Tiny Cell Phone Or Big Brother?

from the you're-not-worried-enough dept

Lauren Weinstein's latest column for Wired News points out that the new mobile phones that are coming out with things like high speed internet and location-based info will introduce all sorts of new ways to use your mobile phone - not all of them good. He's worried about the phones being used to track people's whereabouts or to set up spy cameras. His worry is that no one realizes this or is thinking about it. He thinks that we need to preemptively think about these issues and adjust our laws now. While I don't deny the importance of thinking about these issues and thinking about how to respond, I think it's dangerous to changes laws now, without realizing their impact. With Congress the way it is, we're likely to end up with laws that don't actually do much to prevent the misuses, but outlaw plenty of perfectly reasonable uses of mobile phones. The fear is that, once again, we'll move towards legislating against technology, rather than legislating against bad behavior.
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  • identicon
    dorpus, 6 Jan 2003 @ 2:20pm

    A decade ago

    They talked about assigning each person a life-long telephone number, like a social security number, so that one would never have to go around with multiple phone numbers again. People thought it was a great revolutionary idea.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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