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I thought I'd raise this as it's been something that's been on my mind for quite sometime.
It's getting to the point of where we will be tracked everywhere, with cameras on street corners, increasing laws and reforms that apparently protect privacy, our own personal tracking beacons... how much surveilance do we actually need?
Does it bother you, some people will argue "if you don't have anything to hide, you've nothing to worry about".
I find the idea of being monitored constatly disturbing, I have enough problems with people sitting behind me on the bus listening to me talk...
Lately nearly every phone call I've made from home has had some music playing faintly in the background, it's kind of freaking me out.
I don't own a mobile phone, I find them disturbing and anti-social most of the time. I understand the need and the usefulness of them but..... I see people growing increasingly dependant upon them.
Anyway have a read and let your thoughts be known....
"Mobile phones: your own personal tracking beacon"
"This may come as a surprise, but when your mobile phone is switched on, your cellular network provider knows where you are in the world to within a few hundred metres.
Similar technology is used to track down lost aircraft and yachts through their radio beacons. It's not identical, because most radio beacons use satellites and cell phones use land-based aerial arrays, but the principle is the same.
At any one time, your phone is usually able to communicate with more than one of the aerial arrays provided by your network provider. They're ten or twenty kilometers apart (less in cities) and it's usually within range of at least three of them. So by comparing the signal strengths and time lags for the signals at each station, your network provider can triangulate your position and work out where you are.
This is true whenever your phone is switched on, whether you're using it or not, because every so often it sends out a check signal to make sure everything is working as it should.
Not surprisingly, the phone network companies are a little coy about admitting they have this ability. But within the industry, it's seen as just one more piece of data. There is even talk of selling the data to Internet content providers so they can send information to your Internet phone based on your location, for example reviews of nearby restaurants.
The triangulation capability of cell phone network companies varies. Some can only do it manually with a big drain on skilled manpower. Their networks are usually old. More up to date companies can generate the information automatically, which makes it cheap enought to sell."
web page
.feking mobilephones. |
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BEWARE! YOU ARE BEING PHOTOGRAPHED! 
n privacy: I went up to see my parents a few days ago; phone rings, call display says :"Private Name" and displays a phone number. I answer, they hang up. my dad mentions that he'd like to know who that was, as they get a lot of these hang-ups and my mom is a relatively public figure in the hood. within five minutes on the net, I had a name, address and a fucking MAP to our previously unknown caller's house. reverse phone lookup, gotta love 'em. Or not.