Not carrying mobile phone = suspicious activity

By Helen Duffett | Fri 24th April 2009 - 2:39 pm

When did you last leave home without your mobile phone?

The Register describes cases in Germany and France where people were accused of being terrorists because they didn’t use mobile phones:

By design, phones pass their location on to local base stations. You can gauge how effectively the networks can track you by requesting your personal information from your network provider using a data subject access under the Data Protection Act, or by just running Google Mobile Maps on your phone. The smaller 3G cells in central London give an even better location than on GSM.

Mobile phone penetration in Europe reached an average of 111.26 per cent in 2007 according to ITU estimates, while in the UK it was 118.47 per cent. We love them so much that we are more likely to leave our wallet at home than our mobile.

The location breadcrumbs from these, along with other communication traffic data, are kept as part of a mass surveillance operation affecting everyone. They are collected by the networks, retained for a year, and handed over to the police and other bodies on request.

… Mobile phones and email are used by everyone, including terrorists and other criminals. The data can be instrumental in tracking down criminals, with the caveat that having a bigger haystack does not make it easier to find a needle. But it misses one perverse effect – those who will be stigmatised in the future are those who don’t have traffic data retained.

Could it happen here? As the Government wants to keep tabs on all our mobile phone calls there’s plenty of scope for recording our whereabouts too.

So: is it dodgy if I don’t carry a mobile phone, or dodgy if I carry too many? Confused now.

Perhaps there’s an optimum, state-sanctioned number of mobile phones for people to carry?

11 Comments

Kevin 24th Apr '09 - 5:30pm

Presumably people like me who have an unregistered pay as you go phone are even more open to suspicion!
Hywel 24th Apr '09 - 5:38pm

The code presumably looks something like this:

IF COUNT(MOB) =0 OR >1 SETFLAG(Terrorist)=”Poss”
Niklas Smith 24th Apr '09 - 9:32pm

My hairs are beginning to stand up on end. This quote (from a former civil servant no less) is perhaps the most worrying:

“[A]pplication of modern data mining and processing techniques does involve examination of the innocent as well as the suspect to identify patterns of interest for further investigation.[…] [b]Finding out other people’s secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules.[/b]”

If such data mining would “involve breaking everyday moral rules”, perhaps that’s a reason NOT to do it! Oh for more humble government….
Niklas Smith 24th Apr '09 - 9:33pm

Sorry, ignore the HTML tags! Obviously they don’t work here!
Frank H Little 25th Apr '09 - 12:09am

(i)Sorry, ignore the HTML tags! Obviously they don’t work here!(/i)

(b)Oh yes they do!(/b)
Frank H Little 25th Apr '09 - 12:10am

Well, they used to.
Frank H Little 25th Apr '09 - 12:17am

Sorry, ignore the HTML tags! Obviously they don’t work here!

They do when you remember to put the right sort of bracket in. I blame it on this Australian Red. 🙁

Anyway, this business about non-mobile-phone carriers calls to mind the suspicion I attract when I admit to not being a car driver.
Helen Duffett 25th Apr '09 - 2:17pm

A friend of mine caused uproar a few years back when she got rid of her TV. Now I only watch mine occasionally. Rebellious!
tony hill 25th Apr '09 - 5:03pm

I don’t drive or have a mobile phone, or a passport, or a credit card. It gets quite difficult to prove who I am – what’s needed is some form of Identity Card!
Niklas Smith 25th Apr '09 - 8:57pm

Re. Frank H Little: What is the right sort of bracket? Precisely because your second attempt suceeded I can’t see which are the right sort to use! I always thought square brackets were the standard.
Alex F 26th Apr '09 - 8:27pm

HTML is built around commands within angle brackets, the greater-than and less-than symbols. > and <