Pay for being tracked through your cellphone

25 August, 2012

Undoubtedly, location-based service (LBS) would be helpful to track terror suspects, but there are equal number of chances that the service, which tracks the movement of cellphone users could be misused by various agencies.

IN THE name of national security, cellphone users would be tracked by service operators and their location within 50 metres would be recorded for safety purposes. And the amazing part of the directive from the Home Ministry is that consumers would have to pay for it too.

The location-based services (LBS), part of May 2011 mandate, makes it mandatory for the mobile service providers to bear the entire cost, who will pass it on to the consumers. Given the large consumer base, there would only be a nominal increase of a few paise but many fear that tracking of movements could be misued by various agencies.

As per the MHA's suggestion, the operators may be given a go-ahead by telecom regulator Trai to recover the LBS cost, estimated at $4-5 billion, from consumers through a nominal increase in tariff,” reported The Times of India.

Set by the DoT in May last year, LBS as a part of the security mandate required all cellphone operators track and record the location of a user with accuracy of up to 50 metres in urban areas and for sub-urban, rural and remote areas, the distance of 100-500 metres, by May 2014.

This has been a demand of security agencies and rightly so, the service can help in tracking the movements of suspects and help security agencies in nabbing the terrorists before they put into practice their perilous designs. But one thing that everybody would fear from the service is the misuse of the technology in breaching privacy.

As has been often complained, even laws have been misued by the agencies for their benefits, and this service can be misused to blackmail people after recording their movements, etc.