Google Maps To Add 'Friend' GPS Tracking 259
Henway writes "Google is adding the option to Google Maps to
place your whereabouts either via cell phone towers or GPS. Think 'locator beacon.' Paraphrased: This would be good for people wanting to let their friends know where they are or for parents wanting to know where their children are at all times."
I don't think it means what they think it means... (Score:4, Insightful)
How the article reads:
What it really means:
This would be good for girlfriends wanting to know where their boyfriends are or for parents wanting to know where their children are at all times.
Big brother knows where you are (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Big brother knows where you are (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like the opposite please (Score:2, Insightful)
Can I have my location copywritten? I want NO ONE to have access or the right to use my location in any manner without my explicit approval. Feds and local law enforcement included.
My generation was lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
We didn't even have cell phones when I was a teeneger. Of course, there were no child molesters or terrorists. All we had to fear was Russia throwing nukes at us.
Yes, there were probably as many pederasts as today, and anyone in Great Britain knows there were terrorists then, but the media didn't hype them like they do today. I'd bet kids are SAFER now than we were then, but you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media.
Prior Art (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh man, I hope my girlfriend gets on this! It will make it SO much easier to track her.
Funny, but you raise an important point... This could be used by abusive spouses to keep tabs on the other person, particularly because there doesn't seem to be a "keep my location here no matter where I go" - so turning it off or setting it to the city-location mode could trigger angry accusations.
Re:Big brother knows where you are (Score:2, Insightful)
Get back to us when Google sends you to Room 101 for refusing to use there service. Until then the comparison falls a wee bit short.
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because clearly there wouldn't have been any pre-existing problems in such a relationship.
It's like Science Fiction. It's not really about the technology; the tech just provides an interesting framework to examine the real issues.
Re:Turn off your phone... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, if you're really paranoid you DON'T CARRY A CELL PHONE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Think about it: if you don't have a phone, you can't be tracked through it, period.
Google sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One more thing to subpoena... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Big brother knows where you are (Score:3, Insightful)
See, I would recommend actually reading 1984, rather than quoting a single line from it and saying, "Seems to me...".
Re:I don't think it means what they think it means (Score:4, Insightful)
This would be good for girlfriends wanting to know where their boyfriends are or for parents wanting to know where their children are at all times.
Because we ALL know there are no obsessive, jealous, and insecure males of the species, right?
Or stopped being lovers ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The women who know where their men are are called widows.
Or stopped being lovers when they became wives.
Six degrees of separation game (Score:4, Insightful)
"if you were tracking your best friend" ... and in time, if most people tracked their best friends (and family), then Google would literally have the power of Big Brother to monitor the movements of almost everyone. Sounds exactly like they want to play the six degrees of separation game.
This also sounds like a dream come true for the world's governments (who do get data from Google). (Plus even if it just grew over a few years until it was say 10% of the population they tracked, there is huge statistical value in approximating the movements of that many people).
But anyone signing up to this or signing up their friends better be careful they don't visit any part of a city while a government protest is going on (or even visit the home of someone who was at a government protest, or even visit someone who was friends with someone who was at a protest).
People in power get into power because they seek power over others and they are constantly seeking ways to gain power and influence over others. (Their greatest fear is the loss of power and they spend sometimes decades learning how to gain power and influence over others). The simply act of seeking power over someone else is to seek to dictate terms to that person. That is why democracy is constantly undermined and why democracy has to be defended by each generation. Just because we have democracy now doesn't mean we keep democracy as there are people who seek to undermine it for their own gain. Ironically it is the very nature of seeking power over others that undermines democracy. So they end up distorting the society they control out of all proportion until their minority in power can control, manipulate and dictate whatever they want for their own gain.
People in power don't care about individuals but they do care about controlling and manipulating groups of people (as groups of people can stand against governments points of view). But before they can manipulate and influence a group, they need to profile everyone into groups, to then know how and where best to apply their influence. Ultimately they wish to play a divide and conquer game to undermine any group which can stand in the way of their goals. So they end up continuing to bias laws and controls in their favor, until the society they control is a nightmare vision for the majority of people in their control.
Knowledge is power and this new move by Google is a level of power way beyond the capabilities of any government in history. If the majority of people fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, we are all doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Knowledge is power and people who seek power see a book like 1984 as something that is good, as they are the ones who seek to control and use that level of power over others for their own gain. The people who seek such power never see their own actions as wrong, as they are too busy seeking power over others and ignoring anyone who suggests they cannot have ever more power.
We all need to stand up and speak out against moves like this before the level of control is so great that no one can speak out, for fear of what the people in power will be able to do to anyone standing up and speaking out. Democracy has to be defended by each generation and the more this level of power grows, the more we are all going to be forced by their actions to stand up and speak out against the ones who seek such power over everyone.
Re:Six degrees of separation game (Score:2, Insightful)
Oppression through overt force is very second millenium. Nowadays it is done by convincing the people that your evil scheme is something they really want and strive for, even choose to pay for.
Opt in is no defence in the face of socialogical statistical manipulation.
Following the chap above's reference to 1984 - the central theme of the book wasn't simply that there was a totalitarian state, but rather that such a state existed and it had managed to make the population believe in and love it.
However (to calm things down a second) it could just be that Google can see the increase hits inherent in this plan, and therefore the increased ad revenue.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My generation was lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor should you get your statistics from websites that, on the very same page, list conflicting data:
Of the 800,000 children reported missing annually, approximately 69,000 are abducted:
Family members account for the majority of these reported cases (82 percent)
Non-family abductions account for 12,000 of these reported cases (18 percent)
Farther down on the same page:
Each year 3,600 to 4,200 children are abducted by someone outside the family; 1/2 of them are age 12 or older; 2/3 are female; at least 19% of these abductors are not strangers to their victims-Finklehor, p. 10. *The chance of a minor being kidnapped by a stranger is 1 in 560, by a family member 1 in 180. - Discover Magazine as reported by Gannett News Service 5/28/96.
Now, if you take that 12,000 number, multiply it by 18 (years of childhood), and then take that result (216,000) and determine the percentage that represents of the child population in the US (82,457,018... I grabbed a number off the Census website that's for the 2007 American Community survey, but I had to total up percentages of population by age group and then take that percentage of the total population), you get about a .26% chance of being kidnapped by a stranger... but 1 in 560 is more like .17%. And the ratio of those two percentages don't match the annual statistics, where one lists a number that's 3-4 times as high as the other. Notice that the much higher number is listed prominently at the top of the page, without a footnote as to the conflicting measures from other sources.
Re:They claim you can lie (Score:1, Insightful)
If my boss wanted to use a GPS tracking device at a, he could see the path I make while I'm resigning.
The old trick (Score:4, Insightful)
The old "parents wanting to know where their children are" trick!
It wouldn't surprise me if media suddenly start to emphatize missing child cases...
What would you be teaching to your kid if you did that? Only that it is OK for an authority to know where they are/what they do, anytime... You'd be stripping away their right to privacy before they realize how important it is.
If I need to hear from him, I'll just call him.
A perfect example (Score:3, Insightful)