I just watched a video about tracking software that microsoft is involved with.
This is something telcos would have been doing either themselves, or on behalf of public agencies for a long time, I'm sure. I'm almost certain that logs at your telco, which would be probably kept forever, would betray the whereabouts of your mobile phone since it first hit the telephone network. That is, your phone company could very easily know everything about where you have been, indeed I'm sure they have business intelligence systems that use this data so they can plan infrastructure.
But you knew that already, right? I mean, you've been carrying that phone everywhere, so obviously you would have thought about this before.
Anyway, now we seem to be 'going public' with these capabilities. Telcos are opening up the services for corporates and consumers, and they will provide location services for you.
The crux of it is that mobile phone tracking is going to be something that will be common place soon enough.
If you're like me you realised a long time ago that you don't have any privacy.
The only reason that you need privacy, is so that you have the *power* to be disobedient.
That is, if you are *told* how to behave, and you don't want to behave that way, then if you have privacy you can just shut up about how you've been behaving, and you won't suffer *consequences* for your actions.
The problem is you are losing your privacy. You will not be able to get away with anything when it is economically easy for people to 'getcha' for the 'criminal' things that you do.
The only reason that you get away with things now is because it is too expensive for 'them' to chase you down.
The laws themselves, and the people that control them, are selfish, and far too oppressive to be allowed to survive in this environment where privacy is a thing of the past.
I don't know what we (The People (TM)) are going to be able to do about it though.
I guess we can just suck it.
You can't rely on 'them' to give you 'freedom'.
They will oppress you, and they will tell you that you're free.
It'll be OK for you though, provided you're on the right side of it, and provided the system is designed to give you everything that you've been trained to think you want.
John.