Over the past few years, technologies have emerged that make it
easier for people to know where they are, figure out how to get where they want
to go, and how to get there faster.
But there can be a cost for all this convenience: users’
privacy. Consider the case of Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, who was
involved last year in a bitter custody battle. Urlacher testified that he
tried to pick up his son for visitations four times during a two-month period,
but Tyna Robertson, the child’s mother, did not bring the boy to meet him at a
highway oasis in Hinsdale, Illinois as scheduled.
In a subsequent hearing, Robertson’s attorneys produced evidence
that Urlacher was actually nowhere near the meeting place on those four days.
How could the lawyers prove where Urlacher was at a specific point
in time several months earlier? They used his cell phone records and the list
of tolls he paid automatically with the I-Pass transponder in his vehicle to
show his exact location at each scheduled visitation time, which was nowhere
near Hinsdale.
This is the chilling side effect of all of the technologies that
help us to track our own location and get where we want to go. Those same
technologies allow others to see where we’ve been and where we’re going.
But
the current technologies and applications are just the forerunners of many more
smart systems that will soon surround us and increasingly know where we are and
what we are doing.
Consider a revolutionary new type of billboard. Video displays
developed by Samsung with advertising firm Reactrix Systems will soon appear in
the lobbies of Hilton hotels. Instead of presenting a two-dimensional, static
image, the new billboards will display 3-D images that move in response to the
movements of passersby.1
The displays use cameras that can capture information about people
who come within 15 feet. Next, computer algorithms interpret what that
information means so that the displays can respond appropriately. For example,
if two people are holding hands, a display can respond by showing a picture of
a candlelit dinner in the hotel restaurant. While this technology seems
benign, it could...
