Google Latitude to allow you to track friends and families every move
- From: Webmanager_CritEst <webmanager@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2009 14:53:46 -0800 (PST)
February 4, 2009
Google Latitude to allow you to track friends and families every move
The new 'opt-in' feature available in Google Maps pinpoints the exact
location of loved ones, but has been met with sharp criticism from
privacy campaigners
Murad Ahmed, Technology Reporter
Millions of people will be able to track each and every move by
friends and family through their mobile phones, thanks to a new
feature launched by Google.
The new system dubbed “Latitude” uses a digital map to show
automatically exactly where a loved one is at any time, sometimes
pinpointing their location to a few metres. Worried parents will be
able to check up on where their children have got to after school,
friends can meet for a quick drink if they see they are nearby and
spouses will be able to see if their partners really are working late
at the office.
Google said that Latitude was an opt-in feature, meaning that both
parties have to consent to being spied on. But privacy campaigners
said they were appalled by the idea, and children’s groups said the
Government should intervene and look into whether the system was fully
secure.
The feature was made available immediately on millions of mobile
phones that can access the web, such as the BlackBerry. Within weeks
Google hopes to release a version that will also work on computers as
well.
“Once you’ve shared your location, you can hide it from individual
friends or all of your friends at once, or you can turn off Google
Latitude completely at any time.” said a Google spokesman. “You can
adjust your privacy settings in Latitude so that you share as much or
as little about your location as you want, with whom you want.”
Google said that it had tested the product with thousands of people to
make sure that the system was secure, but experts were not so sure.
Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the security was
appalling and said Latitude would open up a “privacy minefield”.
“Google is naive if it thinks there are adequate controls on this
feature,” he said.
Others were concerned that even though you could, in theory, bar
anyone from spying on your location, in practice peer pressure would
mean it would be difficult to reject their suggestion to follow you,
even if it was not in your own interests.
“It’s about the little white lies. You might be skiving off work, and
now your boss might be able to see that you’re at Twickenham instead
of at home,” said Ian Angell, an information expert at the London
School of Economics. “You’ve already got mobile phone technology where
husbands and wives track each other in secret. Google is so pervasive
that this will become the rule rather than the exception.”
Google said that people always had the option of adjusting how much
about their location they wanted to give away. Colleagues could merely
know what city you were in, whereas other more trustworthy friends
could find out what street you were walking down. How much each
individual wanted to reveal was always up to them.
The technology is likely to be greeted enthusiastically by a younger
generation hooked on social networking websites such as Facebook. In
testing, the feature was quickly adopted by people to locate friends
in crowded areas, and by families to give themselves a rough idea of
when loved ones would be returning home.
Children’s groups said that, though the principle of being able to
check up on the whereabouts of a child may bring peace of mind to many
parents, problems would arise when children became teenagers and
sought more responsibility and independence. “Is a mobile phone
becoming an electronic leash on children?” said John Carr, the
secretary of the Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety.
“You can see situations where this kind of thing might be useful, but
it is also kind of imprisoning children even more.”
Mr Carr called for the Government to look into the security of the
system, and said that any company that wished to offer or sell
tracking software such as this should be required to get a licence.
The Information Commissioner’s office said the opt-in nature of
Latitude indicated that the feature satisfied data protection laws,
but said it would monitor the system closely.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5662525.ece
***
WM
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