Deliberate amnesia

[unixronin]

You:  "Tell all my friends where I am right now."

Google Latitude:  "Done."

You:  "OK, now forget it."

Google Latitude:  "...Forget what?"

Google's Latitude now tells your friends where you are, but forgets where you've been, and doesn't keep logs.

The intention is to make sure Latitude doesn't become an honeypot for cops wanting to be able to easily find out where you have been or even say the names of everyone who attended, or was near, a political protest.

[...]

The government tells courts, almost always in secret proceedings, that it is entitled to location records without a warrant, even if the person involved isn't even a suspect in an investigation.  The government argues you have no privacy interest in the data since you already told it to your phone company.

What Loopt — and now Google — are asserting is this: when you tell your friends where you are, you are using a public conveyance to communicate privately.  And, just as it would if it wanted to record your phone call or read your e-mail, the government needs to get a wiretap order.  That's even tougher to get than a search warrant.

(Via bruce_schneier)

Comments

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

Why, I just happen to have recently acquired a Garmin. So, you have to manually input your Lat/Long? I'm still reading the google page trying to figure out how it works. Can it read your location from cell phone tower blips?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

fiik, we still don't own a GPS :)

(though I think one would be a big help for Cymru ... there's only so much I can do trying to locate her and remote route for her in real-time over a cell call using Google Maps)

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

I got an older bare bones model etrex off of ebay. I have no plans to use it for road nav, but I figured if I ever got really off track in the woods, it might come in handy for route trace-back.