Location-Based Services Seen as Key Privacy Issue
Mobile phones invade privacy in several ways, most participants agreed in a debate on London-based Spiked- Online.com. Location-based services add another layer of data govts. are likely to want held for antiterrorism and criminal inquiries. Newly emerging mobile commerce (m- commerce) services could be deluged by the same spam and malware attacks e-mail systems now suffer. And, in the U.K. at least, “happy slapping” -- capturing photos of practical jokes and assaults on cellphones and circulating them electronically -- while rare, is seen as a growing problem.
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The debate is sponsored by mobile operator O2, which said it wants more clarity about “what the facts are, who is responsible and for what” on mobile phone privacy. Two key issues confronting mobile operators are data retention and location-based services, CEO Peter Erskine said.
Having one’s location known is one of mobile phones’ many benefits, said Mobile Broadband Group Coordinator Hamish MacLeod. Many owners still regard cellphones as a safety tool, but in the future they'll also look to them for information, entertainment, music, games and TV. The mobile industry has a long record of complying with privacy and data protection rules, to build customer trust, he said, and law enforcement agencies can get traffic data only in accordance with U.K. laws: “People recognize this is for their general protection, not an unwarranted invasion of their privacy.”
Mobile devices easily can become a “scapegoat for our anxieties about other people,” wrote James Harkin, an associate at London think-tank Demos. Phones with location-based technologies, picture-messaging, video- messaging and audio recording “will bring a new urgency to existing debates about privacy and the control of information.” Citizens’ attitudes toward mobile operators, marketers and govts. could change “as we start to feel harried by the demands made on us by our mobiles and imagine ourselves to be under constant surveillance by the new technology,” he said. Unless there are clear limits on what govts. can do with data gleaned from mobile phones, Harkin said, there may be a backlash as disgruntled users turn off location-based services.
The “state’s seemingly unstoppable rush to regulate” telecom should cause concern, said James Woudhuysen, prof. of forecasting & innovation at De Monfort U.. Mobile privacy is important not because the govt. may be able to follow our every move, but because “too many of us wouldn’t much mind” if the govt. did have that power.
A defining feature of the recent London attacks “was how we all turned to our mobile phones, to seek information, comfort and reassurance,” said Susanne Lace, senior policy officer, National Consumer Council. But mobile phones and emerging technologies, including m- commerce, will make more personal data available, raising more privacy and other issues. Consumers should get more control over their data, Lace said.
Mobile phone users must take some responsibility for shielding their privacy, several said. Instead of pushing for new and more intrusive regulation, targets of happy slapping should take test cases to court under existing laws, said Graham Barnfield, lecturer in journalism and print media at the U. of East London. The phenomenon shows a “cultural shift in attitudes towards privacy,” he said. Criminals “helpfully circulate evidence of their crimes, with an eye on finding the widest possible audience,” while victims invite us to feel their private pain. Their plight would be eased “if we didn’t live in a society where private lives were on unrelenting display,” Barnfield said.
Boundaries between public and private have become far less obvious, said Nicola Green, a lecturer in the sociology of new media and new technologies at the U. of Surrey. While any mobile phone calls taken and made on trains seem to show people are willing to have private or intimate conversations in public, other research suggests phone users “negotiate” privacy in public places by moving to private spaces or limiting disclosures during conversations.
“'Personal information’ as defined in data protection law isn’t the only information that is private, and what’s understood as ‘private’ isn’t always personal information,” Green said. That poses significant challenges for policy-makers, lawmakers and activists. Mobile communications technologies make clear privacy can’t be reduced to issues of personal data protection, however important they are.
Several members of Parliament offered opinions. Most agreed mobile technology poses a threat to personal privacy, citing constituent concerns about happy slapping, bullying by texting, and identity theft. One disagreed, saying “It’s no more of a threat than to have your name and address in a phone book.” Another, asked how best to safeguard mobile users’ privacy, said: “What you need is some system whereby you turn it off, and keep it off.”