From: Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca>
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 23:10:54 -0800 (PST)
To: "Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com>
Subject: Cellular phone triangulation
Message-ID: <199701260710.XAA10387@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Mark M. wrote:
> I wonder how expensive it would be to put a GPS receiver in a cell phone and
> have the option to transmit the coordinates on a separate channel.  There
> would be little difference between this and forcing cell phone companies to
> triangulate every call.
>    The primary motivation for this is almost certainly
> "location escrow" to make it easier for the feds to track drug dealers.

  Replace the words 'drug dealers' with the words 'everyone', and I
think
this becomes not only a correct statement, but a very revealing one.
  It doesn't matter whether the subject is crypto, cell phones, or any
communications item or issue, the 'answer' to the proclaimed 'problem',
according to the government, is to increase the government's ability
to monitor every citizen, everywhere, at any time.
  Our prisons are overflowing with drug dealers and drug users who were
put there by quite ordinary means which didn't involve violating or
discarding the rights of the ordinary citizen.  Yet we keep hearing
cries from the government for the desperate need to infringe on the
citizen's right to freedom and privacy, again and again, in order to
jail the guys who were supposed to be jailed by the 'last' infringement
on the average citizen (and the one before that).

  So far, as a result of the plethora of laws passed to enable law
enforcement agencies to 'catch drug dealers', I have seen only a
few minor criminals who are claimed to have been brought to justice
as a result of these laws, while seeing documentation of hundreds
and thousands of ordinary citizens being harassed and having their
human rights violated by these same laws.
  And still, we have people like Mark, who seem relatively intelligent
and informed but who still echo the party-line of Big Brother when
He proclaims that the average citizen must be subjected to new and
better ways to monitor the movements and activities of His citizens
in order to 'protect' them from 'drug dealers'.

  I am certain that the issues (and the debates about them) will be 
the same as today, when the dawn finally comes where we hear the 
announcement about the plans for identity-chip body-implants. I am 
sure that the government will tell us that our privacy and rights
will be protected by the Key Escrow encryption in the identity-chip
which will only be compromised for the purpose of catching 'drug
dealers' and other 'scum'.
  I am sure that the statement above will be pooh-paah'd by many as
an example of reactionary-paranoid thinking, but the same could be
said for all of the rights and privacy-infringing realities that
we currently live under. (Like having to provide samples of bodily
fluids to keep your job as a janitor--in case you've been dipping
into the coke stash of the CEO, who does 'not' have to piss in a
jar.)
  Five years from now, you may well be wearing an identity-anklet
at work (to combat employee-theft, etc.) and still laughing at
my ludicrous example of body-implant identity-chips. ("It's not
like they make us wear them at home, they are just for protecting
us from unfair firing by our employer.")
  Ten years from now, you may be wearing your identity-anklet at
home, and still laughing about the idiot who predicted body-implant
identity-chips. ("It's no trouble wearing it at home, especially
if it helps catch those damn 'drug dealers'. They are the only
ones who leave their house during the curfew hours, anyway.")
  A couple years after that, you will welcome the government
announcement that they have found a solution to the 'problem'
of having to wear the identity-anklet all of the time--the new,
improved, identity-chip solution--the body-implant ID-chip.
  Naturally, you will pooh-paah the naysayers who claim that
the body-implant chip will eventually have the capacity to
read your mind.
  ("The guy saying that is the same idiot who predicted that
we would all be wearing body-implant identity-chips...
  "Well, OK, that's a bad example, but...")

  You can fight the increasing hi-tech machinations of Big 
Brother to control our actions, movements, and our thoughts,
but it will cost an increasing amount of time and effort to
do so.
  Not to mention larger and larger amounts of money.
  But, maybe if you became a 'drug dealer'...

Toto