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?)
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?)