Location tracking probe expands despite 2001 FCC law requiring all phones track users

[The Straight Story]

Location tracking probe expands despite 2001 FCC law requiring all phones track users


The US House and Senate is widening investigations into mobile location tracking, despite a federal mandate on the books since 2001 that requires wireless carriers to track the location of users.

A report by Reuters noted that the the House Energy and Commerce Committee has sent letters to Apple, Google, HP, Microsoft, Nokia and RIM requesting more information about how devices use and store location data.

The US Senate is also addressing privacy concerns, similarly tipped off by a report that Apple's iOS 4.x devices maintain an internal database cache of generalized location data that appears to never go away, and is compiled regardless of whether Location Services is turned on or not.

The issue has stoked the strongest bipartisan cooperation in American politics seen in recent history, and appears to be generating more interest and scrutiny by elected officials than Net Neutrality, the BP oil spill, employment or the economy at large.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/04/26/location_tracking_probe_expands_despite_2001_fcc_law_requiring_all_phones_track_users.html

[DCKit]

1. Coordinate and analyze the data from all of Congress' phones....

and you'll have the coordinates of every whorehouse, sex club and lobbyist in DC.

[TheWraith]

2. That's a ridiculous mischaracterization of the facts.

The requirement in 2001 was not to "track all users," but to make cell phones location traceable in the event of a 911 call, and even then they only required it to be reliably possible in two thirds of such calls. That's a huge difference from "a federal mandate requiring wireless carriers to track all users."

[CBGLuthier]

3. You aren't saying that the appleinsider

may be biased are you. :-)