Your cell phone's gonna rat you out

[Theophylact]

(at least in Missouri):

Missouri: State Spies on Drivers Through Cell Phones
The state of Missouri has begun a program to track individual movements on highways through cell phones.

The Missouri Department of Transportation will spend $3 million annually on a program to monitor the movements of individuals on highways via their cell phones -- without their knowledge or consent.

Delcan NET, a Canadian company, developed the system which triangulates the location of each driver by monitoring the signal sent from the cell phone as it is handed off from one cell tower to the next. Each phone is uniquely identified and the information is compared with a highway map to record on what road each motorist is traveling at any given time. The system also records the speed of each vehicle, opening up another potential ticketing technology.

Missouri rejected the simpler solution used by other states of embedding sensors in the pavement that record how many vehicles pass over a stretch of pavement without uniquely identifying them. Missouri wanted a program that required less equipment.

"The traffic community has been really excited for quite some time about the possibility of being able to use cell phones to track vehicles," Valerie Briggs, program manager for transportation operations at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials told the Associated Press. "Almost everyone has a cell phone, so you have a lot of potential data points, and you can track data almost anywhere on the whole (road) system."

A pilot program in Baltimore only tracks Cingular cell phones on 1,000 miles of road. AirSage Inc. has contracted with Sprint to spy on motorists in Norfolk, Virginia and Atlanta and Macon, Georgia.

(A tip o' the hat to Bruce Schneier.)

[johnnyis42]

i can't help but htink this is just more FUD. seems more likely that this data would be used to justify procurement of highway funds than anything else, using the raw statistics of undoubtably unique individuals who use the highways over a given length of time.

telecoms are notorious for refusing to give up the names of their customers without a court order, and i really wouldn't expect judges to start handing out court orders to subpoena cell tower info for a $200 speeding ticket.

[ShuckyD]

Im in PA, does that mean im safe.... at least for now...doink doink

[elroy]

If they start tracking me, I know what I'll be giving up. [Cingular]

[soulja]

wasnt ISP gonna rat us out?.. now cell phones.. it seems like the futures getting better yet worse on our privacy

[mjolnir1134]

....yet so easy to break once you sit on one... well, I use a Sprint one... I dunno if they implanted some type of GPS device in there...

I think we should all move back to those brick heavy cell phones that use the power-drill batteries, dontcha guys think? A blast from the past!!!11

[Ultima]

there is such an easy solution to this.

Turn your phone off before you start driving.

[paul9]

Claim you were in a light aircraft or helicopter, lol.

[hatehotmail]

Why don't you just trow your phone on the tower so it breaks?

[Jakaar]

There's no reason to worry. It will give the state more accurate information as to the number of users it has on it's highways, hopefully increasing funds to the department of transportation for repairs/etc. Besides, even if it WAS used to detect your speed/etc, you're the one speeding and then just getting upset when they have another way to detect your illegal activity -- sorta backwards, eh? I speed all the time, but I'm not gonna stop until I start getting tickets...