Are You Being Tracked?

As technology rapidly advances people are increasingly faced with new legal, ethical, and moral issues regarding the use of new devices. When it comes to tracking devices, people seem to have mixed emotions to say the least. This new technology has is definite societal benefits ranging from providing directions while you are driving to helping to find missing children or even apprehend criminals. Despite the many positive ways these devices can be used, many people are not convinced that the technology comes without a substantial cost. Privacy is in danger of extinction. With our privacy on the line the question to ask ourselves is: Is it worth it?

To better understand its ramifications on society, it is important to first gain a better understanding of the most common devices that implement this technology and how they work. Probably the most well known and widely is GPS, or global positioning system. In the simplest of terms, GPS is defined as a navigational system that involves satellites and computers that can determine the latitude and longitude of a receiver on Earth by computing the time difference for signals from different satellites to reach the receiver. GPS technology can be found in cell phones, hand held devices, as well as microchips that use GPS to track things such as children or cars.(Parsons,42)

Another form of tracking technology is called RFID, or radio frequency identification. The way that this form of this technology works is through a chip equipped with a microscopic antenna that receives and responds to radio frequencies from transceiver. These chips are very small and can be almost impossible to notice. They have the capability of being implanted in people or animals. This technology can also be incorporated into credit cards, passports, clothing labels, or commercial products.(Parsons,43)

These devices have the ability to provide us with valuable services. If you are driving in an unfamiliar area and you find yourself lost, all you have to do is enter in the address of your destination and a GPS device can provide you with turn by turn directions to get you there. Vehicles equipped with OnStar can pinpoint the location of a broken down or wrecked car and send the appropriate assistance to the passengers. RIDF can provide a way for business owners to track merchandise. While some of these things might seem like luxuries that many of us could live without, GPS locating devises have been to be useful in far more important ways.

In an article he wrote for the Washington Post entitled Police Turn to Secret Weapon: GPS Device, Ben Hubbard references several cases in which law enforcement have used tracking devices to apprehend dangerous criminal offenders and in doing so have saved lives. Police are increasingly turning to GPS devises for reasons that make a great deal of sense. First off, the technology is relatively cheap and getting cheaper as it advances. Secondly, it is extremely accurate. The third reason, and quite possibly the most appealing to law enforcement, is that no warrant or court order is needed in order for the police to use them. This fact raises controversy with privacy issues. "Privacy advocates said tracking suspects electronically constitutes illegal search and seizure, violating Fourth Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and is another step toward George Orwell's Big brother society."(Hubbard, 2008)

In their defense the police contend that using such devices is not a far cry from having one of their officers tail someone. More often than not the courts tend to side with the police on the legality of information obtained from the use of GPS devices. People who advocate the use of tracking devices by the police argue that the information obtained by this technology is public and nothing that an officer could not see with their own eyes, but it is faster, more accurate, and less expensive.(Hubbard, 2008)

Certainly we all feel that we have a reasonable expectation of privacy and nobody want to feel as though they are being "watched" all of the time. On the other hand if you were to ask someone whose life may have been positively affected by the use of these devises, they would undoubtedly say the end justifies the means. Further along those lines, it might also be safe to assume that even the most die-hard privacy advocate would never request the police not use a tracking device in a situation such as the kidnapping of their child.

Privacy is something that all of us enjoy and it is worth protecting. Using tracking devices to obtain information for things such as marketing and advertising is a most certainly a questionable practice, to say the least, but in light of the highly beneficial and valuable resources these devices can be the question remains: Is it worth it? Even though there is a potential for abuse of this technology and it does infringe on what we feel are our rights to privacy it is difficult to look past the potential it has to do good in the lives of countless people. Who would not be willing to sacrifice the luxury of privacy to save a life?

Works Cited

Parsons, June Jamrich and Dan Oja. Computer Concepts. Cengage Learning, 2008.Eleventh edition.

Hubbard, Ben. "Police Turn to Secret Weapon: GPS Device." Washington Post 13 August 2008. 6 March 2009