Geoslaves and Yellow Journalism

A long post today, I saw this article released on a press release network and couldn't resist making some corrections and comments. It's sad that a country based on technology has a press corps so berift of understanding of it.. Mu comments in Italics
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Experts fear brave new world of 'geoslaves'
By LANCE GAY Scripps Howard News ServiceSeptember 01, 2005
- To injured mountaineers and lost backpackers, nifty technology using global information systems holds the promise of being a lifesaver.
And America's legal system has found the technology provides ways to punish drunken drivers or nonviolent offenders like Martha Stewart, who are sentenced to home confinement with an ankle bracelet monitoring their whereabouts rather than time in a prison cell costing taxpayers $60,000 a year to operate.

à This is interesting, since I have long been a voice in the wilderness asking how we would pay for tracking all the people we want to track. However $5000 a month seems extraordinary.. do you have a source for this figure?

But academics and lawyers warn there's a real danger to privacy as the technology becomes cheaper and easier to obtain. Developed for military use in the 1970s, global positioning system (GPS) technology is today a $5 billion industry that has gained widespread use in American society without much debate about whether its uses should be limited.
"Human tracking has gone mainstream," said Jerome Dobson, a geography professor at the University of Kansas and past president of the American Geographic Society. He says tracking systems are eroding America's cherished independence and threaten to transform workers into "geoslaves."
"The question I like to use to bring this home is to ask: 'How long would Anne Frank's diary be if she were wearing one of these nifty devices?' " he said.

à A nice quote if the only agreement is that use of tracking is by entities who wish to do harm. I mean, if Eve hasn’t eaten the apple we’d all be still living in Paradise, would we not?

GPS technology used to be an expensive niche product because of the costs of maintaining relay stations that transferred signals from satellites to receivers. But thanks to widespread use of cellular-phone service, the price for a system has dropped to as little as $200.
GPS equipment is an option offered on many new car models today, so drivers can find their way to strange locations. But what many owners don't know is that the equipment can also easily be used to find the driver, and rental-car operators have used their systems to track where customers took their cars.

à An alarmist paragraph that is only partially correct. You are mixing capabilities of different systems. Typical GPS navigation systems that show the vehicle on a map for the driver’s benefit have _no_ ability to transmit location to anyone. Systems such as GM’s OnStar™ do allow the monitoring agency to ‘see’ the vehicle, but this is an option that must be paid for in advance by the owner…hardly a clandestine monitoring system. With respect to rental car companies monitoring vehicle use, they are required to inform users in advance … several court cases have enforced this rather emphatically. Basic property rights come into play here, in opposition at times to expectation of privacy. If you own a car, and you rent it to me, and I abuse the terms of the contract, have you no right to know? If I rented the car and you followed me in another car and observed me, would you be guilty of breaking some law … I doubt it, it’s a free country (or it was before the American Patriot Act). The germ of truth in your paragraph is caveat emptor.

Use a cell phone, and someone can locate where you're talking, thanks to a 1999 federal law that directed cell-phone companies to include GPS identifiers in their machines. Several companies sell tracking devices that can go in a child's backpack or shoe.

à The Enhanced 911 rule you mention does not include any such GPS requirement such as you assert. See the rule here:
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Wireless/News_Releases/1999/nrwl9016.html
What the rules _do_ require is that carriers be able to locate 911 calls to certain tolerances. Although the FCC has since delayed enforcing these rules, many carriers can and do comply today. However, they comply almost universally by using a technique called cell tower triangulation. The reason this technique is used rather than GPS location is that it works with all cellular phones, not just the miniscule number of GPS phones currently deployed. Again, everyone is entitled to their views regarding commercial companies or the authorities being able to know the approximate locations of every call made, but GPS is not the issue and were the GPS system turned off tomorrow the location ability would not be significantly affected.

In hopes of controlling traffic on the jammed and gridlocked highways, and avoiding collisions, the U.S. Department of Transportation is working on "intelligent design" highways that will link traffic control to wireless-controlled systems to be installed in cars by the next decade. But the same systems could easily measure your speed, and mail you a speeding ticket if you violate the law.
Dobson concedes that Americans are adopting these systems because the technology provides an advantage, and he stresses he's not opposed to the equipment. But he said Americans need to debate what limits to place on global positioning systems and develop safeguards for dangers to freedom they pose.
Those same difficult-to-remove tracking systems strapped on the wrists of Alzheimer's victims to locate those who wander away also can be used to track and control you, he notes. After the horrific Elizabeth Smart and Shasta Groene kidnappings, some parents looked to fitting their kids with tracking devices. But the same devices could just as readily be purchased by predators and put to use keeping kidnapped victims imprisoned (by telling the predators the exact whereabouts of the children).

à Come, come now, this is a bit far fetched, isn’t it? The criminal puts a bracelet on the child and orders the victim not to move and then leaves the area. The victim disobeys the captor and the captor than, by some science fiction means simultaneously tracks the child via the internet and pursues and recaptured? Pulp fiction .. a piece of rope would be a much more effective captivity monitor and has no batteries to run down.

Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the National Workrights Institute, says GPS is a powerful technology that permits the sort of electronic monitoring of mobile workers that has become widespread in factories and offices in the last 15 years.
Gruber said employers can now monitor the minute-to-minute whereabouts of salesmen and other on-road employees, even when they are not working.
"The type of personal information they can gather is virtually unlimited," he said, pointing out that employers can determine if their workers are going to the doctor or attending political rallies. There are currently no legal restrictions on what employers can do with the information they collect, and no requirement that employers inform employees that they are being monitored.
"This is an extreme gray area" that hasn't been addressed by the courts or legislatures, he said.

à I certainly agree with the issue that rules regarding collecting and safeguarding data should be more clearly defined. However, what part of employment guarantees such perquisites as visits to the doctor on company time? When an employer pays an employee is there not an expectation of a day’s work for a day’s pay? I’ve installed many vehicle tracking units for commercial and government clients. So far the results are 100%, that’s right; each and every installation has had significant time accounting problems. Employees certifying they left home at one hour, but actually leaving 45 minutes later … boss paid for breakfast. An employee who spent the last hour of every day before returning to the warehouse at the hospital, visiting a sick relative. The employer should pay for these abuses, or the employees are somehow entitled to just steal? A government agency found an employee who took several afternoons a week to stop and play 9 holes of gold before returning to the office. Did the taxpayers have aright to expect a day’s work from this individual or was it a violation of his “privacy”? A bank robber wishes for privacy while making his escape, but is he entitled to it?

Then-Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., pushed legislation requiring companies collecting GPS data to inform customers of their activities, but the measure languished in the Senate Commerce Committee without action.
State and local governments say GPS systems put on public vehicles have increased the effectiveness of operations. After Charlotte, N.C., installed such technology on its ambulance system, the local government reported a 10 percent faster response time because ambulances could be guided around roadblocks and traffic. Many northern states use GPS systems to guide snowplows through snow-obscured streets.
One New Jersey police department secretly installed the system on police cars and fired five policemen who were loitering over meals or in parking lots when they wrote in their logbooks that they were patrolling the streets.

à Exactly replicating my real-world experiences. Were these cop’s rights violated? Or, were they giving their employer .. us tax payers .. bad value for wages received?

The systems are widely used in the trucking industry. Employers used to rely on odometers strapped to the truck's axel to tell them how far the truck traveled. But GPS technology provides much more information, giving companies not only information on the truck's specific location, but the direction it is heading, its speed and information on whether the worker is taking a break or working.

à indeed, taking a break is one of the things drivers and ultimately their employers are responsible for. The safety record of trucking is as good as it is strictly because the Federal Highway Safety Administration and other government agencies require adherence to federal Hours OF Service rules to prevent fatigue-caused accidents and prevent the exploitation of drivers. It seems to me that in this case a good argument might be made that, in addition to being a business profit tool for drivers as well as owners, GPS tracking is a viable safety asset.. let me tell you a true story from a driver friend of mine. Like the majority of long-haul drivers, his income depends directly upon loaded miles driven. Before his company gave him the free profit incentive of a GPS tracking system in his truck, he had to stop several times a day, stand in line for a pay phone, wait for a dispatcher to be free to speak with him and then, perhaps, find out that he had passed up a load an hour or so back .. already given to another driver farther away than he was at the time the load became available. Now that he has GPS tracking and in-cab communication, he drives more legal hours per day and learns of loads ready for pickup the instant they are ready. He can contract for the load with the push of a button. GPS in the cab raised his personal income 25%!. Some kind of geoslave, perhaps, but a happy one.

William Herbert, senior counsel for the Civil Service Employees Union in Albany, N.Y., is troubled that the technology is giving employers too much information.
"This infringes, to some degree, on their autonomy," said Herbert. He also worries the location systems could also be used to track employees heading off to union halls, or engaged in other union activities that employers are prohibited from monitoring under federal labor laws.

à I have a little problem with employee “autonomy”. Are employees hired to do a job and paid a wage for it, or are they responsible to take money and do as they wish? Far be it from me to argue law with an attorney, but the way the comment is attributed to Mr. Herbert may be inaccurate. Employees of a union shop most certainly have the right to visit their union headquarters but there is _no_ Federal law that allows this on company time, or that compels the employer to pay them for that time. I was a union employee for years and one of the reasons I left the union was that a few of my fellow employees who held positions of trust in the union would sign out from work to do “union business” and go to bars or take naps. My employer did not pay them for that time … the union local, via the dues deducted from my paycheck did. Employers have the right to now that their employees are on the job when their employees are being paid. Period.

Herbert told a recent American Bar Association conference that the nation's labor laws need to be updated to deal with the technology, and urged the National Labor Relations Board to issue directions on how the technologies can be used.
Herbert said he's not opposed to using new technologies, but noted that other countries and the European Union recognize the privacy issues surrounding the wider use of GPS and are concerned enough to draft regulations to keep its use contained.
The NRLB has left concerns about the systems to unions to sort out with management. In its new national contract with the trucking industry, the Teamsters this year won agreement that information gathered through "black boxes" installed on trucks cannot be used to punish truckers.

à Indeed this sounds a worthy cause. What about the other side of the coin. Last year a trucker involved in an accident was arrested and spent nearly 6 months in jail before a laboratory extracted the data from the archaic “black box” in the vehicle and proved the charges made by the police were false. Not long ago a client of my company had a driver involved in an accident in which a vehicle pulled out in front of my client’s vehicle and was struck. The police charged my client’s driver with speeding, based on their on-scene investigation. (and, perhaps, because he had the name of a nation-wide corporation on his truck??) In less than a day, my client extracted the information form the on board GPS business system which showed beyond the shadow of a doubt that the police estimate of my client’s speed was at least 20 miles per hour too high. When the prosecutor was shown the GPS records, he called in the police chief and the ticket as voided and no charges were filed. Were these drivers geoslaves?