Just a few weeks ago, we posted about a German politician, who was able to access all of his location data from his mobile phone service provider and allowed a German newspaper to create an interactive map displaying where he was at all times (and combining it with other public info). It seemed pretty creepy. Now, if you have an iPhone or an iPad, it turns out that you can do the exact same thing for yourself. As a bunch of folks are pointing out, some folks, digging through some information on Apple's devices, have discovered that it's been recording your location for the past 10 months, and they've created an (open source) program to let you easily create a map of your own whereabouts. That's even more creepy (especially for those who own such a device). It's not clear why Apple's devices were storing this data or if anything was being done with it, but it does seem a bit unnerving.

Washington DC to New York from Alasdair Allan on Vimeo.

Last fall, we wrote about the bizarre situation of Yasir Afifi, a student here in California who discovered a GPS tracking device on his car during an oil change, and then posted photos of the device on Reddit. Following that, the FBI showed up at his house demanding the tracking device back. It later turned out that the key reason behind tracking him was a random comment on Reddit that -- if read in context -- did not represent any kind of threat or warning that should have resulted in FBI surveillance. But, of course, since there's almost no oversight on who the FBI gets to spy on, it didn't care and just started tracking Afifi.

Afifi has now sued the government over the tracking action, claiming that it was a violation of his civil rights. There are some differences of opinion in the courts over whether or not the government needs a warrant to place GPS devices on cars, which provides some background for this case. There's a bit of a circuit split on that right now, with the government (obviously) insisting that no warrant is needed. Part of the goal of this lawsuit appears to be to get another ruling on this issue to push it forward. Given the history on this subject, I would guess that Afifi will likely lose the lawsuit, but the possibility that it actually does go in his favor makes the case worth paying attention to.

Last week, we wrote about the guy who found an FBI tracking device on his car. His friend then posted the pics to Reddit, leading the FBI to show up at the original guy's house, demanding the tracking device back. One odd part of the story is that in the discussion that ensued, the law enforcement agents showed the guy a post his friend (the one on Reddit) had made. This is how Wired described that part of the story:

Afifi retrieved the device from his apartment and handed it over, at which point the agents asked a series of questions -- did he know anyone who traveled to Yemen or was affiliated with overseas training? One of the agents produced a printout of a blog post that Afifi's friend Khaled allegedly wrote a couple of months ago. It had "something to do with a mall or a bomb," Afifi said. He hadn't seen it before and doesn't know the details of what it said. He found it hard to believe Khaled meant anything threatening by the post.

"He's a smart kid and is not affiliated with anything extreme and never says anything stupid like that," Afifi said. "I've known that guy my whole life."

Someone in our comments quickly pointed out that the "blog post" in question was actually a comment on Reddit that was in response to a discussion about silly security procedures, and the entire comment reads:

bombing a mall seems so easy to do. i mean all you really need is a bomb, a regular outfit so you arent the crazy guy in a trench coat trying to blow up a mall and a shopping bag. i mean if terrorism were actually a legitimate threat, think about how many fucking malls would have blown up already.. you can put a bag in a million different places, there would be no way to foresee the next target, and really no way to prevent it unless CTU gets some intel at the last minute in which case every city but LA is fucked...so...yea...now i'm surely bugged : /

I'm having trouble seeing how anyone could read that and think there's anything suspicious at all about it. But, as Bruce Schneier notes, what's really bizarre is how that comment doesn't just lead to the guy being tracked, but his friend having his movements tracked.

If they're doing this to someone so tangentially connected to a vaguely bothersome post on an obscure blog, just how many of us have tracking devices on our cars right now -- perhaps because of this blog?

Schneier also wonders how many people are combing through the depths of sites like Reddit to totally misread comments out of context, and then using them to start surveilling someone's whereabouts.

Apparently the system that tracks sex offenders and paroled prisoners and other convicts via electronic tags was totally unreachable for about 12 hours last week, because no one at the company who ran the system, BI, apparently noticed that they had run out of space on their servers. "In retrospect, we should have been able to catch this," claimed a spokesperson for the company. You think? While the data as to their whereabouts was still collected, and the people being tracked were unaware of the lack of monitoring while it was happening, it still makes you wonder why so many governments trust such a system to a company that can't even monitor when they're running out of data storage space.

Just a couple weeks ago, we had written about a federal lawsuit concerning whether or not the Justice Department needs a warrant to put a tracking device on cars. In a very prescient manner, a bunch of our commenters started discussing what would happen if they found such a device on their car, and whether or not it would be legal to remove it. Well, now we have a case of exactly that happening.

Apparently a guy named Yasir Afifi, who lives in Silicon Valley, discovered a strange device on his car, when he took it in for an oil change. The friend he was with, took some photos and posted them to Reddit, asking if it meant the FBI was after them... or if it was a bomb: Lots of people in the thread quickly confirmed that it was a tracking device, made by a company who only sold to law enforcement. Then, to confirm things, a couple of days later, the FBI showed up to demand he return the device. Wired has a cinematic description of the encounter:

Afifi considered selling the device on Craigslist before the FBI showed up. He was in his apartment Tuesday afternoon when a roommate told him "two sneaky-looking people" were near his car. Afifi, already heading out for an appointment, encountered a man and woman looking his vehicle outside. The man asked if Afifi knew his registration tag was expired. When Afifi asked if it bothered him, the man just smiled. Afifi got into his car and headed for the parking lot exit when two SUVs pulled up with flashing lights carrying four police officers in bullet-proof vests.

The agent who initially spoke with Afifi identified himself then as Vincent and told Afifi, "We're here to recover the device you found on your vehicle. It's federal property. It's an expensive piece, and we need it right now."

Afifi asked, "Are you the guys that put it there?" and the agent replied, "Yeah, I put it there." He told Afifi, "We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate."

The full story is a lot longer, and a fascinating read, so head over to that link to check it out. It also suggests some of the reasons why the FBI might be watching Afifi -- who says he already knows he's on the federal watchlist -- as well as concerns from the ACLU over the whole thing. Wired also spoke to an ex-FBI agent who thought that the FBI almost certainly would have gotten a warrant to install the device (though, given all the lawsuits, it seems they don't always do so...) and who also pointed out that this particular device is really old. The newer devices, apparently, are much harder to find. They don't come with their own battery pack, but run off the car's battery, and are much more well hidden.

Either way, apparently this gives the FBI's answer to what happens if you find the device. The friend on Reddit claimed they had thought about throwing it in a lake, or even just putting it on another car, "but when you come home to 2 stoned off their asses people who are hearing things in the device and convinced its a bomb you just gotta be sure."

Apparently pre-schoolers in Contra Costa County are going to learn from an early age to get used to the idea that their every move will be tracked relentlessly. They're all going to get special jerseys to wear that contain an RFID tag, which will track the kids whereabouts at all times. The claim is it will even track "whether they've eaten or not," though I'm not quite sure how that works. The idea is that this will "free up teachers and administrators who previously had to note on paper files when a child was absent or had eaten." While I'm generally all for technology that makes processes more efficient, I'm not quite sure it makes sense to go full-on Big Brother here. Aren't there better technological solutions for tracking attendance and food intake. What about having the kid (or their parents) sign them in via a computer check-in (which is what I do with my kid)? As a parent, frankly, I don't think I'd be comfortable with a preschool tagging my kid with a tracking device.

The EFF has launched a neat little project, called TOSback, where it tracks any changes to online service agreements from a bunch of different well known companies, such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and eBay. Considering that some of these companies have been known to quietly change their terms without making the details all that public, it seems like this could be quite a useful service -- at least in getting these companies to recognize that they should clearly explain why they're changing their terms and what those changes really mean.

There's been a lot of coverage around about Google's new friend finder, built into its Maps app for smartphones. The feature, called Latitude, is able to share your location with friends that you select, and who also carry a compatible mobile device (or laptop) with the app installed and a data connection to Google's servers. This kind of service has lots of uses for the enterprise, families, and among friends, and it seems like Google has added the necessary controls to avoid the worst of the privacy issues. But the privacy issue has been discussed elsewhere, and frankly it's hardly worth debating since usage is optional. Yes, you sacrifice privacy to use such a service, but YOU choose can when it's useful enough to be worth the privacy sacrifice, and turn it off at other times. Seems simple. I make the same trade-off with my toll-paying RFID tag.

So let's discuss the competitive implications of this latest move, instead. Other firms, such as Loopt, Networks in Motion, Wavemarket, OmniTRAKS, FindWhere, Motorola Rhino, Autodesk have been offering various location tracking services for years, with the first in the US consumer phone services popping up around 2005. Historically, the services were offered for prices of $10/mo or more. Loopt offers their consumer service through carriers for free or $4/mo, but Latitude is user-installed and free. Now, it's no surprise that consumer-grade tracking services are offered for free: consumers tend to like that price, and the providers can make revenue by driving consumers to local business through advertising. But the free Google application also threatens enterprise-grade tracking solutions, especially in an era of cost-cutting. Like enterprise-grade solutions, Google can display a map with the location of all the tracked "friends" or staff on a PC as well as a phone. Zoinks! Looks like the bottom just fell out of the low end of the enterprise tracking market.

So, how do enterprise vendors "compete with free"? Well, so far, Latitude cannot replace an elaborate employee tracking solution that records breadcrumbs, integrates time-carding, optimal dispatch routing, offers geo-fencing, and other high-end functions. The existing enterprise vendors can compete quite well by offering premium features, integration into management tools, and verticalized solutions that deliver incremental value over the free services. How do you compete with a free product? Offer a product that's worth more -- and which the free version can't easily copy.

Google's entry signals a tipping point for tracking, as its brand penetration and price will push this type of service into many more handsets. Since Latitude also works on laptops, we can expect much better targeted location-aware advertising on our laptop Google searches, too... whether that impresses you or creeps you out. Bottom line is that the Twitter-types, who constantly update their network with short text messages, can save themselves some typing with Latitude. Privacy advocates will shun it, and others like me will manage it, enabling Latitude when we need it, and shutting it off most of the day. However, in the long run, this can be quite good for competitors in the market who can successfully incorporate advanced features worth paying for. Let Google educate the market, and have demand for such apps in the enterprise level bubble up.

Ryan Radia takes a look at the news that cable TV providers are teaming up to track viewing habits and questions whether or not there's a real privacy issue there. He comes to the conclusion that there isn't one for a few reasons. First, he notes that the data is anonymized and aggregated. That's true, but not very convincing. We've seen over and over again that there's no such thing as an anonymized dataset. There's almost always something in the data that can reveal at least some of the participants. Perhaps that's more difficult with things TV watching habits -- but not impossible. Next, he points out that the legal and PR impact of any real privacy violation would be pretty damaging on these companies. Finally, he suggests that the benefits of the tracking outweigh any negatives -- which, again is not very convincing. Just because a company can better target ads to you doesn't seem like an excuse to give up your privacy. That said, I do tend to agree that this isn't much of a privacy violation at all, but if the cable companies were smart, they should at least be extremely upfront about how the process works, and let people voluntarily "opt-in" to it, rather than being forced to join. Hell, they can offer incentives to do so. It's worked for AC Nielsen for years.

We recently noted that some articles were appearing in the UK about a plan by the government to track all phone calls, emails and internet surfing histories in that country in a giant database. The whole thing sounded so extreme we even doubted it was true. However, it appears to be based in fact, as the government is outlining the details of the plan, while at the same time agreeing to delay introducing it for at least year, in order to hear from the public (or, perhaps, to hope that public dislike of this proposal dies down enough that it can be introduced quietly). The backers of the plan stress that all they want is the data about the communications, rather than the communications themselves. So, that would mean they're interested in who called whom, not what was said, and who emailed whom, not what was written. That may be small comfort to some, but it still seems like a huge privacy violation, and the database is almost certainly to be abused and misused by those who have access to it.