Scary Dangerous New Cell Phone Technology

"Think back to when you were a teenager and your mom or dad said, 'I don't want you to do this,' and you said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' because you knew you could do it and they wouldn't know," said Graham Clarke, president of National Scientific, which makes several GPS tracking devices. "Those days are gone now, because they actually can know."

Clarke recently installed a tracking device called Followit in the Jeep Wrangler of his son, Gordon. It alerts him if Gordon, 17, has exceeded 60 mph or traveled beyond preset boundaries.

Companies are being founded whose sole purpose is to track the E911 signal and provide that to others - for a fee. This includes parents tracking children, spouses tracking spouses, care givers tracking disabled relatives, stalkers tracking victims and employers tracking employees. Some of these uses are beneficial; some, clearly, are not and amount to unauthorized surveillance of private individuals.

A future theoretical abuse of the E911 system would be retail businesses tracking nearby potential customers and sending a voice or text message offering a coupon as they approach their store location. The movements of individuals also could be recorded and entered into a profile of that individual.

Will federal investigators be allowed to retrieve information on your recent whereabouts from a private service such as uLocate, or your cellular carrier? Can the local Starbucks store send advertisements to your phone when it knows you are nearby, without your explicit permission?

Because the new electronic surveillance services are in their infancy, there are few answers, but the debate over the boundaries of privacy in a more transparent world is taking shape. Teenagers in particular tend to be skeptical of the new technology's value.

"Cellphones would lose their appeal if they became tracking devices," said Nate Bingham, 16, of Seattle. "I think if your parents really care that much, they should just put a leash on you."

Bingham's parents use an AT&T service called Find Friend that lets them see his general location when his cellphone is on, based on the company's nearest cellular tower. He said his mother at times had asked him where he was and then used the service to see if he was telling the truth. He admits to turning the phone off occasionally when he doesn't want to be found.

That won't work in the Pratt household, in Garden City, N.Y., where Jason, 13, and Ashley, 11, were given new Nextel cellphones on the condition that they be kept on at all times. With uLocate, Tom Pratt set up his account on the company's Web site to establish a "geofence" around his home and his children's school. Every time the kids leave a 400-foot radius of either place, he receives an automatic e-mail alert: "Ashley has exited Home at 08:18 AM," read a typical message recently.

Advocates of location-aware technology insist that its safety benefits such as locating a 911 caller or a stolen car outweigh the privacy issues. I certainly do!

There are a number of cell phones which include the option to disable E911 tracking. Some phones allow it to be disabled entirely. Some phones allow it to be disabled for everyone except emergency operators.

Spyware.info's Blog About Cell Phone Spying by Parents, Authorities, or Companies

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