practice
Doi: 10.1145/1592761.1592778
Article development led by
queue.acm.org
Participatory sensing technologies could
improve our lives and our communities,
but at what cost to our privacy?
BY Katie shiLton
four Billion
Little
Brothers?
Privacy, mobile
phones, and ubiquitous
data collection
The Y PLaCe PhoNe calls, surf the Internet, and
there are close to four billion of them in the world.
Their built-in microphones, cameras, and location
awareness can collect images, sound, and GPS
data. Beyond chatting and texting, these features
could make phones ubiquitous, familiar tools for
quantifying personal patterns and habits. They
could also be platforms for thousands to document
a neighborhood, gather evidence to make a case, or
study mobility and health. This data could help you
understand your daily carbon footprint, exposure to
air pollution, exercise habits, and frequency of interactions with family and
friends.
At the same time, however, this
data reveals a lot about your regular
locations, habits, and routwines. Once
such data is captured, acquaintances,
friends, or authorities might coerce
you to disclose it. Perhaps worse, it
could be collected or reused without
your knowledge or permission. At the
extreme, mobile phones could become
the most widespread embedded surveillance tools in history. Imagine carrying a location-aware bug, complete