Mobile Phone Location Tracking

The US FCC has mandated that cell phones and accompanying infrastructure be able to pinpoint your position within around 100 meters when you dial 911. This capability is now in the middle of a five year rollout: . It turns out to be nearly as easy to tell where the phone is any time it's turned on as only when you dial 911. So far, phones will still not be locatable when not turned on.

While pretty much everyone agrees that locating 911 calls precisely is a good thing, some privacy worriers wonder why the FCC got so excited about mandating it (and thereby the subsequent tracking capabilities) and wondered if there were ulterior motives somewhere.

Separately, the phone company in Switzerland got in hot water briefly in 1997 when a newspaper published a story saying they'd logged the position of all their subscribers who had their mobile phones on, presumably to support law enforcement investigations: . Part of the hubbub was that it was a secret. I'm not sure how it turned out after that.

-- Peter Kaminski, 20010829