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.'"

Senators Franken, Blumenthal Introduce Location Data Privacy Bill to Congress

The bill, The Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011 co-sponsored Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. was introduced yesterday. It requires hardware and software providers "to receive express consent" from mobile users "before collecting or sharing information about those users' location with third parties."

- CNN via @jeffharrison

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

Continue reading...

CTIA Wireless 2011 - Pre Show Buzz #ctiaw2011

Some of the buzz surrounding the CTIA Conference (aka The Wireless Association; formerly the Cellular Telecommunication and Internet Association...CTIA) surrounds the AT&T/T-Mobile merger and Long Term Evolution (LTE) or the next generation of 3G...that would also be 4G, of course. But regarding location-based services the news is certainly around location-based advertising...aka "nirvana" for the corp of retailers, augmented reality, and LBS app developers vying to win the prize that is the "killer app" that gets consumers to buy-in to using a mobile device that receives contextual and location-aware ads, coupons, etc.

I've issued a report on news from aisle411 and NAVTEQ. These are interesting developments and continues an evolutionary process of integrating indoor navigation with location-based advertising and social networks.

Other news...Nokia will be introducing Nokia Astound, a new smartphone with the latest version of Ovi Maps that includes voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation in 46 languages in 90 countries...this according to the CTIA Show Daily.

Privacy will be another topical area and the Mobile Marketing Association has not yet offered guidelines on protecting consumer privacy. Again, according to the CTIA Show Daily, MMA president Greg Stuart says that, "There's basically two issues - one is transparency...the second is around control, giving consumers control of how they manage their own privacy." See our podcast today on just this subject.

More from the keynotes in a later report...Keynotes include Steve Largent, CTIA president and a roundtable discuss led by CNBC's Jim Cramer with the CEO's of AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon.

LOC-AID Looks to Support Wireless Carriers with Location Positioning Technology and Privacy Setting

I spoke to Rip Gerber yesterday, CEO of LOC-AID, a company supplying location positioning technology at the cell site level to wireless carriers. LOC-AID's primary goal is to help carriers monetize location-based services since companies like AT&T and VerizonWireless have already had to make a huge investment in complying with the FCC's E-911 mandate issued several years ago. LOC-AID believes thier stong suite is allowing carriers to enter areas where they can add more value for customers of wireless carriers by adding location privacy. In addition, LOC-AID sees an opportuity to mitigate fraud for credit card companies and reducing "false positives" and for authentification. It costs banks up to $30 if they have to make a call every time they need to verify the identity of a card holder if a fraudulant transaction is suspected. LOC-AID believes their technology will help verify by location a client and thereby eliminate the need to contact individuals.

As next week is CTIA, LOCA-AID will be showing technology that will allow handset users control of their privacy settings from a simple user interface. The UI has the ability to control various location settings that you have running on your phone. We know that to do this today, a users either turns off the location device switch on the phone or go to each app and turn off the function that allows location awareness. LOC-AID want to position this application with developers that could use this kind of control feature (or it could be white labeled in the future); carriers want to have this pre-loaded on the device which may be a simple off/on switch on the device. Another option is to install a widget along with the app and control the privacy settings from a website.

Now, why would LOC-AID, a company that wants to promte location-enabled applications, be interested in developing and application that introduces a "kill switch" on the device? Gerber say, "self-regulating" - by making it easier for users to easily turn on or off their location, they will feel much better about their ability to control their own privacy.