FW: Google, GPS and "We know where you are."

[Jan Hauser]

Hello all,

Please to excuse. As you might see below, I am quite passionate about the
issues Tom raises.

So much so, that I responded to his query at 9:30AM PST this morning ( email
this early is a big deal for me  ;-) ) . Unfortunately, my email bounced
from the FRIAM list and it's taken me until now to correct it.

Some of the below may have been addressed by others since, but the "history"
of cellular GPS and access issues have for the most part not been covered.

I have much more to share with anyone who may wish to dive deeper.  

Please let me know directly so the LIST does not get side-tracked..

Cheers!  - Jan Hauser 408 483-1967


  _____  

From: Jan Hauser [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 9:34 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'; 'Jan Hauser'
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Google, GPS and "We know where you are."


Hi Tom,
 
As a co-founder of Navigational Technologies (NAVTEQ) let me assure you that
what you request has been on the forefront of my intention for many, many
years.
 
First, I was born with the geo-spatial gene.  I can't help myself. My first
attempt to start such a company (Microfilm Maps) goes back to 1970.  NAVTEQ
was the second (~1986-7 ish). For those that don't know, NAVTEQ in the
preeminent supplier for navigation data. it generally underlies MAPQUEST,
virtually all automobile navigation systems, Google, etc. etc.
 
My last "title" (for whatever that is worth) just before I left Sun
Microsystems was Principal Architect, Wireless Geo-Location-Based Systems.
Whew!  Well I told you that this was genetic with me... I think I am
incurable.
 
Now the answer... It's purely business and political issues.
To understand the issues fully, you need to look at the history of
geo-location in phones in the USA:
 
1) The wireless carriers NEVER wanted to do this.
2) The emergency 911 emergency NEVER asked for this.
3) The cost of the "upgrades" to the wireless systems in the USA was a mere
3.3 Billion dollars with no apparent ability to recover their investment---
but they are doing in any way, one might ask: why!?
 
It's the rules.
 
If the carriers don't comply, the will loose their license to use that
oh-so-precious ether that their airwaves require. So, very begrudgingly,
they are slowly complying with a bunch of back-and-forth between them and
the government about how to get it paid for.  This has been going on for
roughly 10 years. There is a fairly good consensus that the driving force
behind was the loss of a tracing capability. (federal) law enforcement has
always had the capability to geo-locate a land-line phone but they lost this
with cellular and took a step backward in law enforcement--- so they had to
catch up.
 
But there is good news!
 
- A few years ago Sprint and Nextel opened up the GPS capability in certain
(limited) handsets for a few limited applications.
- VERIZON will now allow a business partner (you need to be a partner) to
get the geo-location for about  25 cents per location.
- More will (slowly) follow.
- There are no technical barriers to creating a private system if you need
to. AAA created a systems that required them to give a specific cell-phone
to their users. This was an ordinary phone with a very special battery. The
battery contained a GPS and a coding system that coded the GPS info and put
in on a sub-carrier in the analogue signal. They had a decoder at the
call-center that took the AAA "help" calls.
 
The last part: gelocation-based trust and privacy.
 
After left Sun they still had limited interest in pursuing this area.  They
hired me to as a consultant to make a roadmap into this business area. I
produced a 22-page whitepaper with a general outline of how to approach the
so-called marketplace and a very specific plan for each part of Sun that
needed to coordinate their efforts.
 
I suppose I could get Sun to allow me to release this if anyone wants all
the gory details.  It has allot of information about trust and privacy if
anyone is interested let me know.
 
Thank for asking!  - Jan
 
 
 
 
 
  _____  

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 12:11 AM
To: Friam at redfish. com
Subject: [FRIAM] Google, GPS and "We know where you are."


Colleagues:

In recent days, Google announced the beta of some software for a
GPS-equipped mobile phones.  See http://tinyurl.com/yrvfo3
The way it works is by picking up a signal from cell towers, it indicates
the phone's location with a blue dot on Google's Mobil Maps.  (For what it's
worth, I have Google Mobile Maps on my Treo 650, but I have yet to get this
version to work.)

Here's my question:

Would it be possible for the Google mothership to do the equivalent of
"pinging" my phone number, not to make a call but to see if (a) the phone is
on and if so (b) where is that phone?  The phone wouldn't ring, so the user
would have no idea he/she is being geo-located.  I assume that if Google
could do that, those phone numbers and geocodes could easily become a data
base appropriate for some interesting data mining, both as a static bit of
insight and if done, say, every hour, whew.  What a rich pile of insight for
all sorts of people, businesses and survey agencies.  Putting aside issues
of a person's privacy, just the collective data about where that particular
phone is going -- forget who owns it -- would be rather amazing and useful
to some.

So, back to the questions:  

1) Would those pings of a phone be possible?  
2) Would the results reflect location and movement of that phone down to
what degree of distance today?  Are we talking meters or kilometers or ????
3) And if Google wasn't doing the pinging, could anyone who had my phone
number track my location and/or distance from any originating dialing
point/server?

Thanks,
Tom Johnson

--
==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com                 tom at jtjohnson.com

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
                                                  -- Buckminster Fuller
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