A Time of Magic

Tags are things that are only worn by criminals, aren’t they?

Well, no, chances are that you are carrying around just such a tag right now. You probably call it a cell phone or mobile phone but it tracks your movements all the same.

They have to do that because of the way the technology used to implement the cells works. Essentially they need to know where every phone is so that they can pass phone calls aimed at it. A side-effect is that your mobile phone works as a reasonable accurate tracker of your movements whilst it is switched on. OK, not down to a few feet or anything like that but certainly the phone company knows which areas you pass through and if you’re in a car then it could almost certainly work out which roads you travelled along, roughly where you stopped, and so on.

And, yes, this information is available to the police. So even though you’re not a criminal they could still be tracking you.

Worrying, isn’t it?

Related posts:

1. Are you a “best buy” junkie too?
2. Do you find the 21st century boring compared to the predictions?
3. Bumping up your cell-phone signal
4. Have you got all your vacation equipment?
5. Mobile villages

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Science Fiction Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.