U.S. Supreme Court Unanimously Decides Warrant Needed by Police for GPS Tracking

The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that police must obtain a search warrant prior to before attaching a global positioning system (GPS) device to a suspect's car. According to the Journal, "The government argued that attaching the tiny device to a car's undercarriage was too trivial a violation of property rights to matter." Also according to the Journal, "The decision upholds a federal appeals court in Washington, which voided a drug conviction because police obtained evidence by using the GPS tracker to follow the suspect's movements without a valid warrant."

According to the New York Times, "That ruling avoided many difficult questions, including how to treat information gathered from devices installed by the manufacturer and how to treat information held by third parties like cellphone companies." The Times also reported that, "Though the ruling was limited to physical intrusions, the opinions in the case collectively suggested that a majority of the justices are prepared to apply broad Fourth Amendment privacy principles unrelated to such intrusions to an array of modern technologies, including video surveillance in public places, automatic toll collection systems on highways, devices that allow motorists to signal for roadside assistance and records kept by online merchants."

Writing in a majority opinion and reported by the Times, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "We hold that the government’s installation of a G.P.S. device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search.'"

Update 2: Apple and Google Speak to Senate Subcommittee About Location Tracking Today (webcast)

But wait, there are more privacy hearing scheduled! This one with the Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Subcommittee.

A Senate Commerce subcommittee has scheduled a 10am hearing on mobile privacy for May 19, titled "Consumer Privacy and Protection in the Mobile Marketplace."

Among those invited to testify are Bret Taylor, chief technology officer at Facebook, Catherine Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, and Alan Davidson, director of public policy at Google.

There's no word yet on who has accepted this invitation.

- PC Mag

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Prediction: CTIA (and Wireless Carriers) Will Grow to Love Location-based Services #ctiaw2011

At CTIA, The Wireless Association's conference in Orlando, Florida this week, location technology was there but not in a huge way. But it will be. That's my prediction and I'm sticking to it. Here's why: money.

While the expostion floor is stacked with wireless service providers, chip makers, telecommunication tesing services, and network infrastructure players, all vying for the attention of AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint (sorry...T-Mobile is off the table now), it's not a conference for location-based services applications...yet. Even Qualcomm didn't have its usual location technology partners around its booth. But when deals are struck between AT&T and Walmart, Verizon and Disney, Sprint and McDonalds, for example, where the payout becomes measured in billions of wireless transactions, this conference will be filled with attendees looking to see how their tiny LBS app can get the attention of the carriers, instead of say, Apple or Google. Because, the scale is not there as I mentioned in one of my earlier reports.

It was interesting to note that someone posted on Twitter that Google was missing from this show...and so was Apple. For now, they are the gatekeepers of LBS. Google at one point bid on spectrum in the TV band and rumors fly on perhaps their acquisition of a wireless provider. But somebody will figure that out of the billions of SMS messages, tweets and check-ins broadcast wirelessly, that everyone has a location. It's big data. Harvesting these data is what mobile location based advertising is all about. And that's when the wireless carriers will get interested. They are late to the game and this was echoed by several people with whom I spoke. But today, they understand that SMS and connecting to the Internet outpaces voice in data transmission so they beef up wireless plans with data packages. Location services for the carriers is embedded today in their infrastructure because they were mandated to do so by the FCC. But it was never thought it would make them money until the transaction rates made it profitable. And that's coming.

Already, CTIA this year revealed that the carriers are making deals with some of the LBS service providers like the AT&T/Placecast deal. The wireless providers are opening their APIs to expose their location platform which allows the app developers the ability to access network centric location positioning. Today, app developers tap into the handsets that have GPS or Wi-Fi location positioning or both. Is it enough? For some it is but for others, using the carrier's platform provides security, scalability and privacy. That may be a game changer. We'll see.

At past CTIA's, especially those in the Bay Area, separate LBS conferences were held nearby like SiRF's (now CSR)  Location Conference. I expect that CTIA will expand its location technology program as the market for location-based advertising (LBA) grows steadily.

LightSquared CEO Offers No Insight on Possible GPS Interference #ctiaw2011

Nothing was mentioned today by Sanjay Ahuja, CEO, about LightSquared's technology that might possibly interfere with the GPS signals that we have reported on previously. LightSquared owns 59Mhz of telecommunications spectrum in the U.S. and plans to use both satellite and terrestial means to deploy is their LTE-4G network. Concerns exist among the U.S. military, GPS equipment manufacturers and others that LightSquared's hybrid approach has the potential to interfere with GPS signal integrity. In speaking with executives from Spirent, a company that tests for such interference, this is exactly to kind of verification in which they are being asked to perform (see prior interview).

Ahuja spent the majority of his remarks addressing the LightSquared business model, its wholesale distribution of a 4G broadband network, and its investment in building out its new wireless broadband system. "LightSquared is completely revolutionizing this model with an integrated approach that will open the market to many more entrants," said Ahuja. "Just imagine the enormous opportunity to create a business model to democratize wireless service for all Americans. LightSquared is poised to do just that." This is a radical change for LightSquared whose business model was originally based on a new satellite-based constellation but is now focused on a terrestial deployment of broadband.

LightSquared announced a partnership with Best Buy, the mega-retailer, to offer a service called Best Buy Connect through its stores with pilot trials coming in Q1 2012.

The LightSquared business model is providing broadband on a wholesale basis. "We will have no retail overhead; we will  spend [our money] on building and deploying the most reliable 4G network... we will sell to network providers under their own brand," said Ahuja. "Wholesale means that we will never compete with our network partners; [our] success is solely based on the success of our network partners. LightSquared partners can expand their product offerings and expand relationship with customers."

Ahuja believes that LightSquared is completely revolutionizing the existing model for broadband access with an integrated approach that will open the market to many more entrants.

Ahuja said, that "demand for data continues to surge and digital overload continues to grow. We are worried about staying connected. [LightSquared] is taking a transformational approach to help the wireless industry to address the overload and fix connectivity." Ahuja stated that during peak internet usage on a daily basis, 20% is from streaming video.

LightSquared plans to spend $14 billion of private investment over the next 5 years on network infrastructure.

FCC’s Broadband Map to be Released on Feb. 17… And an App for Signal Strength

The Federal Communication Commission's National Broadband Map is to be released on Thursday, February 17. It is expected to show details on extending broadband coverage across the U.S. The initiative to create the map was part of the American Reinvestment and Recoveray Act (ARRA) and is intended to guide policy-makers for further investment in extending broadmap coverage especially in rural areas. One of the pieces of information that the map will reveal is signal availability, download speeds, and type of technology.

But...if you are interested today in your signal strength, well, "there's an app for that." Android users will have an app from Signal 3 using their OpenSignalMap according to Mashable.