GPS Declassified

by Richard D. Easton

  Chaffetz and Wyden reintroduced the GPS Act, H.R. 1312 and S. 639, in spring 2013 with substantially the same language.100 As this book went to production both the House and Senate versions remained lodged in their respective committees. GovTrack.us assigned the House bill a 32 percent chance of being enacted, while it gave the Senate version (with only one cosponsor) only a 1 percent chance of enactment.101 The GPS Act would require the government to show probable cause and get a warrant before acquiring geolocational information about any person in the United States. It would create criminal penalties similar to those for wiretapping for anyone surreptitiously using electronic devices to track a person’s movements, and it would prohibit service providers from sharing customers’ geolocation information with third parties without customer consent.102

  Buried in the fine print of a typical provider’s terms and conditions is language granting permission to share “aggregated or anonymous information in various formats ” with “trusted entities ,” including retail, marketing, and advertising companies that offer products that may be of interest.103 That information is valuable to the carriers. Pyramid Research, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based market research company that follows the telecom industry, projected in mid-2011 that global location-based advertising revenues would reach $6.2 billion by 2015, an exponential rise from $86 million in 2008.104 Legal restrictions on using personal data could constrain the growth of location-based services, observed Glen Gibbons, editor and publisher of Inside GNSS and former editor of GPS World, who has followed the GPS industry over several decades. “I expect that location privacy will steadily become more of an issue, in the same way that exploitation of user personal data and behavior by social media has encountered some pushback from citizens generally ,” Gibbons said. “A key legal question will be whether one’s personal real-time location can gain the same status as private communications or whether that is treated as something intrinsically in the public domain. ”105

  How much information about an individual does a carrier acquire? A German Green Party politician and privacy advocate wanted to find out, so he sued his provider, Deutsche Telekom (which owns T-Mobile) to gain access to records it had collected about him. In one six-month span the carrier logged his latitude and longitude coordinates 35,831 times.106 Beyond shaping the content of ads that pop up on a phone when the user is playing an online game with friends, such detailed location information is a magnet for law enforcement officials trying to establish a suspect’s whereabouts. Cell phone surveillance has skyrocketed in the past few years as warrants for wiretapping have declined 14 percent.107 Representative Markey, the cochairman of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, in mid-2012 requested an accounting from nine wireless carriers of requests for subscriber data made by law enforcement agencies at all levels.108 Reports from eight companies revealed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies made more than 1.3 million requests for consumer cell phone records in 2011, a figure Markey called “startling. ”109 The number understates the total because T-Mobile did not provide a figure, but the company acknowledged that requests had increased between 12 percent and 16 percent annually. Verizon reported a 15 percent annual increase. Requests included “cell tower dumps ,” in which police trawl through all phone calls connected through a particular tower over a specified period. Cell phone carriers said the volume of requests forced them to hire new technicians and lawyers, and some even outsourced the work to specialists that have sprung up to meet demand.110 Although carriers may charge law enforcement agencies to recover “reasonable ” costs—AT&T collected $8.3 million in 2011—some complained they lost money or that bills went unpaid.111

  This level of routine police involvement with cell phone records seems certain to spark litigation and legislation. In fact, one California telecom provider took the unusual step in mid-2012 of responding to an FBI request made through a “national security letter ” by filing a civil complaint in U.S. District Court.112 National security letters, under the U.S. Patriot Act, do not require judicial oversight and impose a gag order on the recipient, which in this case means that court documents redact the name of the plaintiff. Since 2000 the FBI’s use of such letters has doubled, to more than sixteen thousand annually.113

  Customers also grant data-sharing rights to the makers of location-based apps they install on their phones. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that 47 of the 101 most popular smartphone apps sent location data to third parties.114 Dutch GPS giant TomTom, searching for revenues to offset slumping device sales, marketed driver behavior data to European governments on the understanding they would use it for transportation planning. The company suffered a public relations black eye when the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad revealed that Netherlands officials shared the data with traffic police, who used it to set speed traps.115

  Phone hacking is another threat. The rising use of smartphones for personal shopping and banking and their adoption for business and professional use has mobile cybercrime on the rise. Privacy advocates have criticized a type of software called Carrier IQ, sold to mobile carriers to monitor their networks, as spyware because it is capable of logging the user’s keystrokes.116 Whether hackers can access and commandeer the software for other purposes is unknown. Documents and e-mails downloaded from the cloud pose risks of malicious software aimed at everything from identity theft to corporate espionage. Lawyers representing a California software company in a $2.2 billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and several computer manufacturers received nearly a dozen Trojan e-mails (traced to servers in China) that were designed to steal confidential documents from the firm’s computer system.117

  Business users clearly think the benefits of mobile devices and apps outweigh the risks. An AT&T poll in early 2012 found that 96 percent of small businesses used wireless technologies and nearly two-thirds doubted their company’s ability to survive without them.118 Almost a third of small businesses used mobile apps to save time, increase productivity, and reduce costs. Of those who did, four-fifths used GPS navigation and mapping apps and nearly half used location-based services. IE Market Research of Vancouver, British Columbia, forecasts GPS navigation and LBS services to reach $15.2 billion by 2016.119 TNS Global, a London-based market intelligence consultancy, surveyed forty-eight thousand people in fifty-eight countries and found that 62 percent of mobile phone users who do not already use LBS aspire to.120 One in five surveyed was interested in seeing mobile advertising if it offered him or her a nearby deal.121

  Free advertiser-supported LBS apps are likely to be among the first ones any new smartphone owner downloads. Just about any service or subject of interest is more relevant to a user based on location, so news aggregators, sports and weather apps, Internet radio, and many others use GPS location. However, if users open their phone settings to examine the apps listed under location services, they will find some that appear to employ location primarily or only for streaming ads.

  Startups and established companies have rushed into the LBS space, offering social networking, customer reviews, shopping guidance, price comparisons, coupons, loyalty programs, and the latest wrinkle—augmented reality. Many apps combine several or all of these elements. LBS apps help people find everyday needs—the lowest-priced gasoline (Gas Buddy, Cheap Gas!, Gas Guru), a clean public restroom (Sit or Squat, Bestroom, Have2P), restaurants (Yelp, Urban Spoon, Open Table), medical care (HealthTap, DoctorsElite, Zoc-Doc), and of course, real estate (Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia), the industry that coined the phrase “location, location, location. ” Some newer apps (Highlight, Intro, Sonar) link users through one of the larger social networks, such as Face-book, Twitter, Foursquare, or LinkedIn, which dominate the U.S. market.122 Social networking is growing faster than other apps. Distimo, a Dutch market research firm that specializes in the mobile marketplace, reported that downloads of the one hundred most popular social networking apps in Apple’s App Store for U.S. customers increased 193 percent from mid-2010 to mid-2012, while
the store average for all apps was only 43 percent.123 During that time Facebook remained the world leader, but competitors LINE, WeChat, and Viber surpassed Facebook downloads in many Asian countries from mid-2011 to mid-2012.124 As of late 2012 both Facebook and Groupon, which have publicly traded shares, were finding it difficult to translate their large mobile presence into earnings that meet investors’ expectations.125

  The LBS market is evolving so rapidly that some well-known names (Gowalla, Brightkite, Babbleville) have already gone under—“deadpooled ” is the industry term—or been acquired (such as Loopt, which prepaid card specialist Green Dot will use to enter the mobile wallet business).126 It seems certain that the mobile app market will undergo extensive experimentation and consolidation over the next several years. Whatever emerges will undoubtedly integrate personal navigation. Navigation apps have evolved far beyond public roadways to include subway systems, bus routes, and large destinations such as Disney World and Arlington National Cemetery. GPS guidance has so altered consumer behavior that Google, Microsoft, Nokia (which owns Navteq), Broadcom, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, and other companies are investing millions to extend accurate navigation—down to the inch—indoors, where GPS signals often fail.127 Each has patents using a variety of technologies to make this possible. Some use cellular phone signals or Bluetooth beacons at Wi-Fi hotspots; others use inertial methods—gyroscopes, accelerometers, and compasses—to measure movements from a known location, such as GPS coordinates at a building’s entrance.128 Apple has acquired several location technology companies and announced a worldwide agreement with TomTom in mid-July 2012 that suggests it will head indoors as well.129 Google announced in July 2012 that it had already mapped ten thousand indoor locations, including more than 2.7 million square feet in seventeen Smithsonian museums.130 That same month Walgreen’s announced it had mapped all of its 7,907 stores in a partnership with mapping and search startup Aisle411, a coup that catapulted the small company’s indoor map offerings above 9,000.131 Not only will shoppers know where they are in a store; sellers will know, too. Those Valpak coupons that shoppers are used to getting in their mailboxes will appear instantly on their phones for consumers using the JUNAIO app, an augmented reality browser. The app activates the phone’s camera, and geolocation coupons pop up on the screen as the shopper scans his or her surroundings.132 Augmented reality is attracting such giants as IBM, which is working on an app that would allow shoppers to pan their cameras across an entire grocery aisle and identify products that fit personalized, preselected criteria—and then offer a coupon.133 Analysts have forecasted the global indoor location market to grow from $449 million in 2013 to $2.6 billion in 2018.134

  GPS for personal use has come a long way from the early days of geocaching, a type of high-tech treasure hunt where people hide small artifacts and post their latitude and longitude for other hobbyists to track down, but in many ways the future of location-based socializing and shopping for bargains reflects those roots.

  Commercial and Professional Users

  While individual consumers using GPS navigation devices or mobile apps make up the largest share of the market, commercial users collectively spend more on GPS equipment than the military does. GPS equipment sales across North America averaged $33.5 billion annually from 2005 to 2010.135 Consumers made 59 percent of those purchases and the commercial segment accounted for 25 percent, while the military represented 16 percent.136

  Since the mid-1980s, when surveyors began pinpointing terrestrial features with newfound precision, nonmilitary uses of GPS have so proliferated that it is difficult to catalog them, and new applications appear regularly. A recent market forecast offered the following breakdown by sector: aviation, maritime and waterways, highway and construction, public transportation, railroads, communications, emergency response, surveying, weather, scientific, space, environmental protection, recreation and sports, law enforcement and legal services, and agriculture and forestry.137 This list does not mention the retail, marketing, and advertising industries, but as many commercial applications migrate from expensive stand-alone equipment to smartphone-enabled apps, sellers and ads are sure to follow.

  The transition from mapping military targets to using precise coordinates to keep track of municipal infrastructure like utility poles and fire hydrants was a natural one. Civil engineering users were at the forefront of systems employing augmentation techniques such as differential GPS, signals from Russia’s GLONASS satellites, carrier-phase signal processors, and lasers to achieve accuracies measured in centimeters. Today companies like Mobile 311, based in Cary, North Carolina, offer smartphone solutions that allow city workers in the field to upload infrastructure coordinates and the locations of sanitation problems, code violations, or repair needs directly to digital geographic information systems.138 The City of Boston has extended this capability to its residents by creating free apps. Citizens Connect allows users to report and upload photos of graffiti, broken streetlights, and damaged signs.139 Users can track the progress of the city’s response online and view all reports on a map. Street Bump is a crowd-sourcing approach to transportation planning that uses the accelerometers and GPS in drivers’ smartphones to detect and upload pothole locations and rough pavement in real time as users travel Boston’s streets.140 Communities of virtually every size today use GIS mapping, and apps like these will undoubtedly become more widespread. U.S. Census Bureau workers used GPS-equipped handheld computers in 2010 to ensure that census reports accurately link data to the proper geographic area. Some residents evidently saw listing their latitude and longitude coordinates as more intrusive than listing a street address. The agency responded to privacy concerns on its website, explaining that by law it may not share information on individual respondents, including GPS coordinates, with any other agency.141

  GPS accuracy yields better maps, but correcting old problems can create new ones. The North Carolina–South Carolina Joint Boundary Commission authorized new surveys to correct errors dating back to 1735, when surveyors gauged direction from the sun and stars and marked the boundary with wooden stakes and hatchet marks on trees. Near Charlotte the proposed new state line, 150 feet south of the old one, would convert ninety-three South Carolina property owners into North Carolina residents. Convenience store owners who would be affected by the change say it would put them out of business because of North Carolina’s higher gas tax and ban on selling fireworks.142

  Small improvements in precision multiplied over large distances, areas, or volumes in a commercial enterprise can mean huge differences to the bottom line. GPS-enabled machine control has revolutionized such large-scale enterprises as agriculture, construction, dredging, excavation, grading, and paving. In 1996 about 5 percent of farmers used GPS precision to adapt cultivation techniques to soil variability.143 Instead of spreading seeds, irrigation, fertilizers, and herbicides uniformly across a field, they began managing these inputs down to the square yard and eventually to fractions of an inch using row guidance to avoid costly overlapping of applications. A farmer with 1,600 acres could purchase a GPS farming package from Rockwell or John Deere in 1996 for between $6,500 and $8,900 and save $16,000 on phosphorus and potash alone in the first year.144 By 2010 about 60 percent of farmers had adopted GPS systems.145 The average unit price of GPS agricultural equipment was around $13,000, but farmers could cultivate more land with fewer tractors, operating them around the clock in critical planting and harvesting months.146 Analysts estimate that GPS reduces U.S. farmers’ input costs by $9.8 billion annually while generating improved yields worth $10.1 billion.147 This $20 billion boost to the U.S. agricultural industry amounts to roughly 12 percent of annual production.148 Some authorities believe precision farming will reach a 100 percent adoption rate within five to ten years.149

  Trimble Navigation introduced SiteVision GPS Grade Control in 1999, which placed site plans on computer screens in bulldozer cabs, enabling operators to excavate without surveyed stakes in the ground.150 The tech
nology, developed in open-pit mining, lowered costs, saved time, and improved accuracy in large road construction and land development projects. Precision three-dimensional machine control today shaves waste and boosts profits in a variety of settings where crews previously had to survey, set stakes, and run string lines to maintain proper elevations. At $50 per ton for asphalt, a contractor paving a ten-mile road seventy-two feet wide can save $140,000 by pouring one-one-hundredth of a foot less asphalt.151 A landfill that charges a tipping fee of $40 per ton can generate an extra $2 million of revenue and extend the site’s life span by improving compaction 10 percent across a half-million cubic feet of available airspace.152 Contractors dredging 130,000 cubic yards of mud from the Ohio River near Mount Vernon, Indiana, in 2011 used a three-dimensional GPS system to “see ” their bucket digging on the river bottom, speeding the work and avoiding overexcavation.153 Analysts estimate that about 40 percent of U.S. heavy and civil engineering construction firms have adopted GPS, producing $9.2 billion in cost savings annually.154 GPS-guided robots and “smart machines ” will increasingly affect other spheres of activity in the future, a topic explored in the next chapter.