Hello?

When people raise concerns about loss of privacy in the face of new, snoopy technology, the answer, if you get one, usually runs along the lines of "technology will take care of it."

Well, score one - a half-one, anyway - for technology.

A recent federal mandate requires that cell carriers be able to pinpoint the whereabouts of any customer who calls 911 during an emergency. That sounds like a good idea - except that it also means that anyone else can pinpoint you as well.

Companies have been looking for ways to profit off the new requirement, leading to visions of getting advertisements from the restaurant you happen to be walking by or nasty messages from your boss wanting to know why you're not taking the shortest route back to the office after a sales call. CNN for January 19 notes that

[w]hile many cell phone users might like to be notified of a nearby eatery or find it helpful to let others keep track of their movements, most would rather not expose themselves to round-the-clock, everywhere-they-go surveillance.

However, given the real-time requirements of transmitting information over a telephone network, it can be difficult to program a wide range of options for individuals to personalize preferences such as when, where and with whom to share location information

Now, however,

Bell Labs says it has developed a network software engine that can let cell users be as picky as they choose about disclosing their whereabouts, a step that may help wireless companies introduce "location-based services" in a way customers will find handy rather than intrusive.

Which would seem to resolve the privacy question. Except for two things:

- This will undoubtedly be an add-on, extra-fee option, which again approaches privacy as a matter of wealth, not of right.

- There needs to be some way of limiting government access. I can already imagine the argument that because by using the phone you're allowing the 911 network to be able to locate you, you've surrendered your "privacy interest" in that information, so the government is free to use it to track you anywhere and anytime if it chooses.

The simplest, best way to deal with the first is to make it an opt-in service rather than an opt-out one. That is, make it illegal for anyone other than 911 to use the service to locate you for any reason unless you specify otherwise. The second could probably be dealt with, if not satisfactorily from a privacy standpoint at least from a better-than-nothing standpoint, by making such actions subject to at least the same controls as on wiretaps.

Personally, I go with the low-tech solution: I don't have a cell phone. And if I ever get one, it will be solely for use in emergencies.