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Unwitting Research Subjects Studied through Cell Phones
June 05, 2008 12:27 PM
by
Liz Colville
The Northeastern University study is the first to use cell phones to track people’s everyday movements, raising privacy concerns.
30-Second Summary
A study used cell phones to track the movements of 100,000 people for six months, finding that most people operated within a short radius of their homes, although “a few hardy souls move long distances in a short time.” Nature magazine published the study on June 5.
The cell phone owners’ identities remained anonymous and the researchers have kept the study’s location a secret, saying only that it was an “industrialized nation” outside the United States.
Tracking cell phone users without their consent raises troubling legal issues. “Tracking [a cell phone] and thus its owner is an active intrusion into personal privacy,” bioethicist Arthur Caplan told the Associated Press.
The study’s coauthor, Cesar Hidalgo, contends that the subjects of the study are being used as “statistics” rather than “examples” and that his team is “not trying to do evil things. We’re trying to make the world a little better.”
A spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission, Rob Kenny, told the Associated Press that although nonconsensual tracking is illegal in the United States, consensual tracking “is legal and even marketed as a special feature by some U.S. cell phone providers.”
Tim Barker of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes that the study suggests a “loss of privacy that seems to go hand-in-hand with technological advancements.”
In 2007, the Washington Post reported that federal officials solicit tracking information from cell phone companies “so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects.”
The cell phone owners’ identities remained anonymous and the researchers have kept the study’s location a secret, saying only that it was an “industrialized nation” outside the United States.
Tracking cell phone users without their consent raises troubling legal issues. “Tracking [a cell phone] and thus its owner is an active intrusion into personal privacy,” bioethicist Arthur Caplan told the Associated Press.
The study’s coauthor, Cesar Hidalgo, contends that the subjects of the study are being used as “statistics” rather than “examples” and that his team is “not trying to do evil things. We’re trying to make the world a little better.”
A spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission, Rob Kenny, told the Associated Press that although nonconsensual tracking is illegal in the United States, consensual tracking “is legal and even marketed as a special feature by some U.S. cell phone providers.”
Tim Barker of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes that the study suggests a “loss of privacy that seems to go hand-in-hand with technological advancements.”
In 2007, the Washington Post reported that federal officials solicit tracking information from cell phone companies “so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects.”
Headline Link: ‘Mobile phones demystify commuter rat race’
The researchers at Northeastern believe that the study results “could help epidemiologists to predict how viruses will spread through populations, and help urban planners and traffic forecasters to allocate resources.” The results closely align with a 2006 study that tracked people’s movements through the circulation of $1 bills.
Source: Nature magazine
Opinions & Analysis: Human habits and cell phone ethics
In a June 4 article, the Associated Press delved into the legal and ethical matters behind the Northeastern study and invited the opinions of the study’s authors, as well as a bioethicist from the University of Pennsylvania. The authors defended themselves by saying that the cell phone owners’ numbers were scrambled into “ugly” number-and-letter codes and that the geographical locations of the subjects and the cell phone company used to obtain their numbers will remain undisclosed. The article notes that the researchers “did not check with any ethics panel” before beginning their study.
Source: Fox News [Associated Press]
While the majority of news sources covering the story focus on the helpful aspect of the study and its demonstration that humans are “creatures of habit,” Life & Tech, a blog of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, notes that knowing where the studies’ subjects come from is crucial to defining whether the study is legal. But the researchers have only referred to the study location “as an industrialized nation” outside of the United States. To many people, the blog observes, the study may cause concerns about the connection between loss of privacy and evolving technology.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch Life & Tech Blog
The Register points out that “even if the study was legal, this was hardly an example of anonymous data aggregation. After all, this was a study that sought to determine where people live. ‘How could they not know who they were studying if they had latitude and longitude?’ [Marc] Rotenberg [of the Electronic Privacy Information Center] said.”
Source: The Register (U.K.)
Related Topic: Tracking criminal suspects with cell phones
The Washington Post reported in November 2007 that information from lawmakers suggested federal officials receive information from cell phone companies that allows them to track criminal suspects. “Such requests run counter to the Justice Department's internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas.” The requests are sealed, making it “difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied.”
Source: The Washington Post
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