sets is easier than convincing a judge to grant a warrant for an individual’s GPS data, since there the demands for probable cause aren’t as stringent. Arguments against this kind of activity is often made weaker by the fact that it’s usually brought up in reference to being on the run from the law for some kind of criminal activity.
The argument isn’t without its humorous points, however. The 2009 movie “Pineapple Express” effectively satirized this concern, showing a small-time drug dealer and his client obsessively trying to destroy their phones so police can’t track them.
In actuality, the threat of invasion of privacy goes much deeper than the fact that thieves might target your home if they know you’re not there or that police could apprehend you easier after an illegal offense.
Think of it as the Google effect. When a personal-GPS user utilizes this technology, that transaction is recorded with their service provider. This data — whether collected by On Star Verizon or Four Square — is a valuable commodity. It can be sold and shared. It can be used to create consumer profiles. And like traditional phone records, under the right circumstances the government could seize that information with a court order.
Exactly how much information do mega aggregators and social networks like Google and Facebook have on the average user? And how much of that information is available for other individuals and companies to acquire?
_A year ago, the Canadian government criticized Facebook’s privacy settings, focusing specifically on the data retained even after a user had deactivated their account. Litigation and criticism like this could continue to increase, particularly when third-party groups are given access to personal information. In face, the ACLU warns users that participate in Facebook quizzes are especially vulnerable to third parties acquiring valuable information. Google potentially “knows” even more about you–and with the proliferation of GPS enabled devices and location-based social media, these corporate giants have more information on the average person than the FBI could dream to have.
The political and legal future of GPS technology
However personal GPS technology develops over the course of the next few decades, much of its future lies in the hands of judges and lawmakers. The privacy concerns associated with the technology pose legal (and some might say moral) ramifications, ones that will only be hashed out in court and in legislation for many years to come.
A federal appeals court ruled earlier this month that police must have a warrant to track a person’s whereabouts with a GPS device over an extended period of time. Until this ruling, courts across the country had rule in varying ways on the issue. But the appeals court decision now makes it possible for the Supreme Court to get its hands dirty on GPS issues related to cell phones and in-car GPS systems, according to the Washington Post.
“A single trip to a gynecologist’s office tells little about a woman, but that trip followed a few weeks later by a visit to a baby supply store tells a different story,” U.S. Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg wrote in the unanimous opinion, according to the Post. “A person who knows all of another’s travels can deduce whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular individuals or political groups — and not just one such fact about a person, but all such facts.”
Decision makers will have to set boundaries without allowing personal GPS to become a stifled technology. These decisions will undoubtedly impact the way law enforcement agencies investigate and prosecute criminal activity in the United States.
