Google Latitude Spies on Americans' Exact Geographic Location in Real Time

Google Latitude Spies on Americans' Exact Geographic Location in Real Time

www.naturalnews.com

Has the age of electronic stalking begun? Google has announced a new service called Latitude that triangulates the real-time position of any mobile phone user and displays their location online, in real time, for other people to see.

Google says it's a "100 percent opt in" service that only works if you sign up for it, but there's something fishy about all this they're not saying: How is it that Google has access to cell phone tower triangulation data in the first place?

A typical programmer (or even a company) can't simply announce they're creating an online mapping program and get access to cell phone tower triangulation data. This requires some sort of high-level data interchange between Google and telecommunications companies -- you know, the kind of data interchange normally reserved for the FBI or CIA. That Google now has this technology is downright spooky (and "spook" is the right word here...).

(visit the link for the full news article)

A few years ago, my older brother showed me how he tracked his ex-girlfriend using similar technology by using GPS to track her cellphone's location to find out if she was cheating on him. The cellphone was still on his account at the time, so it wasn't technically illegal.

Speaking of which, I really don't see how google can do this legally. Or is law in general just lagging behind on this one, and laws still need to be written? If google can do this, how hard will it be for the NSA or other government agencies to do this?

www.naturalnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Hahahahahaha.....

That'll be nice. That way rapeists will know where their pray is at all times, and murderers won't have any more shuckles about hunting down their targets, and the main use mommies won't worry about their babies.

Great for everyone!

Not.

Ah, I was looking further into this, the only phones that can use this are smart phones,your PDA style phones, and other units that can run java applets, and have software control over its comm interface.

My guess due to this is that they're not actually tapping into the cell networks to triangulate your position, but a java applet on the smart phone is actually doing the triangulation for them, and uploading it's location back to Google.

It would seem that if you don't have Google's Latitude Java Applet processing data and triangulating it's own position, and sending that position back to Google, then Google hasn't got a clue where you are.

On your phone you can set it so that it either automatically calculates your position and sends it to Google, you can manually set your position, or you can simply not send your position.


Yes, the FBI and CIA use triangulation from the towers themselves to find you. But this is likely working the other way around, your phone is triangulating it's position based on the signal strength it gets from 3 towers, does the math itself, then sends it's location out.

Essentially, Google doesn't have access to the cell networks, just the information from the java applet you voluntarily installed on your phone.

[edit on 4-2-2009 by johnsky]

reply to post by johnsky


Thanks man, you've done your homework, makes alot more sense now.

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