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Privacy Technology

Cell Tracking on the Rise 233

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the it's-ten-o'clock-do-you-know-where-your-pants-are dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is reporting that with the recent advances in cell phone tracking tech more and more companies are using it to keep track of their employee's movements. From the article: 'The gains, say the converted, are many, ranging from knowing whether workers have been "held up" in the pub rather than in a traffic jam, to being able to quickly locate staff and reroute them if necessary. Not everybody is happy about being monitored, however, and civil rights group Liberty says the growth of tracking raises data privacy concerns.'"
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Cell Tracking on the Rise More

Cell Tracking on the Rise

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  • Solution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tindur ( 658483 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:32AM (#14649532)
    Divert the calls from your employer's phone to your own phone and turn off your employer's phone.

    • Re:Solution (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jotham ( 89116 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:39AM (#14649557)
      Divert the calls from your employer's phone to your own phone and turn off your employer's phone.
      nah, leave it on in your desk draw after diverted it... that way you're still busy working back late. :)

      • Re:Solution (Score:5, Funny)

        by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) * on Monday February 06, 2006 @07:18AM (#14649665) Homepage
        nah, leave it on in your desk draw after diverted it... that way you're still busy working back late. :)

        Nah, glue the phone to the next plane to Brasil, or another country with lenient extradition treaties.

        This should give the accounting department and the comptroller some pause.

    • Re:Solution (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The argument the employer will have is that they are legitimately tracking their property (i.e. the mobile phone). I don't see it as being a huge issue, as a lot of organisations would be able to build location awareness into their business process. For example, a services organisation being able to send a message to all technicians in the area of a customer fault. Something that would traditionally have meant ringing all technicians who *might* be in the area from guesswork. With consumer services like

      • What about the stalker who works .... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rben ( 542324 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @09:33AM (#14650080) Homepage
        ...in the same office? The one who uses the company phone location service to pursue and harass women in the office. What about the abusive husband who works for the same company as his wife and locates the women's shelter because of the company cell phone? As can be demonstrated by many abuses, companies aren't very good at keeping this kind of data protected from people that shouldn't have it. It's going to end up causing a certain amount of grief and accompanying lawsuits.

        I'm sure that many people will accept this kind of intrusion into their privacy, simply because it will be a condition of employment. That giant stick that has been bashing holes in our personal privacy for some time now.

        This technology will undoubtedly provide some useful services, but it will also be abused. My guess is that it will take quite a lot of abuse before proper rules and restrictions are put in place so that people can control when they are being monitored.
        • "I'm sure that many people will accept this kind of intrusion into their privacy, simply because it will be a condition of employment."

          Hmm....I wonder if you could claim that carrying a cell phone that tracked you was akin to "the mark of the beast", and could refuse to do so on religious grounds?

          If they refused to hire or fired you on this basis...then you could sue the hell out of them for discrimination...

    • Hah, nice. I'm mainly just wondering if this is consensual or not. I would like to hope that it is at least, even though that still is a security concern in my opinion.

  • Easy solution (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sane? ( 179855 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:32AM (#14649535)
    Turn the phone off before you go somewhere you don't want to be tracked.
    • I've heard--though I could be mistaken--that even turning your phone off won't help. I don't know why; I know that it doesn't make sense.. it just sticks out in my mind as "one of those things that I've heard". Probably better, in that it's more paranoid, to remove the SIM card when you don't want to be tracked, since that's what this technology relies on.
      • Remove the battery? And if it STILL tracks you with some kind of magic internal power device get a plastic bag with triple walled aluminum foil...no signal is getting out of there!
        • Remove the battery? And if it STILL tracks you with some kind of magic internal power device get a plastic bag with triple walled aluminum foil...no signal is getting out of there!

          If you need to go to such lengths, wouldn't it be easier to just leave the phone at home (... or at work, hehe...)

        • That won't work: everyone knows you need real tin foil, like for hats.

      • Re:Easy solution (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @07:57AM (#14649780) Journal
        I've heard--though I could be mistaken--that even turning your phone off won't help. I don't know why; I know that it doesn't make sense.. it just sticks out in my mind as "one of those things that I've heard". Probably better, in that it's more paranoid, to remove the SIM card when you don't want to be tracked, since that's what this technology relies on.

        That won't help either! Each GSM phone has its own unique IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identifier) number. Even if you remove your SIM card your phone can still access the network (you can use it for emergency call even if your SIM card is missing or invalid!) and it identifies itself by its IMEI. Roughly you can compare this to the hardware (MAC) address of your network adapter; even if you change your IP address, you can be tracked.

        The only way for 100% security is removing the battery. If you live in the USA, your phone should exchange no information with the network when it's switched off - that the FCC regulation. But if you don't live in the USA, there simply might not be such requirement at all, check local laws that apply. Besides, if you are tin-foil-hat-paranoid, you don't really think "they" care about the FCC, do you? So remove the battery and don't waste your time to toy with a SIM card, as long as "they" know you use this particular mobile phone, "they" can still track you even if you feel secure with anonymous prepaid SIM card.

      • Re:Easy solution (Score:4, Informative)

        by Keruo ( 771880 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @07:58AM (#14649786)
        Tracking a cell phone doesn't rely on sim card.
        Each cell phone has unique vendor identification code called IMEI, which is used to identify the phone on cell networks.
        Think MAC address, but it's harder to fake, and it's visible to entire network instead one lan segment.
        Turning off your phone does block the trace as long as you move from the point where you turned the phone off.
        Device-id query for powered off phone returns the last connected cell tower as phone location when the device itself cannot be reached from service area.
        Atleast when we're talking about GSM networks

        • Re:Easy solution (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Daengbo ( 523424 )
          Just travel to Thailand -- they'll reprogram your IMEI ("Imi" to them). It's a huge business because people there buy cheap phones in return for a 1-2 year contract, don't pay the contract and want to use the phone with a pre-paid SIM. The phone is locked out of the network, though, so these people go to have the IMEI changed through software. You would think that the PM would crack down on this, being the billionaire head of Shin Corp.

          Interestingly, I have a cell phone from Thailand which I can't use in

      • Re:Easy solution (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ajs318 ( 655362 )
        Not quite.

        The SIM is "your" identity. You used to be able to pop any SIM in any phone, and that phone would answer to your number and show your credit level. {But then, phone companies started locking phones to accept only their own SIMs; fortunately there are ways around this.} But the phone itself has an identity of its own; its IMEI, which is basically a kind of serial number. IMEIs are hard to falsify properly {though if you do ever want one for some purpose, you can always put a bag in a public

  • Just because you have a mobile doesn't mean (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Biotech9 ( 704202 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:37AM (#14649552) Homepage
    Just because you have a mobile doesn't mean that it has to be turned on.

    I'd gotten very used to always having a mobile on, being able to be contacted anywhere and at anytime. But I got rid of my mobile 3 years ago and haven't bothered getting a replacement, and it's been very refreshing to have to make appointments to meet people and so on.

    More realistically, if you have your own mobile, you can leave it on and have it with you 24/7. But a mobile from your job should be set to turn on at 9 and off at 5, if those are your hours. I'm shocked by how many people I work with allow their bosses to make them work outside of office hours by ringing them up and getting them to do errands in their own spare time. It's bad enough with European companies slowly moving towards the American model of unpaid lunch breaks that aren't even 30 minutes long, without also copying the 24/7 worker ethic.

    • Re:Just because you have a mobile doesn't mean (Score:4, Interesting)

      by h042 ( 248138 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:52AM (#14649591) Homepage
      Yes, But I'm [paid to be] on call sometimes. The problem then is - I'm not officially "working", (so I'd rather not have them know where I am) but I could be called upon to work (so need to have the phone on).

      So the solution you outline is not universal.

      • This won't work for every application, but I wrote a Nextel J2ME app last year that provides realtime location tracking to a central server -- but it manages the employee's timecard as well. It tracks the employee's position if and only if they are on the clock, because otherwise the program isn't running. I think we need to have more services like this, to provide managers with the tools they need without destroying any hope the employee might have as to privacy. And it's basically impossible to 'cheat

      • Get two cellphones.

        The company pays for the work one. The second one, your personal one, you pay for. During "non-work" hours, when you want your privacy, leave the "work" phone off, and have it forwarded to your "personal" phone.

        The location records for your personal phone cannot be requested by your boss, except perhaps for a criminal investigation.

        Yes, it costs money; but isn't your privacy worth $20-50?
        • Yes, it costs money; but isn't your privacy worth $20-50?

          You just sent shivers down my spine. That line sounded like one of those insurance commercials: "Isn't the peace of mind from knowing your family won't be burdened with unexpected funeral costs worth $1 a day?"

          So, we have to buy our privacy now? Do you propose that we pay to guarantee our other rights as well? How much is the right to free speech worth? How much would you pay to be able to travel, to meet with your friends and family? How ab

          • Re:Shivers! (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Kadin2048 ( 468275 )
            I see it as the other way around.

            Right now, you pay for a cell phone if you want one. It's yours, it's private.

            Nothing in this article proposes changing that. Nobody would be able to get tracking data off of your personal mobile phone.

            What's basically happening is that companies are going to have ways of tracking THEIR mobile phones, which they give to employees. Nobody is saying that you have to carry this phone with you on the weekends, or use it for personal calls, or anything else.

            However, there seems t
    • It's bad enough with European companies slowly moving towards the American model of unpaid lunch breaks that aren't even 30 minutes long, without also copying the 24/7 worker ethic.
      Last I checked, I live in a European country, and I can tell you, none of my former employers or my current employer pays you during lunch. Most employers however are flexible; they don't mind if I have no lunch break, or take a 2 hour lunch break, as long as I put in the 8 hours a day.

      • And the funny thing is, as an American, my employers generally don't care if I take similar lunch breaks, or even if I in fact work 8 hours a day, as long as I get what I promise to get done gets done. Sometimes, unfortuantely, my estimation skills are poor, and I have to work 10-12 hours a day. On the other hand, sometimes my estimates are poor in the other direction and I get some free time to tend to other things.

        Not everyone is as fortunate as me, and I get that. But, this didn't happen by accident

    • Re:Just because you have a mobile doesn't mean (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Monday February 06, 2006 @08:03AM (#14649798) Homepage
      But even that ain't ok. I expect a certain level of trust in me from my employer -- there's really no alternative to this anyway because *any* employee can screw the employer over (atleast somewhat) if he wants to anyway.

      An employer who is not willing to take my word for, for example, that it took 20 minutes longer from the airport back to work today than it does on the average is an employer I have no wish to work for. End of discussion.

  • Outrageous (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Big Nothing ( 229456 ) <tord.stromdal@gmail.com> on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:40AM (#14649560)
    At my current employment, I have refused receiving a company cell phone - I don't want my employer to reach me when I'm not at work! I CERTAINLY would not accept my employer tracking my movements! If the company I worked for implemented such a technology, I would quit - plain and simple.

    If my employer has any reason to believe that I'm screwing him, he can damn well take it up with me, not play Big Brother.

  • Read between the lines (Score:5, Informative)

    by DavidHOzAu ( 925585 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:40AM (#14649561)
    I read the article, but when reading between the lines I noticed that someone could track your cell phone without any sort technological upgrade on your phone. This means that the tracking technology is on the telco's side, and if they are now offering it as a reliable service to the public, it means that it has been around for a while... sounds like old technology to me. I guess all this means is that now businesses can do what the government has been doing for years. Face it guys, our privacy has been invade-able for a while, and there is little that we (the concerned public) can do about it.

    oblig.: "In Russia, you can always find a Cell Phone. In Soviet Britain, Cell Phone finds YOU!"
    • The tracking was already possible long time ago. I know it was at least with GSM networks. At some point in time one was able to get information about their stolen mobile phone's position from the Telco in my country, provided that the thief was stupid enough to use the SIM card which most of them were.
      They stopped doing it for some time now, but the ability is there.

      What's new is that the information is now open to public.

    • Tracking cell phones (Score:4, Informative)

      by Confused ( 34234 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @07:08AM (#14649636) Homepage
      The mobile provider knows which cell your phone had contacted last. If the last contact is a little old, your cell phone can be paged to find it. This paging is always done when there's a call for you, but it can be done at any time. Usally the cell phone networks page the mobile phones a few times a day on their own. This alone gives a rough estimate where your cell phone is located.

      If more precision is necessary, there are applications that request from your mobile the signal strenght of the available cells and triangulate from this data a better location. Depending on how the network is laid out, this can give very good results.

      So if you want to have a peaceful time in the pub, best just take the battery out of your phone. This way it drops out of the network without signing off and you can always blame no reception. As an alternative, select nice pubs in cellars with no coverage.

      This applies to GSM and UMTS networks. I have no idea if it also works that way with those weird american networks.
      • As an alternative, select nice pubs in cellars with no coverage.

        They'll still know that the last position reading from that cell phone was near the doorway of that nice pub under the pillars. From there, putting 2 and 2 together is not hard.

      • It applies to networks in the US, to an extent. But the tech is new, at least here. Carriers had to make all manner of upgrades to comply with emergency/911 legislation, and now they're trying to commercialize it.

        In the US, a single cell of coverage might be (and usually is) up to 8-10 km in diameter. Previously, there was no way to get any kind of accuracy. So a lot of phones are equipped with GPS, so they can be 'pinged'. Even the ones that aren't GPS-enabled have been given signal strength feedback

    • As far as I can tell from some presentations I've seen and articles I've read, the technology goes something like this:

      When you enter the range of a cell tower, your phone sends it's number and 4 digit pin number. These are authenticated, and assuming everything works right, the cell tower updates your providers network that this tower can reach you. When someone calls you then, the telco looks up which cell tower(s) you are near, and tells them to connect with your phone. It does so, and everything is fine

  • The problem is.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sir Pallas ( 696783 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:43AM (#14649574) Homepage
    That (more and more) companies think they own employees, rather than that they pay for their time. If someone never shows up to work on one time or has bad performance reviews, that's one thing; and if it gets bad, let them go. But where that employee is and what that employee does (when not working) is normally not the company's business. Not that any of this is a new idea on their part --- think company towns or migrant worker camps --- but technology now is making the "dream" a possibility, though hopefully not a reality.

    • Re:The problem is.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by rlauzon ( 770025 )
      Welcome to the wonderful world of salary employment.

      If you are salary, you aren't paid by the hour. You are paid to perform a job. To protect themselves, companies have always defined jobs rather "fuzzily." In my company, every job description has something like "and misc. tasks as assigned." (Which means that your boss can change your job description anytime he wants - for a short term.)

      Historically, management knew what this meant: if they need you to do something outside your job description once in
    • That (more and more) companies think they own employees, rather than that they pay for their time....Not that any of this is a new idea on their part --- think company towns or migrant worker camps --- but technology now is making the "dream" a possibility, though hopefully not a reality.

      Slavery is becoming more and more feasable in today's world. Arguably, boned labour has already returned. It won't become widespread, just rare enough for those who engage in it to cream enormous profits.
    • In my experience, employer try to treat their employees as cattle but very often they're very shy to put it in writing. Also, very often the low- and mid-level managers are on the power trip and most abusive - the upper management usually can't be bothered with such details while on the golf course.

      This often boils down to the situation, that if those requests and abuses are ignored, they have no serious consequenses. If my employer abuses the privilege of knowing where I can be reached outside business hou

  • July Bombings? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chris Kamel ( 813292 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:56AM (#14649601)
    From TFA:
    There is increasing awareness about the importance of knowing where your staff are in case of incidents like the July London bombings.

    So what good exactly is businesses tracking employees on an incident like that?
    The range of things you can justify in fear of terrorist attacks never stops widening.
    • Many company's reach out to help their employees during natural and unnatural disasters. The airline crashes on 9/11/2001, The 2004 tsunami, hurricanes and the like all impact people. It was quite rewarding to see my company reach out to it's global employees to make sure they are OK and to offer extra paid time off, counseling services, supplies, and charitable contributions during these events.
      • All the actions you listed were taken a day or more later than the actual event. I don't expect that in the case of a terrorist bombing that an employee will just hang around the bomb site for a few days. And flooding the network with "are you OK?" calls hurts the rescuers more than it helps anyone.
      • Don't you think it's a bit fallacious to suggest that offering the help you describe requires knowing when and where someone is every minute?

  • Isn't this a marketing opportunity.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:58AM (#14649607)
    ... for the US. Govt.? They could recoupe some of the development and deployment costs of their spy technology. Sell a complete Software/Hardware package for small operators and call it: Echelon (TM), Corporate edition.
     
    .... Uhummmmm...... Now where did I leave that copy of 1984?????

  • Privacy (Score:5, Informative)

    by VincenzoRomano ( 881055 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @06:59AM (#14649611) Homepage Journal
    Turning off the cell phone is not enough not to be traced.
    When you turn the cell phone off (or it is shutting down because of low battery), it nicely says the network is being shut down. So your evil tracer would know what you did.
    It is a much better solution to unplug the battery. The cell phone will suddenly disappear from the network as if you were passing through an uncovered area.
    And none could say where you are and why they don't know.
    The only cons are about the loss of some cell phone data (like the last calls details and so on). But we can afford such a loss for the sake of privacy, can't we?
    • It is a much better solution to unplug the battery. The cell phone will suddenly disappear from the network as if you were passing through an uncovered area.

      How about wrappng it up in the proverbial tinfoil? Radio can't travel into a Faraday cage. Maybe a zip-up metallic mesh bag for the more fashion-conscious.

      • most cell phones have a low power and high power mode for hitting the towers, and if you do this with a live phone, it'll drain the battery trying to connect...

    • ...but for complete safety wrap your mobile phone (and preferably also your entire head) in Aluminium foil.
    • Then you wouldn't lose any settings or personal information.

  • Unions For High-Skill Workers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NBarnes ( 586109 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @07:00AM (#14649617)
    Ha.

    It's long been an absurd kabuki that the time you spend in commute is somehow 'your' time and, thus, unpaid. But, of course, who would sit in traffic in their true free time? Employers now show that they understand this dicotomy, this theft, perfectly well; they'll try to extert control over your unpaid time as if they somehow had bargained with you for it.

    If employers are organized, so must employees be. Unions are the only solution.
    • You chose to have a distance between you and your job, so why should the employer pay for your time commuting? They dont get anything productive out of it, so whats their money going toward? Want to spend less unpaid time commuting? Move closer, or get a job closer to home.

      • Re:Unions For High-Skill Workers (Score:4, Insightful)

        by NBarnes ( 586109 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @08:40AM (#14649895)
        You chose to have a distance between you and your job, so why should the employer pay for your time commuting? They dont get anything productive out of it, so whats their money going toward? Want to spend less unpaid time commuting? Move closer, or get a job closer to home.

        The employer chose to have a distance between itself and centers of population that would provide its source of labor, so why should I waste my time commuting without being paid for it?

        I've had employers move from convenient, accessible downtown locations out to suburban work parks in the middle of nowhere in the sprawl. Why? Well, you see, the company felt it could save on rent, so it decided to shift that cost from itself to the employees. My commute tripled, but somehow my wages and hours stayed the same....

        The live to work rather than work to live attitude on /. sometimes baffles me. I'm not here to provide you with a tame little drone you can stuff into mass transit or some Goddess-awful metal box on wheels for two hours (or more!) of my day, unpaid, and expect me to be grateful for the privilege of commuting to your no doubt fine job. Every decision is a trade off between costs to the worker and costs to the business; pretending that somehow the employer is entitled to unpaid commute times is, well, precisely how employers would like you to view the situation.
        • Add to that, the fact that a good many jobs are now perfectly capable of being done by a telecommuter. This means that the job does not require any commute to be performed. The employer just has you commuting for their convenince. It doesn't matter if your commute is 2 hours, or 5 minutes. It is still time spent on behalf of the employer in relation to completeing your job.

          I'm not saying that I think an employer should pay for commute time. I'm just saying that the 'you choose to live away from your
    • Unions are NOT the answer. Individual people standing up for themselves IS the answer, particularly if as many people as possible do so. I have worked as a unionized employee just once, and it was not a pleasant experience. The union limited what I could do on the job, took my hard-earned money (because the company agreed to only hire union workers, who had to pay dues), yet never did anything for me.

      Unions are NOT the answer. Indvidual people working together to assert their rights and make necessary c
      • Most (non-management) people on white-colar jobs have no idea of where the borders are, of what they and other stakeholders (managers, clients) can get away with. The younger the worker, the less likelly he or she will know how the "social forces" that surround him/her work and can be shapped.

        Learning that you can say NO, when to say NO, and what is the right way to say NO to the different persons and under different situations goes a long way to avoiding abuses from managers.*

        Traditional unions with indust

  • This has been rattling around [babilim.co.uk] various blogs for a couple of days now, even making an appearance in the Guardian [guardian.co.uk]. It's interesting that it seems to be being posted as "news", as there has been user level access to this stuff since around 1995 when digital networks started rolling out properly. I'm not sure what's going, presumably it's one of those meme things...

    Al.

  • lame excuses (Score:4, Insightful)

    by layer3switch ( 783864 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @07:17AM (#14649661)
    "An employee has to consent to having their mobile tracked. A company can't request to track a phone without the user knowing,"

    WTF? So if I DON'T consent, of course, on my annual employee's review, I won't be marked down with "TEAM PLAYER: -1" Riiiight....

    "Some businesses want to keep an eye on their staff. Some feel they have an obligation to know where staff are in case of emergencies,... There is increasing awareness about the importance of knowing where your staff are in case of incidents like the July London bombings."

    Huh? It's nice to know employers care about well being of emplyees, but seriously, what business of employer to track employees when something like "train bombing" occurs instead that of police? If that is the case, then health benifit and life insurance shouldn't be optional, but mandatory at work. Other wise, what does that really say? "We really care about your safty, but not really so much that we have to pay for your medicals."

    "Knowing where your nearest employee is to a customer is also important. It allows a company to improve efficiency."

    What? Any profession which requires (in my opinion) radio contact at all time may be useful in this case (such as EMT, police, fire fighters, cab drivers, doctors, field techicians, etc), but to improve efficiency on already shrunk-to-death workforce such as IT and sales (with high turnover)? Exactly how will that improve efficiency?

    Jim the employer: Tom, I know you are by 3rd St. Get over to 5th and 7th, the nearest customer site ASAP.
    Tom the employee: Jim, if you know where I am, you should know that I'm on a break and taking shit in a restroom.

    • > Exactly how will that improve efficiency?

      For companies with large field forces, knowing where an employee is can be a benefit to allow better planning in case of delays (traffic jams, spendign longer at the previous customer site, etc)

      But I agree with you, for office jobs it's just a way to snoop on employees.

  • tis the classic freedom-for-security tradeoff (Score:3, Interesting)

    by museumpeace ( 735109 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @07:58AM (#14649785) Journal
    A woman was kidnapped from a Boston suburb 2 or 3 years ago, killed and her body driven to a remote site in NH and dumped. No evidence at the scene pointed to who did it, how or where they'e taken her. But her cellphone was still on. The time of the crime and roughly the route taken in its perpetration were established. The body, then the car and finally the cultprit were all found. You win some, you lose something. take your choice.
    • If the police can convince a judge that certain information is necisarry evidence in a criminal investigation, and they document the justification, then the police can access any information or property they need. In all other cases, releasing my private information to anyone other than me is simply unacceptable. (In the case of a company cell phone used on company time, it is the company's private information.)

      You don't need to trade away your freedom for security - ever. The due process of law that we hav

    • WTF does my employer knowing when I go to the pub got to do with my security? If I'm f*cking kidnapped then by all means please let the police track my cellphone, thanks, but I see no reason why there needs to be a trade-off.

  • Employee Tracking Victim (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06, 2006 @08:02AM (#14649794)
    I used to work for a company that used those little HID access cards. They had a system that could detect those cards in each room, so they knew where employees were at all times. Well, one week I had the flu, and since they denied my request for sick time, I was in the office, making frequent runs to the restroom (get it?). Later that week, my manager actually wrote me up because he had proof I was spending over an hour a day in the rest room, and accused me of being a goof off.

    So, I resigned and immediately sued them. It turns out that a jury is very sympathetic when it comes to a company forcing a sick employee to come to work, even with a medical diagnosis of the flu and doctor orders to stay home. They are especially generous when it comes to a company actually writing someone up for trying to deal with the symptoms.

    Of course, since they were a startup (what other kind of company would do something like that?), they didn't have enough cash for the settlement. They couldn't appeal because the local DA promised criminal charges if they did. Since they didn't have case, I settled for a majority stake in the company. I then sold it all to one of their competitors who took all of their IP and fired all of the executives, including the asshole who did that to me.

    • That is absolutely magnificent. Shoulda kept them hanging for years, stated that as the majority shareholder you wanted your old boss to take a 50% pay cut, etc, etc. Still, there's not much improving on perfection
    • I think you left out the part where you beat up the guy's elderly mother and molested his dog.

      Jeez, dude. If the company treats you like shit, just resign and move on. There's no need to take the entire company down.
    • Since they didn't have case, I settled for a majority stake in the company. I then sold it all to one of their competitors who took all of their IP and fired all of the executives, including the asshole who did that to me.

      Poetic justicce. Awesome.

  • Stasi used radiation and smell to track you. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @08:08AM (#14649817) Journal
    How would you track ppl smart enough not to have a phone?
    Think like an East German.

    East German secret police, the Stasi used scandium-46 with hidden radiation detectors to identify and track dissidents.
    West German deutschmark banknotes, documents, clothing and meeting rooms where heavily tagged.
    New Scientist, January 3, 2001

    http://www.leftwatch.com/archives/years/2001/00000 4.html [leftwatch.com]

    They also used to get your odour by rubbing it onto a piece of fabric. They would then have a jar with your fabric in it.
    Trained dogs would then sniff you out.
    Stasiland by Anna Funder

    http://www.arlindo-correia.com/081203.html [arlindo-correia.com]

    In Capitalist west phone irradiates you.
    In Communist East Germany you irradiate phone.

  • It's a short-term problem (Score:4, Funny)

    by ben_1432 ( 871549 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @08:34AM (#14649871)
    Don't worry if your employer can track your whereabouts. Soon Google will release GoogleTracker, which will be a beta service you can route your calls through.

    Of course, by using GoogleTracker you agree to allow non-humans to listen to your calls, for the purpose of identifying relevant ads.

    Privacy advocates are satisfied that Google will not track your movement. They are satisfied that Google already knows everything about you. Google spokesmen have reinforced this, saying, "Monitoring your calls would be like triple-wiping. There's only a slim chance we'll get more dirt from you."
  • It would be nice to have our cake and eat it too. If I was driving in bad weather and had an accident (such that I could not call for help), I'd love for my loved ones and emergency personnel to be able to find me. Similarly, If a business lives or dies by ultra-efficiency, it is always good to be able to re-route on-the-ground employees to handle business issues as quickly as possible - while not wasting the employee's time by having them call in/be called constantly to know where they are.

    However, I str
    • The worst part of this whole deal is that apparently everybody can track me using my cell phone *except me*. I'd love to be able to download some mapping software and use my phone like a GPS when I'm somewhere unfamiliar-- but apparently, only other people can get my location. All the third-party software for the treo I've seen requires an external bluetooth GPS receiver, even though the phone has GPS tracking built-in for E911 (and apparently employer tracking.)

      Why does everybody get to track me but me?

  • 911 in Ontario.... (Score:2, Informative)

    by cttforsale ( 803028 )
    All cell calls to 911 are located in this manner.

  • Carriers should make you opt in to be tracked. I believe most Canadian cell carriers send you a text message requiring you to accept being tracked. Then when someone tries to track you you would also get a text message. If your company was tracking you, at least you would know it was happening and give you time to think of a good excuse. ;-)

  • Privacy is dead, join the fishbowl.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jjh37997 ( 456473 ) on Monday February 06, 2006 @11:27AM (#14650766) Homepage
    This wouldn't be such a bad thing if I could track the cell phones of the people who are tracking me. I really don't see what's so bad about letting my boss track me as long as I'm able to follow him around. It's the imbalance of power that's the main problem with typical surveillance. Want to track my movements with a camera? Go ahead.... but only if I get to know who's watching me and I have the ability to watch them back. An open and transparent society can make the world both safe and free. As it is now the powerful, well-connected and criminal can invade your privacy any time they want... privacy laws only prevent us from spying on them.
  • How does this thing work? I understand from the technology side, but how does it work from the business side? Is this company FollowUs making deals/agreements with the cell phone carriers to get this information? Or is it something they are able to access some other way?

    Haven't seen something like this site in the US. Probably the response to the first question above will explain way.
  • All the tracking information should be freely available on the Internet ... ... including historical logs ... ... for all managers too

    I mean, fair is fair, we should be able to know that the CFO goes visit his mistress every thursday evening, or that the CEO is out golfing ....

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