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May 14, 2004

5:19 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

Where Are You on GPS?

| posted by Chuck Salter

For more and more industries, Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites provide something that until recently wasn't possible -- the precise location of a shipment, a truck, a customer, an emergency. This is incredibly powerful information. It enables everyone from farmers and archaeologists to global shippers and ambulance operators to work more efficiently and make more informed decisions. As FC writer Charles Fishman put it, the sky's the limit.

Today's Wall Street Journal explores the flipside of this transformational technology. Police officers who were unknowingly tracked using GPS and caught napping. Snow-plow drivers who protested having to carry cell phones equipped with GPS. Teamsters who feel their privacy is being violated by a tracking device in their tractor trailer.

How much GPS monitoring are you comfortable with? Would you agree to let your employer track your movements throughout the day using a GPS-enabled laptop, phone or car? If your company could operate more efficiently and save a bundle because of it -- and if that, in turn, helped your own bottom line -- would that change your mind?

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Tags: Technology, technology + computers
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Recent Comments | 1 Total

May 17, 2004 at 2:18pm

Brian Smith
My first reaction is, "If I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, why should I be worried!" But then I think about the possibility that an employer could misinterpret my vehicle's lack of movement--I could be on my lunch break, or stuck in traffic, instead of taking a nap--and that little nagging thought of Big Brother watching creeps into my subconscious. Police officers generally check in with dispatch when they're at a location or moving to a new location... or, GASP, taking their lunch break! If companies don't have the budget to staff such a dispatch person, how about including an "Update Position" button on the GPS device that can send an employee's current (or last known) location to the company's computer, and not have it continually transmitting their location. That way, the company has current information without any really obvious invasions of privacy.
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