Your cell phone was tracked doing 40 in a school zone


Cell phones spying on people in Missouri
From the AP.

The Missouri Department of Transportation will spend $3 million annually on a program to monitor the movements of individuals on highways via their cell phones -- without their knowledge or consent.

Delcan NET, a Canadian company, developed the system which triangulates the location of each driver by monitoring the signal sent from the cell phone as it is handed off from one cell tower to the next. Each phone is uniquely identified and the information is compared with a highway map to record on what road each motorist is traveling at any given time. The system also records the speed of each vehicle, opening up another potential ticketing technology.

Pay attention to that bit "without their knowledge or consent." If it were anyone but a government doing that, it would be fraud.

But let's think about all the things that could go wrong here.

To start with, you may not be the driver, but if you have the only cell phone in the car, who do you think is going to get the ticket?

If your cell phone is stolen or if the ID chip is pirated, do you think you will get the ticket?

If you loan your cell phone out, do you think you might be held responsible?

Let's say you have one of those "family plans." Who will get the ticket, the cell phone using teenager or the adult who the account is in the name of?

And all that assumes that everything is working exactly as it is supposed to.

We know that doesn't happen. Cell phone signals drop out or spill over. I know someone who was assigned a phone number that had been used by someone shady and it took almost a year to get all the junk off their bill.

Hat tip to The Agitator.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sun - October 9, 2005 at 05:04 AM  Tag


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