Comment Articles

Cellphones betray your every move

Declan McCullagh CNET News

Published: 19 Aug 2003 13:55 BST

In 1999, Congress stepped in with a law called the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act. (The scenario it was intended to prevent: walking past a McDonald's and getting spammed with unwanted electronic coupons or advertisements.) The law states that people who use a "commercial mobile service" only consent to the disclosure of their "call location information" if they give "express prior authorisation."

Well, that law created more problems than it solved. Mobile service is defined in such a Byzantine manner that nobody knows whether it covers only voice calls, or data communications as well. In addition, US cellular companies have filed comments with the FCC giving their sometimes inconsistent interpretations of the law.

Because location information is not defined, Cingular has concluded that it can disclose the location of the nearest cell tower -- which could pinpoint a customer to within a few blocks, in a large city -- without the customer's consent. The meaning of prior authorisation has become a legal quibble fest: Nokia asserts that consent can't be implied and must be explicit, while other companies, such as Leap Wireless, argue that consumers imply consent when using cellular devices to access Web-based services like Mapquest.com.

The FCC once considered drafting regulations to clear things up, but then inexplicably abandoned the project, which the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association had requested. In a July 2002 decision, a majority of the commissioners said: "Because we do not wish to artificially constrain the still-developing market for location-based services, we determine that the better course is to vigorously enforce the law as written, without further clarification of the statutory provisions by rule."

To his credit, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps dissented. Copps said the commission needed to step in because "serious definitional questions and disagreement between commenters about how this (location privacy) protection will function remain unaddressed."