Patent Watch: Tracking People Via Cell without Compromising Privacy

Jeremy Wood introduced readers to his method "for tracking cellphones to generate useful demographically-keyed data on the movement of people, without compromising anyone's privacy" back in 2009. Today his patent was granted; it's number 8185131. Will applications that use this methodology be more attractive to potential users? Will the data collected be valuable to marketers and others? 

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Nader, Onassis, and Jones: Privacy in Public and Limits on the Private Sector - Communia: Woodrow Wilson Center for Science and Technology Innovation Program

Here is a follow-up post from Communia on the U.S. vs. Jones privacy case:

The GPS case – the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Jones – raises a whole host of issues about privacy in public. The case was about the Fourth Amendment and the government’s ability to follow individuals on public roads. Of the three opinions in the case, that of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s was the most interesting and, potentially, the furthest reaching.

Sotomayor asked “whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the Government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on.” Sotomayor and all the other justices found limits in the Fourth Amendment. I want to look more broadly.

The Fourth Amendment establishes the boundary for government action, but it does not constrain the private sector. What happens if the government cannot follow people because of Fourth Amendment restrictions but the private sector can? After all, what good is the Fourth Amendment if a private company can follow you down every street and sell the information to marketers, profilers, and government agencies too?

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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.'"

Wikileaks New Spyfiles Map

SpyFiles, a new project from Wikileaks and several partner organization, is based on 287 secret documents revealing a campaign of mass spying on users of webmail, GPS, and mobile devices, with this data being sold in a covert, 25-nation global marketplace that Wikileaks claims is worth $5 billion. At present, the underlying documents are not available (Wikileaks is withholding them as part of a fundraising drive), but an interactive map showing the spying on a nation-by-nation basis is up and running...

Using the map as an organizing principle is not new, but withholding the data to raise money is clever.

- BoingBoing

Bill to Require Warrant for Geolocation Info Expected in June

Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican, authored the bill which says in essence: no warrant, no geolocation info. it's a far different vision than has been implemented in the past. The president's administration has asked the Supreme Court to look at the issue due to different interpretations of current law by federal judges (APB coverage).

Wired has the full text of the bill expected to be introduced to Congress on June 15.

- Wired