Agency using cellphones for quick job placements in Japan

According to The Economic Times, a placement agency in Japan is using phone handsets' global positioning system to quickly match workers to temporary jobs, doing away with interviews and other formalities.

The service provided by Tokyo-based firm LocationValue was launched in 2006. Job applicants are to send the company their resumes and make requests about the times of the day and workplaces where they want to work, the Kyodo news agency reported.

The firm locates the applicants, using the global positioning systems built into their cellphones and promptly contacts prospective employers.

Employers can view applicants' track records of work performances on LocationValue's phone site and dispense with face-to-face job interviews before landing capable workers.

At present, an estimated 320,000 workers are registered with the company's service.

Read full article.

Big Brother technology tracks UK shoppers' mobile phones

"Big Brother" technology which uses data from mobile phones to monitor people's movements has been introduce to shopping centres in Britain. The Telegraph reports.

The technology has been implemented in the US for some time, but has now made its way onto British high streets.

Princesshay Shopping Centre, in Exeter, Devon, has been criticised for implementing the scheme without clearly seeking the permission of its customers.

Consumers claim yellow signs which have been posted at the centre are too small to be seen.

Read more.

Malls track shoppers' cell phones on Black Friday

Attention holiday shoppers: your cell phone may be tracked this year.

According to CNN, as of lack Friday and running through New Year's Day, two U.S. malls -- Promenade Temecula in southern California and Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, Va. -- will track guests' movements by monitoring the signals from their cell phones. While the data that's collected is anonymous, it can follow shoppers' paths from store to store.

The goal is for stores to answer questions like: How many Nordstrom shoppers also stop at Starbucks? How long do most customers linger in Victoria's Secret? Are there unpopular spots in the mall that aren't being visited?

While U.S. malls have long tracked how crowds move throughout their stores, this is the first time they've used cell phones.

But obtaining that information comes with privacy concerns.

Read more.

Related: - Why Stalking Your Customers Via Their Mobile Phones is Not a Good Idea (Forbes)

How much privacy can smartphone owners expect?

The US Supreme Court could soon allow police to monitor the movements of US mobile phone users without a warrant. Now that most of us carry sophisticated tracking devices in our pockets, how much privacy do we have a right to expect? The BBC reports.

... In the world of smartphones, privacy is becoming an increasingly outdated concept, argues technology writer Sam Biddle. What might once have been considered "creepy" and invasive is becoming normal.

"That line of creepiness is there, but it's eroding quickly because, frankly, we are just getting used to it," says Mr Biddle, a staff writer for Gizmodo.com.

"Something like (smartphone app) Foursquare, something like Find My Friends, these things all would have sounded like something from 1984. Now they are fun and free.

But there are signs that governments and law enforcement agencies around the world are taking advantage of this increasingly relaxed attitude towards privacy to step up surveillance of citizens.

Read more.

GPS Mandatory On Mobile Phones By 2018

In an effort to modernize the 911 system, the FCC issued a rule Sept. 27 that will mandate that all U.S. carriers include GPS in their phones by 2018. That includes VoIP services as well. The goal is to allow emergency workers to find your position when you dial 911, similar to the way they can when you call via landlines.

[via InformationWeek]

28% of American adults use mobile and social location-based services

According to a new national survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, more than a quarter (28%) of all American adults use mobile or social location-based services of some kind.

Read full report. [via @Jason Grigsby].

Using Cell Phone Tracking Data To Pinpoint Relief After Disasters

We are all familiar with the success of Ushahidi, a citizen-reporting platform using online volunteers and SMS to map out disaster areas and help channel aid. Today Fast Company reports on a similar idea but that relies on technology that mines data from cell phones moments before a disaster strikes, then continues to register everyone making calls on their phones, so as help locate where people have fled to.

After a major earthquake or flood, people need help but can be hard to find. Technology -- using tracking data from phones to figure out where people have fled to -- makes it easier to get them help.

Tracking people using cell phone data from the moments before the disaster could help target appropriate relief efforts at the right locations, in the crucial 12 hours after an event.

... As long as their towers stay up, cell phone companies continue to register everyone making calls on their phones. That's data that they collect routinely. Bengtsson and his colleagues at the Sweden's Karolinska Intitutet and Columbia University have come up with a way to quickly and reliably mine that data and use it to estimate how people are moving.

Read more.

Related: Articles on how Ushahidi has been used around the world, allowing users to create maps from data drawn from messages from cellphones, news reports and the Web.

Courts grapple with GPS technology in criminal cases

As rapidly evolving technological advances allow people to be tracked by global positioning devices found in most new cellphones, Congress and courthouses nationwide are trying to balance privacy rights with the law enforcement’s need to locate criminals. The Olympian reports.

Nearly three dozen ACLU affiliates around the country filed public information requests this month with local police agencies seeking statistics on how often GPS data is sought, how it’s used and how it’s stored.

Congress, meanwhile, has held hearings on cellphone technology and privacy, acknowledging that existing law hasn’t kept up with issues raised by the proliferation of smartphones and other devices capable of keeping real-time tabs on their owners.

“For investigators, the cellphone has become one of the greatest tools available,” said Douglas Ward, director of the Division of Public Safety Leadership in the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.

"But certainly we want to do this the right way and protect people’s rights,” he added. “This technology is going to cause more and more of these arguments, and the courts are going to have to settle how it all turns out. Like anything else, there can be abuses. Justice demands that we weigh that.”

Read full article.

How technology is changing our understanding of the world and our place in it

An amazing article from The New Atlantis on how GPS is changing our understanding of the world and our place in it.@drz via @BrainPicker.

Catch the London Underground with Google Maps

I missed this post by Google Blogspot in July. Useful!

Google Maps added public transport directions for London within Google Maps, including Google Maps for mobile on iOS, Blackberry, and Android-powered devices. Now, whether you live in London or are just visiting, you can get public transport directions on your mobile device.

@FakeDispatch On Localisation

@FakeDispatch

ACLU Wants Details on Mobile Tracking by Police

Affiliates of the ACLU in 31 states have filed 379 information requests, demanding that state and local law enforcement agencies tell how they use location information from mobile phones to track U.S. residents. PC World reports.

Amid a growing debate over whether police or private companies should be able to track mobile-phone users, the public should know how law enforcement agencies are using mobile location data, the ACLU said. The information requests ask local and state law enforcement agencies whether they are obtaining court-approved warrants before tracking mobile-phone users, and how often they are obtaining mobile-phone location data.

The ACLU groups also want to know how much money local and state police agencies are spending on mobile-phone tracking.

ACLU: Is Your Local Law Enforcement Tracking Your Cell Phone's Location?.

TruePosition: Location Intelligence

From Wired's Danger Room:

Chances are you’ve never heard of TruePosition. If you’re an AT&T or T-Mobile customer, though, TruePosition may have heard of you. When you’re in danger, the company can tell police, firefighters and medics know where you’re at in an emergency. In the U.S., it locates over 60 million 911 calls annually. But very quietly, over the last four years, TruePosition has moved into the homeland security business — worldwide.the homeland security business — worldwide.

Read full article.

Senators press Apple, Google for answers about location tracking

Representatives from Apple and Google faced hard questions about their location and privacy policies when testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law on Tuesday.

The hearing was called by Senator Al Franken (D-MN) in April following the location tracking controversy that first exploded over Apple's products and Google soon thereafter.

The hearing was primarily meant to address mobile privacy on smartphones, tablets, and cell phones, and to get answers from Google and Apple about how and why they record various aspects of consumer data.

Read ars technica's report.

Check-in Data: The Reality Behind the Hype

A survey of more than 1,000 consumers conducted by digital agency Beyond shows that only 17% of the mobile users are taken with location-based apps such as Foursquare, Facebook Places and Instagram.

More than half of mobile users who do use checkin apps (54%) said they are motivated to share their location when discounts are involved. Just 21%, however, said badges and status rewards motivated them to check in.

As for consumers not using checkin apps, 99% said they do not consider badges or status an incentive for sharing their location.

Nearly 50% understandably cited privacy concerns as the main reason for not using the services. And let's not forget about the 50% of mobile users who don't own smartphones.

[TIME Techland via Mashable]

Apple Updates Software to Fix Problems With Collecting Location Data

Apple on Wednesday released its promised software update for its mobile devices to fix a problem that enabled the iPhone and iPad 3G to collect customers’ locations.

[via Bits]

Dutch Police Used TomTom's GPS Data To Target Speeders

Over the past week, U.S. consumers have been talking about their smart phones keeping tabs on their location. In the Netherlands, another kind of GPS scandal is brewing: The government bought aggregate global positioning system data from the automotive navigation company TomTom and then used it to install speed cameras in places where drivers are most likely to speed.

[via npr]

Verizon to Slap Phones With Location-Tracking Disclaimers

Verizon Wireless plans to slap a label on its smartphones and revealed its plans in a letter to Congress, as noted by Forbes.

This device is capable of determining its (and your) physical, geographical location and can associate this location data with other customer information." The label goes on to tell users how they can limit the location information available to others.

[via TIME Techland]

Google faces $50 million lawsuit over Android location tracking

Google and Apple have both been in the news lately over details of how both companies' mobile operating systems store and transmit geolocation data. Following a class-action suit brought by two Tampa men targeting Apple over alleged user tracking, Google is facing a similar class action lawsuit filed in Detroit on Wednesday. arstechnica reports.

Two Detroit-area residents are suing Google for $50 million. They claim Google's collection and use of location data far exceeds the disclosure to end users, and could be used by stalkers or other unsavory third parties.

Read more.

Related: - Apple's Steve Jobs Says Software Update Will Curtail Location Collection

iPhones and Android phones building vast databases for Google and Apple

According to The Guardian on Friday, Italy, France and Germany are to investigate smartphone tracking software amid privacy concerns.

Apple and Google are using smartphones running their software to build gigantic databases for location-based services, according to new research following the Guardian's revelations that iPhones and devices running Android collect location data about owners' movements.

iPhones and Android smartphones swap data – which does not contain information directly identifying the user or the phone – back and forth with their respective companies if the user agrees to use "location services".

The news has led some European governments to announce investigations into whether Apple is breaking privacy laws.

Read full article.

Related:

-- Your phone, yourself: When is tracking too much? (USA Today) - If you’re worried about privacy, you can turn off the function on your smartphone that tracks where you go. But that means giving up the services that probably made you want a smartphone in the first place. After all, how smart is an iPhone or an Android if you can’t use it to map your car trip or scan reviews of nearby restaurants?

Apple’s iPhone/iPad location-tracking may be a bug

Why is Apple tracking the locations of iPhone and iPad users? The reason is probably less Big Brother and more Big Glitch, according to blogger John Gruber, via VentureBeat.

Gruber’s source told him that the much-maligned tracking file is just a cache for location data, and that the historical data isn’t being cleared due to a bug or an oversight. But the source didn’t downplay the implications of the issue, according to what appears to be a fragment of an email from Gruber’s “little bird”.

Read more.

Apple Geo Tracking: Now the Government Is Involved

Within hours of it being revealed that Apple has been tracking the location of iPhones since the release of iOS4, Senator Al Franken had written to Apple CEO Steve Jobs wanting answers.

Franken asked nine questions of Jobs about the matter - questions that he's probably not alone in wanting answered.

[via TIME Techland]

Smartphone's Tracking Geodata May Be as Personal as Your DNA

Lawmakers in Europe are concentrating their efforts on one aspect of online privacy that may be being overlooked in the rush to "check in" everywhere, and are suggesting your real-time (and historic) geo-tracking data may be as personal as DNA. Fast Company reports.

... The concern is that if you combine tracking data with a database of venues and locations (perhaps such as the one that Foursqure is putting together) it's possible to extrapolate deep data about a person's habits even if they choose not to "broadcast" their visit, for example, to a Hooters. Even anonymized data is dangerous, Jessen notes, because it could be relatively simple to deduce a person's identity from their habits.

Read full article.

GPS check-ins taking off

Check-ins from GPS-enabled apps are wildly popular. But what happens when people start faking their coordinates?

New Scientist reports.

Beijing to track citizens with their cell phones

According to theNextWeb, the Chinese government is looking into monitoring the movement of 17 million cellphone users in Beijing, China by tracking the signal of their mobile devices.

Purportedly to improve Beijing’s public travel and reduce traffic congestion, the new initiative, literally translated as “Platform for Citizen Movement Information” proposes to track each individual citizen’s movement in real time via cell phone signals, as reported on the Beijing Municipal People’s Government website.

Read full article.

Calling all cars: cell phone networks and the future of traffic

In this in-depth look at the Mobile Millennium project, Arstechnica examines the technology behind a distributed automotive sensor network.

We'll look at how the system is designed to protect user privacy, examine how data from thousands of mobile phones and hundreds of static sensors are combined to measure traffic flow, and look at how this technology will impact the future of driving.

Read full feature story.

Smartphones could soon reveal a person's every move

An interesting read from The Sydney Morning Herald, on how smartphones could soon reveal a person's every move.

Google and Facebook are putting location at the centre of their businesses. Both have launched services that broadcast your location to friends - Latitude and Places respectively - and within weeks Facebook will allow participating retail outlets, restaurants and cafes to offer special deals to Facebook users who ''check in'' with them.

Greater rewards are on offer to those who bring their friends. Searching for stuff on mobile phones is already a $US1 billion business for Google and demand by advertisers to have the number of their nearest outlet listed next to their Google ad is one of the fastest-growing areas of its business.

Read full article.

Facebook Launches SMS-Based Service on GSM Phones

Facebook and Gemalto have partnered up to create a SIM card embedded with Facebook, thus allowing any GSM-phone holder check for updates without the need of a data plan. PCMag.com reports.

"Facebook for SIM" give users on a GSM network the ability to perform basic Facebook app-like functions such as approving friend requests, updating statuses, posting on walls, and replying to messages, without using a data plan or downloading an application.

All of the text information is transmitted via SMS.

Read more.

New York Trials Real-Time Bus Tracking Information on Smartphones

New York's public transport authority, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is starting a pilot trial of a service that makes bus locations available via cell phones. The trial, which is being carried out on New York City Transit's B63 bus route in Brooklyn puts GPS trackers onto the busses, then passes that information back to their central server.

All bus customers have to do is send a request via an SMS number that will be prominently displayed at bus stops. Users will receive a return text with the real-time locations of the next several buses. There is also a smartphone compatible mobile website which can be accessed via a QRCode that is displayed at each bus stop.

[via Cellular News. MTA Press release]

Senator eyes bill on mobile privacy

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, argues that a search warrant should be required before police can track your electronic whereabouts via your cell phone signals. CNet reports.

In an luncheon speech at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., Wyden said his staff was drafting legislation to restore "the balance necessary to protect individual rights" by requiring police to obtain a search warrant signed by a judge before obtaining location information.

... The forthcoming legislation, he said, is being drafted with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), and will apply to "all acquisitions of geolocation information," including GPS tracking devices that police are generally allowed to place on cars without warrants under current law.

Read full article.

Related:

-- Why you should always encrypt your smartphone - A very interesting article from arstechnica on how to protect your cell phone from search and seizure. Taking small basics steps such as storing your mobile phone in your luggage, footlocker, or the glove comportment in your car, or any other closed container that's not on your person.

-- Court Upholds Searches of Text Messages in Drug Arrests - The California Supreme Court ruled in San Francisco on Monday that police are entitled to search text messages on the cell phones of arrestees without obtaining a warrant.