Big Brother in your Pocket

Starting immediately, the government will be issuing every citizen a digital tracking device. Citizens will be required to carry these devices with them at all times. These devices will track your whereabouts at all times, and at any given time these devices must be submitted to law enforcement officers who will be able to track your movements and view your personal data.

If this were true — if the government really assigned us personal tracking devices — the general public would go insane. Of course this would never happen. Instead, we bought our personal tracking devices from the AT&T store, and pay $80/month to have our privacy invaded.

Two great news stories this week, in case you missed them.

The first was the discovery that the iPhone continually tracks your location. And not in some weird, accidental method; since iOS4, iPhones (and iPads) have been tracking their owners’ locations by tracking the phone’s latitude and longitude and storing it in a local database. Anyone with physical access to your phone can pull this file off and see everywhere your phone (read: you) has been. When you sync your iPhone with your computer, the file is copied over there too. If you have access to someone’s computer, you can find and copy the file off in seconds.

Section 23 of Apple’s EULA for iTunes states:

“Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.”

So yeah; we gave them permission to do it. I’m sure teenagers in China are already working on a virus that snags this information from our computers.

Note 1: Here’s how to access the data and convert it into a viewable map.

Note 2: Untrackerd (jailbreak required) will remove this information from your iPhone.

(And before you get too smug, apparently Android phones do the same thing. Lovely.)

It was also reported this week that Michigan Police are using a mobile device to download all the information from your cell phone, often during traffic stops. Run this scenario through your head: you get pulled over, late at night. An officer approaches your car and accuses you of swerving, even though you weren’t. “You’ve either been drinking, or you were texting,” the officer says. To prove your innocence, you offer up your cell phone. A few moments later, the officer now has a copy of your phone and probably has access to more details than you do — all your texts, phone call logs, pictures, locations, and every thing else stored on your phone.

“Have a nice evening, officer!”

The ACLU is currently investigating Michigan’s use of this device, which has apparently been in use since 2008. If you have ever been asked to surrender your phone to a Michigan Police Officer, I would love to hear the story.

Thank you sir, may I have another?