Study Tracks Population Movement by Recording Locations of Cell Phones
Jun 9th, 2008 • Posted in: NewsBut no one sought permission of the phones’ owners, and some thorny privacy issues have surfaced
WASHINGTON
A study involving tracking cell phone use in Europe has revealed some interesting patterns of human behavior while also raising questions about the ethics of researching people’s movements without their permission.
The research involved tracking the movements of cell phone users in an undisclosed European industrial city, reports the BBC, and concluded that the majority of users tend to stay close to home for months at a time.
About 75 percent remained within a 20-mile radius of their home during the six-month duration of the study.
But the users did not agree to participate in the study, which means it probably would not have been legal in the United States because of federal regulations, reports the technology network CNET.
The study’s authors say they did not know the exact whereabouts of users and the phone numbers were electronically scrambled so as to be unrecognizable.
Still, contends bioethicist Arthur of the University of Pennsylvania, “There is plenty going on here that sets off ethical alarm bells about privacy and trustworthiness.”
Caplan told the Associated Press that studies of normal behavior at public places is “fair game for researchers” as long as no one can figure out identities. “So if I fight at a soccer match or walk through 30th Street train station in Philly, I can be studied,” Caplan wrote in an email to the AP. “But my cell phone is not public. My cell phone is personal. Tracking it and thus its owner is an active intrusion into personal privacy.”
The CBC notes that cell phone tracking, which uses GPS signals to locate the phone and its user, is legal when consensual, and in fact is offered often as a sales inducement.
The purpose of the study was to document movement patterns to forecast traffic or outbreaks of disease.
Sources: CNET, June 5 — BBC, June 5 — AP, June 5 — CBC, June 5.
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