Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
Although it may be possible to deny access to some components and systems,
it is still possible to hack consumer devices and adapt them for terrorism.
Whereness technology would be especially useful to guide and deliver explosives,
chemical poisons, and biological pathogens.
However, Whereness can be used as a countermeasure on both passive and
active tracking systems. In particular the transport networks can automate the
ability to monitor huge numbers of potential suspects. It is also possible to
highlight unusual movements of people and objects to identify new suspects using
massive deployments of surveillance cameras with pattern recognition and data
mining.
5.4.1
Big Brother Tamed?
Perhaps a distributed approach to Whereness (which is the main recurring theme
in this topic) can help by encouraging transparency. For example, consider this
hypothetical conversation by a law-abiding citizen: “I might be happy for the
authorities to know where I have been, if I know what information they actually
have on me. How do I know? It came from my own portable system, so I can
check and if necessary show someone the master log file.” The main worry is not
so much law-abiding citizens being concerned by being tracked, per se, but the
prospect of being falsely accused by a central system that is either incompetent or
that has been hacked in some way.
If Big Brother is required to maintain the operation of a (reasonably) free
society, then there is a growing onus on the authorities and their partners to assure
the integrity of systems. There is a corollary, perhaps, with the credit-checking
agencies. If people suspect there may be a problem with their records, they have a
right (in some countries at least) to access the records and have them corrected.
Perhaps a similar situation could emerge for mass tracking where the trusted
agency can allow legitimate requests from people to check whether their
whereabouts are accurate. The use of personal blackboxes (discussed in Section
9.2) might mean that individuals have much better quality of information than the
authorities.
5.5
Sports and Games
New generations of location-aware games and sports are being researched. Sports
where the participants are not colocated are possible with a sensing system
providing positioning information of players, balls, and equipment. Breakout for
Two [6] was ball game where two remote players used mutually connected video
walls to play a ball game, where the ball's bouncing position was sensed locally
and relayed as an image to the screen at the remote end.
