While most of us know it is theoretically possible for our movements
to be tracked by detecting which tower our mobile phone is connected
too, it might come as a shock to see just how much of a digital
footprint we leave as we go about our daily lives. German Green Party
politician Malte Spitz and German newspaper Die Zeit have
provided a frightening insight into just how much information can be
gleaned from the digital breadcrumbs we drop every day by creating an interactive map
showing Spitz's movements and activities over a five month period based
on mobile phone data and information freely available on the internet.
To get hold of his mobile phone data, Spitz sued his service
provider, German telco giant Deutsche Telekom. He then provided the
phone data, which included geolocation and time and date information, to
Die Zeit who combined the data with information freely
available on the internet – including Twitter feeds, blog entries and
websites – that related to his life as a politician to create an
interactive map of Spitz's movements and activities.
And before you start thinking a public figure like Spitz is going to
generate more data than your average man in the street, you might want
to take a moment to consider just how many tweets, blog posts and
Facebook updates you fire off on a daily basis.
In the age of ubiquitous computing and technologies such as RFID
chips, the ability for corporations and governments to track not only
our movements but also our activities is only set to increase and raises
questions about the rights of individuals to privacy in the digital
age. But as shown by Die Zeit's interactive map, which was
based on data collected from August 2009 to February 2010, the
information required to form a pretty detailed picture of our lives is
already out there.
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