the following is copied from
http://www.impactpress.com/articles/octnov02/musings101102.html
Over-Priced Musings: by Don Pflaster
The greatest users of the Global Positioning System (GPS) are within the
aviation industry. A close second are ocean going vessels, whose reliance on
positioning is arguably more crucial, having almost no visual cues to know
the location of their vessel while sitting on the ocean's surface. The GPS
system allows people to know their exact position on the earth, and with
recent advances, to within 10 meters, given ideal conditions.
Generally, such a system is passive, using a receiver to pick up the
vergence of signals from a constellation of satellites in Earth's orbit.
However, if one were required to obtain a system that not only received but
also transmitted signals, the system could be tracked by satellite quite
easily.
The watchful eye of government is now turning to the sea in the form of such
GPS transmitters. Promised to usher in a new era of security and safety,
there will soon be a mandatory tracking system imposed on all commercial
vessels traveling the St. Lawrence Seaway. Operation of the St. Lawrence is
jointly controlled by the United States and Canada, and connects the
Atlantic Ocean to all of the Great Lakes via 1,400 miles of river, utilizing
a system of locks. It is a major channel of commerce with dozens of major
ports, allowing such cities as Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Montreal, and
Toledo access to the sea.
The Seaway's new tracking system, called the Automatic Identification System
(AIS), is now in final testing and will be deployed at the beginning of the
2003 navigation season. Hailed as a new era of security and safety, the
system will offer unprecedented government control over the channel from
three tracking stations, and will be able to know the position of every ship
in every kind of weather. It will offer better scheduling of ship movement
through the locks, and better ship-to-ship communications as well, allowing
ships to more easily avoid collisions.
Though this system has been in the making for about a decade, one must
wonder if the process was not recently pushed along with the advent of
terrorism on U.S. soil. Millions of cargo containers entering U.S. ports go
uninspected, sending jitters up the spines of legislators sworn to protect
their citizens against whatever nasty items might be smuggled inside them.
Aside from the traditional contraband cargo of drugs and illegal immigrants,
the more pressing concern about the contents of cargo containers are
terrorism-related. Radiological, chemical, or biological weapons are what
the U.S. is exhaustively looking for now. The only way to prevent weapons of
mass destruction or terrorists themselves from entering the country through
the seaway is to thoroughly inspect all suspicious container ships leaving
or entering.
We are far from such across-the-board inspection--currently only 2% of all
containers are inspected. But this trial run on the St. Lawrence River will
serve as a test case for future implementations, as the jurisdictions using
such a system will likely be broadened in the future. There is currently a
proposal pending before the United Nations' International Maritime
Organization (IMO) to put in place a new system that will track all vessels
worldwide by 2008. The United States recently asked the UN to bump it up to
January 2004, but was met with resistance.
Imposing such broad inspections on commercial traffic is probably a good
idea to safeguard our vulnerable ports. However, many times in the past we
have observed the phenomenon of "function creep," or the evolution of a good
idea into a monstrously larger bad one.
Once active satellite tracking of all ocean vessels is put into place and
increases the effectiveness of security dozens of times over, the technology
may move to land-based shipping and transportation, such as commercial
trucks and buses. After all, in these times of terror, trucks are often
inspected at the entrances to major bridges and tunnels. Wouldn't it be nice
to divert those human resources somewhere else and let a computer alert us
to when an unregistered truck tries to cross a major thoroughfare? And
wouldn't we all be safer if we had the government looking after private
citizens with a mandatory satellite-based vehicle tracking system?
Early adopters already have such systems such as OnStar in their Cadillacs,
which allow authorities to know exactly where one is in the event of an
emergency. Currently, such transmission of one's whereabouts by private
citizens is voluntary. But tracking of people and their vehicles has uses by
governments and industries that are being developed on an as-needed or
as-desired basis, and once the usefulness of that information becomes
apparent, mandatory tracking could soon extend to private citizens.
For instance, police have used records from the northeast's E-Z Pass toll
collection system and New York's Metrocard system as circumstantial evidence
in criminal cases to prove whereabouts of people at the time of crimes.
Perhaps E-Z Pass could expand their powers to stop speeding motorists, or
Metrocard could bind the currently anonymous card to someone's personal
information.
Insurance companies in the future may refuse to insure a car if it does not
contain a tracking device, or perhaps charge more money if they find that
the driver spends too much time in areas where their car is more likely to
be stolen.
Private investigators may use this information to track cheating significant
others when records show they've driven to places inconsistent with their
alibis. This information about social habits could also lead to politically
damaging blackmail and extortion of individuals, making people reluctant to
engage in politics out of fear.
Private industry might use behavioral data for matching against previously
established behaviors. This would further classify individuals into markets
for more finely tuned advertising.
"The control of GPS tracking information will be a significant public policy
issue several years from now," says Phil Agre, an associate professor of
information studies at UCLA and a member of the board of the Electronic
Privacy Information Center.
Once government and industry possess information not just about your buying
habits (which they already have) but your movements, things will get very
hairy. If such intentions turn out to be benign, the very best thing that
will happen will be a billboard tailor-made just for you that pops up on the
side of the road as you drive by it. But dear God, I can't even begin to
imagine the horrible possibilities if you ever make an enemy of the
government.
There will be nowhere to hide from GPS except underwater, and I don't know
anyone who's selling submarines cheap.
Do you Yahoo!?
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