GOV'T. TRACKING CELL PHONES WITHOUT COURT ORDER

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http://www.newswithviews.com/BreakingNews/breaking40.htm

 

GOV'T. TRACKING CELL PHONES WITHOUT COURT ORDER

PART 2

 

 

Posted 1:00 AM Eastern

by David Bresnahan

January 4, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

 

Summary: Turn on your cell phone and you give government agencies

instant information about your location, and even your speed of

travel. It may not be long before you get a speeding ticket in the

mail, or police at your door.

 

KANSAS CITY, MO. -- Drivers with cell phones are being tracked in a

new government program designed to monitor the location and speed of

cell phones in vehicles moving along Missouri highways.

 

The state of Missouri has entered into a $6.2 million contract with

National Engineering Technology Corporation (NET) to track cell phone

users, without their permission.

 

The first test of the system is now under way in Kansas City and St.

Louis, according to published reports. The high-tech, government

authorized spy network is operated by NET and Delcan, a Canadian

company. The two are owned by ITIS Holdings, a British company.

 

Cell phone tracking is also taking place in Baltimore, Washington,

D.C., Norfolk, Va., Atlanta and Macon, Ga. Vehicles with E-ZPass or

FasTrak toll transponder payment systems are also easily tracked by

government agencies in a similar way.

 

Missouri is the first government agency to begin a program designed to

track the movement of vehicles, ostensibly to provide traffic

information to motorists in real time. The same electronic tracking

information has potential to be used for much more.

 

Federal regulations now require cell phones to transmit a signal that

identifies the location of the phone for use by 911 operators. That

same information can be used to track any cell phone that is turned on.

 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has called for a

system that enables consumers to opt out of the tracking program,

according to news reports.

 

The information being gathered by the Missouri Department of

Transportation could be used for far more than just providing traffic

information to the public on crowded highways. The tracking system can

provide the exact location of any cell phone user, track movements of

a cell phone, tap into a cell phone conversation, and even be used to

issue speeding tickets by mail.

 

The Missouri program charts the relative speed of drivers by measuring

the time between the intermittent signals cell phones send to towers

along a stretch of road. That information is then used with

computerized highway maps to show the location and speed of each cell

phone.

 

Under the current contract for services, the private information

associated with each cell phone is deleted from the system, so there

is nothing in the present service that identifies individual cell

phone owners. However, opponents are concerned that in the future that

information will be used to send speeding tickets to drivers by mail.

 

Officials in the Missouri Dept. of Transportation were quoted in local

press reports as being in favor of selling the tracking information to

outside users in order to pay for the costs of the system.

 

The terms of the contract with NET allows that company to sell the

tracking information to outside vendors. The government has no

authority to monitor where the information ends up, according the

terms of the contract.

 

After the first two years of the contract the state can enter into a

revenue sharing agreement with NET and receive funds from the selling

of the tracking information to third parties, giving the government an

interest in selling information instead of protecting it. The

government could also begin issuing speeding tickets by mail as an

added means to generate even more revenue.

 

The traffic monitoring plans assume NET will market more detailed

information to the private sector - automakers that offer onboard

navigation systems, cell phone companies, shipping businesses, or

media traffic reporting.

 

The government has no plans at the present time to notify cell phone

users that their phones may be tracked without their knowledge or

permission, according to news reports. There is also no means to

provide for consumers who wish to opt out. Presently the only way to

do that is to turn cell phones off.

 

" It's a mission creep issue that would be of most concern to

consumers, " said Lillie Coney, associate director of EPIC, as reported

by AP. " They may start out saying we want to know if there's a traffic

problem and then take that information and start using it for

different purposes. "

 

Part 1, " Gov't. Wins Court Authorization to Spy on Cell Phone Use "

http://www.newswithviews.com/BreakingNews/breaking39.htm

 

 

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David M. Bresnahan has over 30 years of experience as an award-winning

journalist, broadcaster, radio station owner, talk show host, and

business owner. David has been a prominent writer for many Internet

newspapers.

 

Web Sites: www.Bresnahan.org and

www.ThatPRGuy.com

 

For radio interviews or comments:

David