Cell Phones Set to Track Call Locales

In cell-phone-crazed Switzerland, consumers have begun using a service that allows them to pinpoint the whereabouts of their friends using instant messaging and location-finding technology built into their phones.

The service, called FriendZone, has attracted droves of teenagers. But behind the fun and frivolity lies the seed of a coming revolution in cell phone service--one that could pose an ominous threat to personal privacy.

The joining of cell phones and location-sensing technology is about to become an integral part of mobile phones in the United States and many other parts of the world.

In this country, the movement is being driven by a government mandate aimed at saving lives by making wireless 911 calls easier to track. Cellular companies were supposed to begin rolling out their systems this month, although most companies have asked for more time.

The wireless 911 effort, however, also has opened commercial possibilities that companies are flocking to exploit.

Cell phone makers and U.S. carriers already have begun embedding tracking technologies that will allow consumers to locate the nearest bank machine, restaurant or gas station on request.

Such mundane but useful services are expected to become commonplace in the coming years, along with specialty services that can deliver customized traffic or weather information based on the subscriber’s location.

But a key question remains: Will customers be able to use the location-based services without having their movements and activities tracked, recorded or misused?

Privacy experts are not optimistic.

“This is a case where being realistic and being alarmist are perfectly compatible because the potential for abuse is astronomical,” said Phil Agre, who follows privacy matters as an associate professor of information studies at UCLA.

Part of the concern stems from the fact that wireless phones are among the most popular consumer-electronic devices in the world, with nearly a billion subscribers (including more than 120 million U.S. users) and more than 400 million phones sold each year.

Adding location-tracking capabilities to the phone systems virtually guarantees widespread adoption in short order, whether protections are in place or not.

“Most people who have a cell phone use it more times per day than their credit card, which means the volume of information that is being generated about your whereabouts, your activities, your schedule and your inclinations by your cell phone is probably greater than that generated by anything other than your e-mail account,” said Jim Dempsey, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a watchdog group.

Dempsey and others said consumers already are fed up with the constant collection and trading of their credit card, investment and Web-browsing data, and they will be alarmed by the possibility of adding their daily itinerary to the list.

The push to add location technology with cell phones began five years ago, when the Federal Communications Commission passed a two-phase plan to give 911 operators more precise caller-location information.

Since the 1980s, 911 calls from traditional land-line phones have automatically provided operators with the address of the caller.

It’s different when the 911 call comes from a wireless phone. Some wireless 911 calls provide operators with rudimentary location information, but the vast majority give emergency centers no hint of where the caller is.

The flaw has grown more critical as more people buy mobile phones and make 911 calls from them. Today, as many as 50 million emergency calls--or about half of all calls to 911--come in each year through wireless phones, according to the National Emergency Number Assn., a trade group for 911 centers.

To fix the problem, the FCC required firms to install location-sensing technology that is embedded either in customers’ cell phones or in the wireless network.

Phone-based systems use a special chip installed in each cell phone that communicates with global positioning system satellites and ground antennas to pinpoint a user’s location.

Network-based systems come in many varieties but generally establish the user’s location by measuring and comparing the phone signal’s relative proximity or angle with the three closest cell sites.

Some reports suggested that if the location technologies already had been deployed, they could have helped rescuers find cell-phone-toting survivors after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center towers. But the systems are not accurate enough to have helped much.

Though GPS devices can be set up to pinpoint a caller’s location within as little as 16 feet in optimal conditions, the companies that deploy the technology are expected to commit only to the government-required accuracy for phone-based systems--locating callers within 164 feet two-thirds of the time. Network-based systems must locate callers within 328 feet two-thirds of the time.

Mobile carriers, stuck with paying millions of dollars for the location upgrades, are planning to recover their costs by launching commercial services based on the automatic-location technology.

They envision selling users traffic reports and directions to scavenger-hunt games, location-based buddy lists and “concierge” features that find the closest automated teller machine or Mexican restaurant. In a few years, location-sensing technologies are likely to become pervasive, with manufacturers adding pinpointing features to nearly all cars as well as to hand-held computers, laptops, watches, pet collars and more, analysts said.

So far, the largest location-tracking service sold to consumers comes from General Motors Corp.’s OnStar subsidiary. The voice-activated in-car service has more than 1 million subscribers and includes everything from stolen-vehicle tracking and emergency assistance to access to live operators for directions and point-of-interest and other “concierge” information upon request.

The company’s services are based on satellite tracking technology built into a growing number of cars. Information is relayed to OnStar through a built-in wireless phone that also can be used by the customer if he or she subscribes to OnStar’s Personal Calling service.

Some features on the drawing board include customized weather and traffic routing, wireless stock trading and access to Fidelity investment accounts--potentially giving OnStar an extraordinarily detailed profile of its customers.

OnStar and mobile phone companies have acknowledged the heightened sensitivity of customer location data and with it the need for special privacy protections.

“Customers really do want to be in control of their location information and how the information is going to be used,” Michael Altschul, general counsel of the trade group Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Assn., told industry representatives recently.

In addition to speaking out on the subject, the CTIA has asked the FCC to consider minimum privacy requirements for companies handling user location data.

Wireless carriers have a powerful incentive to allay customer concerns. Their businesses rely on a combination of monthly subscription fees and per-minute and per-use charges.

“Their core business involves convincing people to keep their phones on all day long,” said Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “The minute customers get annoyed or suspicious about what’s happening to their information, they’ll turn off their phone, and that means fewer minutes and fewer revenues.”

But many unanswered questions remain: How long can companies store location data? Can they cross-reference it with calling records or other profile information? Can they use it for other purposes with the customer’s consent? Can they collect location information passively, without a user activating it? Will the information be available to subpoena-wielding lawyers and government investigators?

It’s also unclear whether companies will be able to safeguard sensitive location data from electronic eavesdropping or theft.

A look at OnStar’s privacy policy reveals the kinds of loopholes that remain and how many key questions are unanswered.

OnStar’s policy states that it gathers personal information “to improve our services,” and it will never sell customer information. But the company also states that it accepts no responsibility for “accidental or inadvertent disclosure” of customer information and it reserves the right to change its policies “as business needs require.”

Examples already abound of privacy breaches and abuses by businesses, and a growing number of them involve customer location information. Earlier this year, customers of Acme Rental in New Haven, Conn., got a disturbing look at what location-tracking technology can do without their knowledge.

The rental car company had its fleet outfitted with a system that tracked the location and measured the speed of each of its cars. The company automatically billed customers $150 each time they exceeded 65 mph for more than two minutes. After a customer complained, Connecticut’s consumer-protection department ordered Acme to halt the practice.

Sensing the brewing privacy concerns, lawmakers amended telephone data privacy rules in 1999 to restrict the use of wireless location information without customer approval, except for 911 purposes.

But those rules already are under legal attack, and a customer’s “approval” is so loosely defined that Pacific Bell and other phone companies routinely supply customer data to telemarketers, caller-ID-box maker Cidco and other “affiliate” companies.

What’s more, the rules apply only to phone companies--not to a host of other companies such as OnStar--that already have begun to traffic in wireless location-based services.

Agre and others hope the risks surrounding location privacy will prompt action from Congress or the Federal Trade Commission, which is looking into the issue and has broader jurisdiction than the FCC.

Two bills are pending in Congress that would prohibit the sale and misuse of location-tracking data, but the fate of those measures is unclear now that lawmakers are passing legislation to ease surveillance by government investigators.

Other industry experts suggest that technology could provide the right balance between convenience and privacy.

Lee Hancock, president of location-services company Go2 Systems, believes that consumers could protect themselves by using new technologies that would allow them to negotiate a privacy deal with each transaction instead of giving a one-time “yes or no” to passing along location data.

“You can say, I’ll give Go2 my exact location because they give me information that I need relative to where I am, but I’m only going to give America Online my city because I just check the weather, and I’ll give Fidelity nothing because all I do with them is check stock quotes and they don’t need to know where I am,” Hancock said. “I think people will make that trade between convenience and privacy.”

Privacy advocates still want legislative action. But they’re encouraged by the mobile phone industry’s efforts to resolve the matter.

“The one bright spot here is that, hopefully, this policy debate is happening early enough so that the technology can be designed to take all of this into account,” said David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “This certainly didn’t happen with the Internet.”