Re:First U.S. Ban on Sale of Cellphone Location Data Might B...
by smcin on Monday July 10, 2023 @09:28PM
(#36675387)
No, "finding lost and immobilized callers" was the cover-story nominally used when E911 legislation was pushed in Congress in 1999/2000.
Do we really believe that Congress authored a law to improve "safety" but that had enormous privacy implications, while accidentally forgetting to also deal with the other 99.999+% of the time that the average person's location data is not involved with an emergency? Why were the legislation (and debate) conspicuously silent on limiting (let alone criminalizing) use and retention of location data, let alone resale (e.g. to data brokers or private parties?)
Unfortunately, it's inconsistently deployed and not universally usable. This is likely the result of a lack of a sufficiently-staffed regulatory body auditing for compliance and correctness because it doesn't work everywhere with all phones on all carriers even when there is the technical ability, e.g., phone has a fix. It hasn't delivered completely on its promise because it's an under-funded, under-audited mandate that needs serious carrots and sticks to ensure it's reliable.