26,000 people are stalked using GPS devices a year (as of 2006)
Posted 05-11-2011 at 04:43 AM by Admin
Tags al franken, apple, google, justice department, privacy
Al Franken (Senator from Minnesota aka Stuart Smalley on SNL) brought out this home dinger of a fact during the Subcommittee hearing on Protecting Mobile Privacy featuring testimony from the eggheads at Apple and Google. Franken had recently addressed directly to Steve Jobs a letter with a list of questions about Apple's privacy policy. Worth noting, in 2006 there were 3x less mobile phones and Google Latitude was still a stalker's wet dream. Also GPS was only legally required to be on all mobile phones as of January 1, 2006
Where did this fact come from? With all the bots online simply regurgitating the exact quote it was hard to find. But find it I almost did: Franken above sites a Justice Department study from 2006. I wasn't able to find that exact study, but I did find a Justice Department stalking vicitimization study from 2009 which mentions that GPS is used in 10% of electronic stalking (73% of people say electronics were used in there stalking).
Another good quote from the hearing today was from the Justice Department...
Quote:
"The Department has also strongly responded to the cyberstalking challenge through the prosecution of violations of the federal cyberstalking prohibition, 18 U.S.C. § 2261A. This statute allows for the prosecution of individuals who stalk using “the mail, any interactive computer service, or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce.” This encompasses the use of the Internet through computers, smart phones and other mobile devices. Cases have been prosecuted under this statute based on conduct involving MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites." Source
Total Comments 0
