{"id":4311,"date":"2010-04-07T22:33:58","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T16:33:58","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-04-07T22:34:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T16:34:00","slug":"as-much-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/as-much-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"As Much Privacy As You Can Afford"},"content":{"rendered":"

What we call privacy — the non-disclosure or transmission of information — is ultimately a matter of economics. To remain hidden in a connected world will cost money. You can always disconnect, but while connected you will be transparent. Under this regime transparency is cheap and ubiquitous, while opacity expensive. <\/p>\n

Apparently there is a service that will provide the current location of any cell phone for $95. You give Best411<\/a> the phone number you seek and $95 and then they will tell you where that cell phone is located is between 9am and 5pm CST.<\/p>\n

\"mobile-location-icon-large.png\"<\/p>\n

How is this possible? Obviously the cell phone company knows because it has to track your cell in order to deliver calls. But how does Best411 know? They claim:<\/p>\n

We are a state-licensed private investigative agency and, as such, have access to many data bases that the general public is not permitted to access.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That doesn’t really explain the deal, or the legality, or the process. My immediate question is: Why does it cost so much? Why $95? Technologically this is a trivial query. It’s real cost is about zero. I wonder who or what is setting the price?<\/p>\n

Second question: If I were willing to pay $100 could I prevent Best411 from tracking me? How much would it cost to have my location “unlisted”?<\/p>\n

I am really asking the larger question of how expensive will it become to be unlocateble in the location-aware mobile future?<\/p>\n

If anyone knows how Best411 and their kin work, I’d love to hear about it. I am sure it is sleazy, but is there any reason it will remain marginal?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What we call privacy — the non-disclosure or transmission of information — is ultimately a matter of economics. To remain hidden in a connected world will cost money. You can always disconnect, but while connected you will be transparent. Under … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}