THE FORUM ON TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION
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CELL PHONE LOCATION TECHNOLOGY
HOW DO WE PROTECT PRIVACY WHILE SAVING LIVES?
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THURSDAY,
MAY 24, 2001
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This transcript was produced from a tape provided by the Forum on Technology & Innovation.
I-N-D-E-X
PRESENTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PAGE
Stephen Carter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
David Sobel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
George Heinrichs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Dan Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
QUESTION & ANSWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21
P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
MR. ROONEY: We’re delighted to see you all today. It’s a historic day in the Senate. Things are definitely wild around here. Senator Rockefeller had a root canal this morning, and he can’t speak. I think it would be quite interesting to see a United States senator who can’t speak. In any case, he’s not going to be with us today. Senator Frist is in conference with his Republican colleagues, and he will try to make it, but there’s a good chance that he won’t. We’re going to go ahead. The senators have brought you a terrific panel with a dynamite topic, and they’re going to go ahead and tell you about wireless cell phone location technology and privacy.
I want to first acknowledge our sponsors. These briefings are brought to you by generous grants from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Samueli Foundation. We could not do this without them, and we’re very, very grateful for their support.
I want to draw your attention to your briefing packets. On the backside of the first item in your packet is the agenda for today’s briefing. As you see from that agenda, each of the speakers is going to give you roughly a ten minute presentation on their view of wireless location privacy, and then we’re going to open up the floor, as we always do, to your questions. We have two microphones set up on the floor. We very much prefer that you come to the microphone and ask your questions. I also want to point out to those of you in the audience who are not congressional staff that we are happy to have you here, but please give the staff an opportunity to come to the microphones in the beginning. The senators are here and we’re here for the congressional staff audience. We want to give them the first crack at asking questions. We do give congressional staff the privilege of anonymity when they ask questions, but for those others of you who get an opportunity to ask, please identify yourselves. It helps the speakers enormously if they know who you are and know where the question is coming from. They can respond better if you do that. I’m going to go ahead and introduce the speakers all at once, and then they’re going to come up here to the podium and tell you about this issue.
This is an absolutely fascinating issue. The issue of determining the location of mobile phone users when the phone is connected to the network, and sharing that information with third parties is an enormously sensitive one. Why would anyone want to track the location of a wireless phone? Well, it turns out that I think more than a third of the 911 calls placed in this country were made from mobile phones, and in most cases, the 911 operator has no idea where that call is coming from. They know it to so sector, but if that call is coming in from northern Virginia, that 911 operator doesn’t know which side of the river that caller is on, and there’s no way to dispatch an ambulance, or fire-truck, or a police person to that location. So, there is an enormous public safety issue here. It’s an issue that both Congress and the FCC addressed. The FCC regulations required that by the end of the year, wireless carriers deliver relatively accurate location information to the 911 call centers when a 911 call is placed from a wireless network. Needless to say, this raises a host of privacy concerns. Just about everybody wants a 911 operator to know where they are, but they don’t necessarily want someone else to know were they are.
It turns out that the wireless carriers, for their part, are not interested in alienating their subscribers, but they’ve got a problem. They’ve been stuck, in effect, with an unfounded mandate. It’s estimated nationwide that rollout of wireless device location finding technology could cast between two and four billion dollars. And there’s no provision in the FCC e-911 mandate for cost recovery for the carriers. In effect, what the government has done is encourage the wireless industry to find other uses for this location data -- commercial uses that can generate revenue and offset some of that investment. How to balance the commercial use of location data and the legitimate privacy concerns of the subscribers is one of the issues that our panelists are going to talk about today. It turns out that there are some very useful services that can be delivered to consumers based on location, services that they may want and actively seek out. But the issue is, how do we give consumers some control over what is to them very sensitive information real-time information about where they are at the moment when their cell phone is connected to the network?
Well, I’m really delighted that Senator Frist and Senator Rockefeller have invited such a stellar panel to talk about his issue, and I’m going to introduce them to you now. Stephen Carter is the president and CEO if Cingular Wireless. It’s a terrific new brand. How many have you heard of Cingular Wireless? Can you raise your hands? How many of you heard of Cingular a year ago? This a nation-wide brand created seemingly out of nowhere. That’s a remarkable accomplishment, and Stephen Carter is the man who did that. Cingular is the second largest wireless carrier in the nation with over twenty million subscribers. He has a wealth of experience in the wireless business. He has managed firms both in the U.S. and Great Britain. He is originally from Great Britain, and like I say, he really is responsible for directing one of the most successful commercial launches in history.
David Sobel is an outstanding expert on privacy issues. He’s General Counsel to the Electronic Privacy Center. Those of you who have attended some of our past forum briefings on privacy are familiar with EPIC; they really do a terrific job. They’re one of the leading public interest research groups in the privacy space, and David in particular is an expert on wireless location and e-911 privacy issues. He has an extensive background in privacy and information law, and he’s litigated a number of cases involving government information disclosure, Internet privacy, and privacy related to law enforcement practice, there is a law enforcement angle to the e-911 location issue as well.
George Heinrichs is the president and CEO of SCC Communications. They are the nation’s largest provider of 911 and e-911 technology and services. George has engineered the introduction of a host of new technologies to deliver and manage 911 services, and prior to founding SCC; he had a ten-year career in public safety and law enforcement information systems.
Dan Allen is the president and CEO of Airbiquity, Inc. Airbiquity is the leading provider of GPS-based location finding technology for wireless devices. These are little modules that clip on to the battery pack of a wireless phone or a wireless device connected to the Global Positioning System that can determine accurately the location of that device and send that information back through the network. So, it’s really not exclusively limited to phones. Airbiquity provides support for automobile telomatics, I’m sure they have products for other wireless devices, palm devices, laptops, etcetera. Formerly, he directed mid-Atlantic operations for Nextel Communications, so he’s very familiar with this area. He’s also been involved as a senior executive in 11 wireless start-up companies, and as a former executive of BellSouth International, he managed the rollout of new wireless operations, not only in this country, but also in Europe, South America, and Asia. So, I’m going to turn the podium over now to Stephen Carter from Cingular.
MR. CARTER: Thank you very much indeed for that very kind introduction, and thank you for the instant market research feedback. That was wonderful, and my chief marketing officer would have, that would have gladdened her heart tremendously to see that show of hands there, so thank you. I’m going to try and keep my remarks fairly brief and hit on a few points this morning. I think whenever society makes a big step forward in technology, there’s a bit of a collision that occurs, and happens between hopes and fears, between expectations and reality. I think in this case, there is a great hope for convenience and perhaps greater efficiency. But at the same time in this issue, privacy is really, well, people are feeling that it may be eroded. This emerging technology I think holds the promise of many advantages, from public safety, to higher productivity, convenience, and I think also it may signal the start of some tremendous new business opportunities. But at the same time, I think all of us can identify with the idea that being identified and tracked for purposes that are beyond our control raises some serious issues and concerns. Privacy issues usually cut broadly across the whole telecommunications field, but I think it is fair to say that location-based privacy issues are purely for the wireless industry and are unique to the wireless industry, and as a result of that, we believe a unique regulatory response is required. Our industry, acting through the CTIA, Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, is urging the FCC to deal with location-based services separately. I think the one thing we all agree on is that timely action is required. Everybody, whether it is consumers, the providers, the carriers, the manufacturers, or regulators, we all need to move forward and have a really clear view of the future. We don’t want to have to go back and fix it once we’ve started. We don’t want to have to do a retrofit as these services evolve. And there are multiple technological roads to choose from, and with that we believe that the privacy road map has to be in place at the very beginning so that the journey is assured, so that the carriers know exactly where we should end up, and so we can select the right parts for our business.
So today, I want to talk about three main questions if I may. Firstly, I want to touch on what the public wants. What do they think about location-based services? I also want to talk about how the wireless industry itself proposes to respond to the concerns people have raised about privacy. And finally, I think it will be worth touching on exactly where does the technology stand from a carrier point of view, and how are we positioned in terms of meeting mandates, etcetera.
So let’s start by taking a look at what the public thinks, and to do that, let’s look at some market research that was carried out earlier this year by the Driscoll-Wolfe Company. They did poll of some 20,000 American households, and here are a few of the findings. The first thing was that among existing wireless customers, there is only limited to moderate interest in any kind of location-based services. I mean by that things such as directions to a destination, traffic information, perhaps promotional information from local retailers, or even information such as where is your nearest ATM -- very limited interest indeed. The way the question was asked was, "Well, if these were free. . ." Even when they were free, nearly one out of five would move the services up the scale to say that they would be very interested. And when you go the other way and say supposing we charge some money for them, and we picked a nominal fee of $9.95, then actually only 7 percent were interested. When you look at handsets, which one of the solutions is to actually change the way we make handsets, 77 percent of respondents said they had no interest in paying anything extra for location-based technology to be placed in phones. So, I would have to tell you that this research didn’t give us very much encouragement in terms of the short-term potential to build a brand new business. I think what they tell us is that consumer demand for the location technology is not on the verge of explosive growth right now. I think on the other hand though, we have to be fair and say that 20 years ago, when the same sort of research was done about wireless telephony generally, the forecast for how many wireless users there would be by the end of the century, by the year 2000, was one million. Thankfully for me, and everyone else in the wireless industry, we missed that forecast by over 100 million. I think what we should take from that is that it is not a question about is there a business there or is there an interest there in the long term, it’s that there isn’t an interest at this time, so we’ve got to be realistic about the timing. Driscoll-Wolfe also looked at focus groups. They asked about privacy concerns, and what the consumers said very loud and very clear was that they wanted control over who receives the information and how it is used. And there was a general acknowledgement though, that in the case of something like e-911, that there was a sort of an implicit form of consent given by making the call. They were very worried about the security risks of someone knowing exactly where you were every day at every time. So, you’d have to say that at best, the consumer interest is a very mixed bag -- very reserved in their enthusiasm -- I think both from a perception of value as well as the privacy concerns. And from our point of view, as I said earlier, it makes the business proposition very hazy at best. I think in the long-term view, it really is down to the industry, it depends whether we can use our imaginations and create some killer applications that people really want. Can we use our marketing acumen to create a business? I believe over time, that this is a powerful prospect, and that there is a business to be had, but may be in a longer time than we expect. Even so, at the moment, location technology is moving forward, and it’s being driven predominantly by the FCC’s mandate on e-911.
I think perhaps now is a good time to look at well, what does the industry propose to do to address the privacy opinions about location technology. I mentioned that the CTIA has proposed to the FCC a framework of principles for dealing with the concerns, and Cingular joins the rest of the industry in endorsing that approach. The CTIA framework really has four points. The first two are notice and consent, and together they constitute what people are calling the 'opt-in approach,' that ensures the consumer is informed in advance, and that they are in control of whether and how information is used. The third leg is security and the integrity of the data, because consumers have to have the confidence that the privacy is real, and that means the service provider has to accept the responsibility for maintaining location data in a very secure manner. And this also must apply to ensuring that any third party that has the consumers’ consent to have that information are also in compliance. The fourth area is that we’ve got to have rules and guidelines that are technology neutral. We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t make rules today that will force dull progress tomorrow. We don’t want rules that will constrain consumer choice. The same privacy standards must also apply whether the services are provided through handsets or through the network.
Let’s have a look at what is realistic the near term. The most diligent driver is the FCC’s mandate, and I think all of us feel that we want to help in moving forward to providing location technology to improve emergency services. Let me be very candid with you. Statements from the public safety community, from certain customer segments, and from some policy makers indicate that there are really great expectations for an easy rollout of location services. The truth is we’re not there yet; this is work in progress. In fact even in the regulations that are prescribed, the FCC has acknowledged that there will be an ability to only meet a percentage of times when the information is accurate. In some cases it is going to be well below 100 percent. But even with that flexibility, the industry is really struggling. It is evident if you look from the waivers that have been filed at the FCC, and I also note personally, from what we’re doing at Cingular with both GSM handset technology and TDMA network technology, that neither is ready for prime-time as defined by the FCC’s order. When you think about that, it is not very surprising, because no where else in the world have such strict standards been imposed, not even in Finland, which is the arguably the most densely penetrated wireless nation in the world. So, I’m concerned, concerned that the public’s perception of the accuracy of e-911 location technology may at best in the early months far exceed what we can actually deliver. And given all of this, I have to pose one concluding question, and that is really will location-based services ultimately develop into a business? I think the answer is yes, but as I have said earlier, not this year, and not next year. The technology is still developing, and consumer excitement has definitely yet to catch fire. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
MR. SOBEL: Thank you for having me. I am very pleased to be able to discuss what I think is really one of the cutting-edge privacy issues that we are currently dealing with. My organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, looks at emerging privacy and civil liberties issues in new technologies. As I have said, this is clearly very high on that agenda. I just wanted to direct your attention to some brochures that you have out on the tables. I would be very happy to work with all of you on the full range of civil liberties and privacy issues that are rising with new technologies, so please pick one of these up if you’d like to get in touch with us.
I think you’re likely to hear a lot of agreement on general principles today. I think one of the very positive aspects of this debate so far has really been the lack of debate, there seems to be a lot of unanimity between the significant industry sector, such as the providers, and the privacy community as to at least where the starting point on this issue should be. I think in relation to some of the other privacy issues that you’re familiar with; we’re a lot further along on really attempting to reach some consensus. I think as a starting point, it is really important for you to know that we are not that we are writing on an entirely clean slate with respect to policy in this area. About a year and a half ago, Congress enacted the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act, which for current purposes did two things. It imposed the e-911 location requirement on the providers and at the same time, to its credit, Congress recognized that there were privacy issues that were attached to that requirement. There had to be some attention paid to the privacy of the location information that Congress was mandating to be developed.
So what the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act basically says is that a cellular provider or a wireless provider cannot disclose location information for any purpose other than for emergency services unless they have, the magic words are, ‘the expressed prior authorization of the user.’ So, that is an opt-in standard, so as I have said, I think we’re off to a good start with that. However, there are several questions that remain unanswered after the enactment of that legislation. The first is, "Who is covered by that provision?" Obviously the traditional cellular telephone providers are covered, but what becomes a little murkier as this technology advances is the status of for instance wireless PDA devices, or wireless palms with Internet access. Is that covered or is that not? Automotive navigational systems, are they covered or not, or does it depend on the technology that they use? That is not yet clear. I’ll get to the FCC proceeding that Stephen mentioned in a minute.
The other big pending question is, "What is expressed prior authorization?" Is it a transaction-specific approval each time a provider wants to disclose location information? Is there a requirement for authorization, or could there be a blanket good for all times through authorization at the initiation of service. Although both of these are arguably described as opt-ins, I think you’d recognize that there is a vast difference between those two approaches. If your service agreement says, "Use of this service constitutes expressed prior authorization for the disclosure of location information," then in effect, from our perspective, that protection becomes meaningless. You also have to take into account the difficulty of communicating that notice and that consent in the wireless environment. Certainly on the telephone platform, you’re dealing with a one-inch screen; PDA is not much better, so how is that transaction conducted? How is the consumer given meaningful notice, and how do they transmit meaningful consent? Those questions are not addressed in the legislation, which has led in part to the FCC proceeding.
As Stephen mentioned, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association has petitioned the commission to basically flush all of this out. It’s not yet clear whether the FCC is going to accept the invitation and begin the proceeding, but I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of commenter on that proceeding request support that undertaking by the commission. I think it’s going to be very interesting to follow what comes out of that. One of the questions raised is, "Who will these FCC rules, if they are promulgated, apply to?" I think it is likely that the FCC proceeding is going to clarify that we actually need broader protection of location privacy than that that has already been enacted by Congress.
And that brings us to the point of technology neutrality. I think it’s really critical that consumers nor be put in the position of needing to figure out what the type of technology that they’re using is, and whether or not that technology is regulated by the FCC, and whether one set of rules applies to PDA and another set of rules applies to the telephone, and yet another set of rules applies to the automotive navigational system that they might use. I think the common denominator here needs to be the user, and the fact that this information is about where an individual is, people need to begin using this technology with a unified expectation that if what is being transmitted is information about my location, there are rules that apply across he board.
I think it’s really critical that we adopt that technology neutral standard. In other areas, we haven’t done that. Privacy legislation in the United States has traditionally been bisector, so that you end up with odd results like the fact that your video rental records are protected by federal law in terms of their privacy, but where you go on the Internet is not. I think this provides us an opportunity to avoid some of the very odd results that are likely to occur if we do regulate this technology by technology. And I think those rules that we ultimately establish need to put the user in control of this information. That is the key principle that needs to guide this.
To the greatest extent possible, the user needs to transaction by transaction say, "Yes, I want my location transmitted to this request," or "No, in this situation, I don’t." I think even better, and this moves us in the technology area in the question of how these systems are designed, anonymity should be encouraged. It is not always necessary for the provider to know the location of the individual, or more importantly to know the identity of the individual. I think a great example of that that most of us use every day is the Metro fair card. This is a system that was designed to ensure that payment is made based on your trip to one station to the next. That system tracks location, but it doesn’t know who you are. I think we need to look more at that anonymity option as we design these systems.
Now, it could be argued, for instance, that while there would be tremendous commercial value in having individuals’ identities tied to their Metro card itineraries, or law enforcement would like to have a database of where everybody was at a particular time of day. But, that’s not the system we developed, and I think we are all a lot happier that that is not the case. We would not like to think that our use of a Metro fair card constituted an ongoing surveillance of our activities creating a database. I think we need to bring that same sensibility into the design of wireless systems.
The reason we need to limit the collection of the information in the first instance is because the user and the provider are not always going to be in the situation to control access. There’s the whole question of subpoenas that could be issued to access this information. In fact, we have already seen this phenomenon with respect to EZ-Pass toll information, where those systems are designed in a non-anonymous way. They have already become targets for both law enforcement subpoenas and civil subpoenas. For instance, in contested divorce cases, you can imagine that that kind of information about the coming and goings of one of the spouses could be of interest. So, if it’s sitting there, it is likely be accessed, so we need to limit the collection as much as we can.
The whole question of law-enforcement access of location information is very much an open question. You might be surprised to know that currently federal law does not address the issue of what standard law enforcement needs to show in order to access location information about a cellular phone user. There’s a lot of debate going on about that issue. Last year, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would establish a probable cause standard for law enforcement access to location information, and I think that’s hopefully going to be the starting point, in this congress, to address that issue.
Finally, the last thing I want to say is that this issue, with respect to wireless privacy, is a lot different than the Internet privacy debate, and I think there are a couple reasons for that. One is the fact that we have already been into that debate for a couple of years so that this debate is a lot better informed from what we have learned through the internet debate. For instance, the now seems to be a consensus with respect to wireless that opt-in is the standard, and like I have said, we need to figure out the details of that, but at least we’ve gotten to that point.
The other one is that this is a very different business model. A cellular phone provider has paying customers who pay by the minute and they want to ensure that those users feel comfortable using that service. You contrast that with the internet, where you have website business models that based on providing free content in exchange for the collection of very detailed personal information, where the business model basically identifies the personal information as what’s valuable in that transaction. Here we don’t have that, so think that’s a great advantage in going forward in this debate, that we don’t seem to have the same pressures to turn personal information into a commodity as we do on the Internet. So, just to sum up, I think we are off to a promising start with this discussion. There’s a lot of consensus, but we’re now moving into what’s likely to be the difficult part, which is to really work on the details. So, let me leave it that, and I’d be happy to take questions later. Thanks.
MR. ROONEY: Before I ask George Heinrichs to go to the podium, I just wanted to point out that also in your briefing packets are green question cards. We know that some of you are shy, and just won’t go to the microphones. You’ve got the option of filling out questions on these cards. Our staff is going to start circulating through the audience in a few minutes and will collect them from you, and the speakers will answer your questions off the cards. George Heinrichs.
MR. HEINRICHS: Well first, thanks for your time. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Based on previous comments, I guess we’re all in alignment that 911 is critically important and the message I’m here to deliver is that it’s very, very important that as we proceed to discuss and move forward on the issue of privacy, that we not entangle the basic functions of 911 in that process. I’d like to, at the risk of maybe briefly repeating something already said, give you a clear view of what’s included in the current legislation on this topic.
There are about eight points of significance, and I would credit Congressman Markee and Senator Burns for really pursuing these points aggressively on the privacy front. And there are some other potential uses for location data that I think you may want to consider that are covered in the bill. I won’t read all of these to you directly, but I will say is that carriers are in a unique position in that they have for many years, as far as I know since the communication act of 1934, been responsible for the confidential management of information. I think they have been good stuards in that regard. So, we’re starting, I believe, from a high ground in terms of trying to manage the data.
The issue of collecting data is however pertinent as well. The point was made that data that is once collected can then be summoned by higher authorities for whatever purpose someone my dream up. I think it would be important to note that in the early tests that we’ve participated in as a 911 infrastructure provider, that most of location determination systems do not in fact operate the way that have been categorized I think in some of the press. That is, they do not continuously record someone’s location. In fact, if you work on the band with requirements to accomplish that task and the infrastructure requirements, they’re massive. In most of the tests we’ve participated in, the only trigger for collecting information was literally dialing the digits 911. So, it required a call event to actually trigger the technology.
Well, the nature of the problem is first that the frequency of calls for help is growing. There will a report released in the next month or so called Report Card of the Nation by the National Emergency Numbers Association that will document what this nation is experiencing in terms of the growth of 911 calls. Wireless, 911, without a doubt, has been one of the most significant factors in improving public safety in America in the past 50 years. This has been an unbelievable resource for people who need help desperately, and could not previously communicate that need and now they can. The down side to that equation is that we have a lot more calls, and in some cases, those calls are problematic.
We deal with a number of areas; our company is responsible either directly or indirectly for about 200 million wire-linked subscribers and about 50 million wireless subscribers, at least from a contract view, and the rollouts are continuing on those projects. But, our customers are estimating that in some areas up to 50 percent of all emergency calls are coming in on wireless phones, which is a real change in the model from before. Approximately 40 percent of those callers don’t know where they are. Now, some might think that Darwinian in nature, but it is amazing, if you think about it yourself. The next time you are driving down the freeway and are bored stiff, ask yourself at a moment how would I describe where I am? And a surprising number of people would really struggle doing that.
I did bring some calls to share with you today. There was one particular call that I found incredibly haunting. It was a young lady in Florida who was driving along the freeway. She dials 911 on her cell phone and says, "I’m having car problems. Can you tell me how to get a tow truck?" It was really not even an emergency call at that time. While she’s on the phone, she says, "No, no it’s all right. Someone is stopping to help me. He’s pulling up behind me. Oh it’s great, he’s getting out of his car, oh, he’s got a gun!" The call evolves to this story of this man who then tries to attack the woman. The dispatcher, this may be questionable, instructs the woman not to roll down the windows, which in the face of a man with a gun, I might choose to roll down my window, I’m not sure. The guy goes back to his car, to get a pillow, presumably to hold over the window, so he could fire a round through the glass and not get the glass on him. This whole time, they do not where she is. She can explain where she entered the freeway, and they do the 60-question thing to try to figure out what landmark she has passed. They end up understanding the emergency nature, and through the brilliant action of the public safety officials, they dispatch troopers, at this point running lights and sirens, from both ends where they established this, and it at the very end of the call, as it was clear this man was about to gain entry to the car and access to her, you could hear a siren in the background of this wireless call. It was because of a wireless phone that she was saved from what may have been a very tragic end to this call. Imagine had they not started from the right points, there are a thousand other ways for that call to end. Had we had accurate call routing and accurate location information, these could have made a huge difference.
When you hear people in these calls, I’ll play one for you now, people aren’t thinking about, "Oh gee, should I opt in now or what shall I do?" They don’t think about that. It’s all they can do to dial the numbers and call for help. And, this is one of those deals where until you’re there, I would encourage you to not second-guess the stress folks are under. This particular call is a call that was subsequently broadcast on a radio station. What you’re actually going to hear is the radio station’s cut of this call with their announcer kind of narrating what was happening. It’s an old call. I think it’s particularly significant in that this was one of the original calls used to pitch the concept of location determination to the FCC in their original rule making in 1991 and 1992.
(Recording of 911 call)
911 Operator: Have any more cars passed?
Caller: What?
911 Operator: Have there been many other cars going by?
Radio Announcer: A police dispatcher tries to find out from a man on a car mobile phone where he is. He has been in a wreck. He has run off the roadway and is cut and needs help. He thinks he’s near Owassa. Every once in a while, the mobile phone goes dead. The dispatcher sends out units looking for the man-- nothing. She contacts other police departments. An hour and half passes, no wreck is found. Then the man calls back to Owassa. He hears a train approaching. He’s on the track
Caller: There’s a train coming! Do you hear it?
911 Operator: Yes, get out of your car.
Caller: Train coming!
911 Operator: Get out of your car!
(Train crash)
Radio Announcer: After the train collision, the train crew contacted the authorities. The wreckage occurred near Claremore. The man is found 30 yards from the wreckage of his car along side the tracks. He is still clutching the phone receiver in his hand, but he is alive. Thirty-year old Doyle Owen of Tulsa is in stable condition at the Claremore hospital. Richard Dowdell, KRMG News.
MR. HEINRICHS: Now, as I said before, that is an old call. That event was at least eight years ago, maybe longer. We don’t know all the circumstances of the call. What we do know was that the victim had head injuries as result of a one-car accident that left his car on a train track. Beyond that, it is not clear exactly what was going on. In this case, he survived, but there we had an example of public safety resources, in extreme numbers, searching the re trying to find him only to realize they were in the wrong place. Obviously the train crew knew exactly where they were.
There was another experience I would like to share with you, and that is some of our west coast customers tell us that more then ten years ago the approximate number of calls they received for an average freeway accident was five calls. This was five motorists who were either exiting anyway, or who would pull off and call on a pay phone to report an accident. Today, they receive more than 100 calls on a single accident, and when you have those kinds of numbers, 40 percent of those people don’t know where they are. Now, the game is how many accidents are there -- do we have one, do we have ten? Take 40 witnesses and ask them to describe the same thing and see how common the results seem. They just won’t even sound like the same thing.
So, duplicate calls are a big issue, and telomatics are a growing issue in America. This is where cars with the deployment of an airbag automatically call for help. These all have location service involved and are all really crucial. So, this initial call for service and first crucial moments may mean life or death for someone. I have another call that I won’t play now, but it is of a man actually being shot and killed on a 911 call. He never has a chance to say where he is. My understanding is that it took three days before the neighbors noticed anything and called the police to come find him. What’s not clear is whether had we had his location, from a public safety view, someone could have responded and helped him medically. There are quite a few issues related to this that are not about the initial call. They’re about the management and disclosure of private health information that may be embedded in the call. They’re about the issues of people who are accused of crimes and not convicted. They’re about the need for America to have a private alternative -- the need that you can call a number that is not 911 and preserve your anonymity and still communicate matters of urgency where you need to remain anonymous.
There are state rules and laws that govern these, and we’re starting to see a trend toward more privacy on the 911 front. There is a particular behavior that we now call the ‘O.J. syndrome.’ I would guess everyone in this room has heard the O.J. 911 call at least three or four times, and that is the sort of popularization of particular calls, and now we’re seeing states move to transcription alternatives, where you can have the content of the call, but not the original recordings. So my message to you is that 911 is our national life line. Its access must be unrestricted. The collection of location data should be, and I believe is today on the wire-link side, a de facto opt-in. You dial 911, you want help, you shouldn’t have to think about pushing any more buttons, sign any more forms, or do anything else. You should disclose that information instantly. Keep in mind that the person who owns the phone may not be the person who calls for help with that phone. It is a very complex situation when an emergency occurs. Clearly different states have different standards of information released after the fact. There appears to be a states’ rights issue that makes sense to rely on the states for. And, finally, we also view and strongly support the CTIA filing a request for further rulemaking to clarify the issues around exactly how all of this will happen. Thank you very much for your time.
(Applause)
MR. ALLEN: Thank you. I would like to tell you a little bit about Airbiquity. We are a technology that allows you to get your location. There are a lot of location technology companies today that can tell you where to go, we’re the technology company that tells you where you are. We deliver GPS information to wireless networks through wireless networks to a call center, whether it’s public safety or commercial, and our technology goes inside the wireless device, any wireless device, and then can be transmitted to a call center so you know your location. Some of the big advantages of that is that it requires no modification or no additional investment in the wireless network or the landline network. So you have a very economical, very quick rollout around the country with a single wireless device that you can call any call center from anywhere wireless works today. These are available today, so the technology is here.
Airbiquity has designed and is manufacturing a GPS battery pack accessory. It fits on about 20 million cell phones today. We believe we have kind of the ultimate opt-in. You put the control of your location in the hand of the user, and they have to call a call center, whether that’s public safety or commercial call center, such as AAA, your auto club, concierge service, and when it’s time to give your location, you push a button and send your GPS location very accurately. So again, this is the ultimate opt-in, if you will. This technology can go in wireless phones, can go in battery accessories, also can be integrated in the phone, and also in a telomatics environment.
I think all of you have heard of telomatics. Definitely telomatics is location services. You have all heard of OnStar, seen a lot of OnStar adds with Batman. Onstar just recently announced that 1 million subscribers that are using the location services and the location technologies of OnStar. Airbiquity is very active with the organizations you see here-- CTIA, Nina, Apco, ComCare, and also Location Inoperability Forum, and Location Privacy Association. So, we definitely believe that privacy, protecting our privacy, and using the information responsibly is very important.
Location is thought to be a big business with a very large commercial potential. A lot of different studies have been conducted, as you can see in the upper left-hand corner, the estimates are that in the nest three to four years, wireless phones will more than double around the world and there will be more than one million. In location services alone, by 2004, there will exist a seven billion dollar a year business. The automobile manufacturers tell us that by 2007, telomatics will be in every vehicle, and that’s estimated to be about a 24 billion dollar per year business. Asset tracking looks like a small business by comparison, only a billion dollars a year by 2004. What is significant there today from a location standpoint in asset tracking is that in this country alone, every year there is a loss of six billion dollars in containers and their contents.
As we look at location services I think, as you heard this morning with the previous three speakers, we all agree kind of two extremes. The first is public safety. That is very necessary, and is the right way to use location. Everybody wants to save lives. The other side is the really the promotional side, the side that all of us are more concerned about I think. How are you going to use that data? Will they know where I am at all the time? Will they use that data for proximity marketing? I’m driving close to the mall, my phone wrings, I look down, and someone is having a sale. What do they do with my location knowledge? I call that wireless junk mail, and that is some of the things we don’t want to see. I think, as George mentioned, about 58 million wireless users call 911 every year, and about 40 percent of those don’t know where they are at. That equates to about 50,000 callers a day who call that call 911 but don’t know where they’re at in those emergencies.
I think as you sill out through the middle of this continuum though, there are a lot of very worthwhile uses for location and location commerce. Many of them are being used today. Safety and security, this is roadside assistance, either calling AAA, the auto club, the 800 number in the back of your owner’s manual, or an OnStar-like service. Crash notification is a big part of this, as the call does not necessarily go to 911 and may not be life threatening, but when the airbag is deployed, a call is automatically made to the call center giving the location, setting up a audio phone call between the vehicle and the call center so that you can determine the severity of the crash and then know if you should send a 911-type response or other types of responses. There are a lot of convenience applications. Some of those are in effect today; others of those will be implemented in the future, as location services are more readily available. We think of those as concierge services, and those are the services that is I know where you are, I can tell you where to go. Where is the nearest ATM, home improvement center, fine restaurant, what ever. A lot of those services are already in effect today. Some of the others are more inside the enterprise -- business kinds of uses for location services that you can use for customer relations, management, automatic dispatch, knowing where your vehicles is or where your employees are -- so you can provide a better level of service to your customers and also more efficiently manage your businesses. And these are all location services that are considered commercial and available today.
Entertainment is probably further down the road. There are some companies today that are developing games around location, believing that in the future you will where cell phone callers are located and be able to use that for scavenger hunt-type games across the country. There are also some applications is gambling. In states where gambling is legal for off track betting it is very necessary to know that you are actually calling from that state or that particular reservation or whatever the regulated area is. So, knowing the location of the caller, you can legally verify that they are in places where it is legal to make off track bets.
As this group moves forward in legislation, they’re going to get a lot of help probably from the press. This has a lot of visibility, and these are just some of the publications that have run articles on location. All of them have also mentioned privacy in these articles. So, any time you have businesses that one, affect privacy, and two, have the potential of being worth billions of dollars, you’re going to get a lot of coverage of the system.
Let’s look a little bit at why it has taken so long for this to happen. I think privacy is still a big issue, as we all know. There are really three elements of privacy. The first one is where am I. What’s my location, and how do I get to where I want to go? I think most folks are pretty comfortable with giving that up. The one that is the real unknown is what they call post-transaction processing. How much data did you collect? How much data did you keep? And what do you do with that data after you’ve kept it? Who has access to it, do you have the right to sell it, and if it’s there, can law enforcement have it? It’s really a question of trust, and you need to think about what we’ve done in that area before in communications and other parts of privacy from the public standpoint. Look at all the junk mail we get everyday. When’s the last time any of us ate a meal at home and we didn’t get called by a telemarketer? And all of the things that have happened on the computers, with banners and the selling of your computer information.
So, that’s really where the public is coming from, and I don’t think they feel really comfortable with some of the uses of location, some of the wireless junk mail, if you will, without some help and assistance. 911 is very important, and I don’t think there is any argument there. It needs to be done, it needs to be soon. There are costs, and some of the commercial applications have the potential of offsetting some of those costs to the carriers and the consumers as well.
Technology is here in a lot of different forms. It’s available today, and we’ll talk more about that. There are several companies that are using location today. As we mentioned, OnStar, AAA -- if you call AAA, typically you have to give up your location, and if you want a tow truck you have to tell them where you are at. Most people feel that the efficiencies of getting assistance to you, even in non-life threatening situations, are so great that that’s a very worthwhile wait to use location services. The other companies, such as OnStar and ATX, all take calls for roadside assistance from automobile manufacturers.
So, solutions do exist today. The technology has come a very long way since the FCC first wrote the mandate. A handset solution in 1996 was not even contemplated. GPS in the handset was not even contemplated. The FCC felt that the technology would work best in the network, and that was the only kind of technology that was even remotely available at that time. So, a lot has happened in the GPS environment. I think many of you are familiar with the Garman or Magellan unit that you hold in your hand and is about this size. The GPS that is used inside a battery accessory or is integrated in the phone is about the size of a dime, and hundreds of times more sensitive than the one that is used today in the Magellan unit.
A lot of discussion, originally with handsets solutions and GPS in the handsets, deals with what will happen to battery life. Well, the technology has advanced to the point now that you will see no appreciable effect on battery life. So, that’s no longer an issue. Accuracy -- how many of you here play golf? To give you just a little idea on accuracy, if you have a solution for location that’s accurate to 20 meters, and we don’t think in meters, but that is the way the FCC mandate was written, in 20 meters, that creates a search area of 100 by 100, or roughly a quarter of an acre. And to identify with that, the average residential lot, if you go back and look on your tax records, if your lot is 10,000 square feet, it is a quarter of an acre. So, a 100 by 100 lot, and that is the search area if you’re accurate within 20 meters. The most liberal requirement in the FCC mandate is for 300 meters in 95 percent of the time in a network solution. A 300 meter accuracy results in a search area of 58 acres. And the reason I asked how many golfers there are is because the average 18 hole golf course is 27 acres. So, you can imagine if you don’t get some accuracy, it’s going to very difficult to find people who are really in trouble. So, I think wee need to consider that as we look at the legislation.
So, to summarize, the location issues are upon us. They are here now, as you can see the technology is here today and will be implemented in the very near future. As we look at legislation, I think wee need to continue to realize that there are going to be some very valuable and worthwhile commercial uses for location that the public are going to want to take advantage of. Thank you.
(Applause)
MR. ROONEY: Thank you. We do have microphones on the floor for you come and ask your questions. We have some questions here. I’m going to start with one of you. David Sobel proposed the notion that the privacy preferences of a consumer should somehow be outlined independent of device or carrier. That sounds like a great idea, but highly impractical. I was wondering if Stephen Carter could perhaps respond to that or if you have any notion of that ever being practical.
MR. CARTER: The very nature of a wireless network means that we gather information about where you are because that’s the way the system works. The fact that you’re mobile, it operates from cells all over the place. We know vaguely where you are however the system works, and even now today, we also happen to collect a lot of information. The restriction on us now is not so much in the collecting of it, we have too that to run the network, it’s more in the nature of whether it’s used afterwards and how it’s used. I do think that he raises a good point in the sense that if you have a contract right from the beginning and you have people sign the contract to say it’s ok and they’re opted in, that’s a very broad level of authorization. But I think that it was perhaps George that said, or maybe David said as well, the carriers have been pretty good stewards up until now. We’ve not abused the information, we’ve used it judiciously and only appropriately, and so I think it is a very difficult question. The idea of should you have permission granted through a pop-up question on the screen, or should it be through the contract or through some other method of communication. These are all issues that we’re still struggling with and frankly, we’re still investigating what we think the beat way to work it. I think it is a highly complex area, and for every good argument you make in one direction, there are definitely counter views that have to be taken into account. So, that’s a long way of saying I really don’t have a definitive answer at this point.
MR. ROONEY: Well, David, I think I heard George when he was speaking, essentially plea that when anyone dials 911, it should be presumed that they have given consent to yield up their information. Does EPIC have a point of view on that question?
MR. SOBEL: Well, more importantly, I think Congress already answered that question in the legislation, which provides as the major exception to the privacy protection that divulging location to emergency services personnel. I think that’s really where the common ground is on this. I’m certainly not suggesting that there should be a requirement of prior expressed authorization when somebody dials a 911 call. What we’re talking about is really everything else. Everything else could come as a possibility when this capability is built into the networks. I think when we talk about handset-based 911 solutions we do minimize a lot of the problems. The problem is really at its worst when a very specific location capability is built into the network and is there for purposes of all calls. It’s all the other calls outside of 911 that we’re concerned about, and that’s what the legislation goes to and I think that’s what the debate is really about. I think there is consensus on 911 calls.
MR. ROONEY: We have a question from the audience. This is really a technical question addressed to Dan Allen. With respect to public safety and e-911, what are the limitations of using GPS for locating a wireless device indoors? This would include inside buildings, or dialing on a cell phone from inside an automobile.
MR. ALLEN:: Do I look like an engineer? GPS in the handset is actually very sensitive. The sensitivity of a GPS receiver, whether it is in a battery accessory or is integrated into the handset, is very a very sensitive GPS receiver. So, it picks up some very low signals. It works very well, frankly, from the automobile. That works very well. It works quite ell close to a window, but there is no guarantee that it will work all of the time, it is a GPS. But, depending on the type of solution there isn’t any one solution in location, whether it’s in the network or in GPS, where you’re going to be able to guarantee that it’s going to work inside buildings. Buildings are going to be tough. There are land lines inside buildings, but for any wireless device, first, does your cell phone always work in the building, and second, we depend on the type of solution you have -- can you triangulate off of anything inside a building? That’s going to be a major concern. But the advances in technology in the GPS have been significant. We’ve tested it thoroughly, and it’s being tested by a lot of other companies as well as by some independent test facilities. It does work quite well near a window, but not all emergencies happen close to a window. So, your fall back is obviously the land line.
MR. ROONEY: Ok thank you. I think we have a question at the microphone here.
MARC LEMAITRE (Audience Member): Thank you very much. I wanted to make an observation, and then I’ll ask a question. First, the observation -- I don’t think there are many people in the room that would disagree with David Sobel that use of location information for 911 services is an area where most people would opt in. I would also like to comment on whet Stephen Carter said about the commercial use. I think it is in its early years. I was in the wireless industry at the inflection point you talked about where we fundamentally underestimated. I would also like to point out the same thing with the Internet the year before it was really adopted. I think most people in this room would now admit that the Internet plays an integral part of their life, business or private. I guess my question is around self-regulation. I’ve worked with the FCC and the FTC, and I’m meeting with the CTIA tomorrow on this very topic. It’s unusual that the industry has asked for regulation. Most other industries have shied away from regulation, and are waiting to have it imposed upon them. But, I think it fair to say that CTIA, which is a trade association, which is representing some of the members the industry, has actually asked for this. I think what they’re asking for is a framework allowing them to go forward and get some of the commercial value out of this information without exploiting the customers. My question is do you believe it is possible that the FTC and FCC, with their cross jurisdiction between the online and wireless worlds, could work with the industry to come up with a self-regulatory framework that would take the burden off the FCC and FTC of having to get down to understanding the granular permissions that customers give for the disclosure of this personal information. So, can the industry self-regulate itself?.
MR. ROONEY: Does anyone want to step up to that question? That’s a tough one.
MR. SOBEL: I’ll take a stab at it from the privacy advocacy side, and that’s to say that certainly with respect to the Internet, I think self-regulation has already been proven not to work. It’s just not happening, and that’s why we’re seeing the movement that we are both at the FTC and here in Congress towards a recognition of the fact that a complete hands off approach just isn’t working. The incentives are just all wrong. There’s too much commercial pressure to collect as much information and turn it into a commodity. But, I think you’re right that on the wireless side, we’re in a situation where industry itself is asking to have some rules established. I can’t speak for the CTIA. Stephen might have something to add to this, but I think there are two considerations at work here. One is the fact that Congress has already mandated something, so we’re sort of out of a self-regulatory mode to begin with. The other is that I think the service providers, as I said, have an interest in maintaining a comfort level among wireless users that’s important to them, and they have some interest in making sure there’s a level playing field -- that other players in the wireless area are not going to basically muddy the water that they are trying to keep clear on the privacy front. From the outside, that’s my perspective. On the one hand, Congress already mandated something, but on the other, they want to make sure those rules apply across the board to everyone.
MARC LEMAITRE (Audience Member): Do you think that bodes well for the industry that there is a recognition there at least? I mean if it’s failed in the Internet industry from a self-regulatory environment, if you see this happening differently in the wireless space, is that cause to think of this as an opportunity to right the wrongs?.
DAVID SOBEL: With respect to the Internet? As I said, there is a different business model. The problem on the internet is that you have this free content and service model that sort of forces the companies to look for some way to make money, and what many of them have latched on to is collecting as much information as possible as a means of revenue. Fortunately, we don’t yet have that in the wireless side, and hopefully that business model won’t develop if we set the rules early on.
DAN ALLEN: I think if it was just the cellular industry, they could be self-regulating and do a very responsible job quite frankly. The issue becomes, I think, that if there isn’t a single regulation from the federal government, you run the risk of fifty separate regulations. That would be very difficult for the cellular industry to be able to comply at fifty different state levels on fifty different kinds of regulations for location privacy. If you look at the issue of driver distraction, there are 3,300 communities in 34 states with different kinds of driver distraction legislation that that they are currently considering. That’s going to be difficult for the cellular phone user, it’s going to be difficult for the industry, and I don’t think you want that to happen in location. Theo other thing is as we’ve talked about there are a lot of commercial applications even today, where the control of privacy and information in location is not in the hands of the wireless industry -- it’s not in the hands of the service provider. It’s people like AAA that will be the destination of that call, and they’re the ones that will ultimately end up with that information. So, I think some broad guidelines to help everyone in the location industry with privacy are probably advantageous.
MR. CARTER: I was going to almost pose the question back, "What is the industry?" Because, I think the industry is much wider than the carriers that people are thinking of, and if this was an issue of purely 911 calls with purely the carriers, it would be a much less complex debate.
MARC LEMAITRE (Audience Member): I absolutely agree with you. I think it was David Sobel that made the point that when it’s a PDA and it’s not going through the wireless carrier, there’s just a pipe of data. Is that covered by the same mandate?
MR. ROONEY: I’m going to do a question card, and then go back to the microphone. This is another question from the audience and it is directed to George Heinrichs. What are your thoughts on the privacy implications of network-based verse handset-based location solutions, and why shouldn’t opt-in mean that handsets include a button that only when pushed reveals the location? I think that means the phone only reveals the location when the button is pushed, or only when 911 is dialed, but at no other time.
GEORGE HEINRICHS: I think if I understand the question correctly, from a 911 perspective, I think there should be no differences. The perspective of the industry is that 911 should be universal on all devices, no matter what the communication methodology is, and what I’ was trying to say earlier is that they should not require an exceptional handling on the part of the caller at the moment of the emergency. So, in the idea that you have to somehow execute something different because you are calling 911 is probably a bad idea. In general, it’s our view that consumers should not have to be aware of what kinds of communication device they are using, or what service they’re using, or who’s jurisdiction they’re in. The beauty of 911 is its simplicity, and so what we’re proposing what I promote is that if for example, the Airbiquity device can be programmed so that when you dial 911, it automatically triggers transmission. There are a number of calls where the act of dialing 911 was the last conscious act of the caller. It’s not necessarily true that we can be around to push the button or can talk after that.
DAVID SOBEL: I think that the question encompasses the solution. From a privacy perspective, the ideal solution is that on a handset, the default is that when you dial 911 location is transmitted, but for any other purposes, the default is no location information unless you push a button on the handset that says ‘find me.’ I think that’s the prefect privacy solution. Whether or not folks in industry are going to find that feasible for their purposes remains to be seen. From a user perspective, that is the way to guarantee user control.
MR. ROONEY: Stephen, do you have an opinion on that as a carrier?
MR. CARTER: Well, I think one of the points that’s being raised is that we’re talking here about buttons and different types of handsets and how it all could all be made to work, and we’re coming up to June and all of this is supposed to be happening in October. The point I started off with today is that this industry is just not ready yet for this sort of mandate that’s out there at this point of time. Everybody’s in agreement about the direction, but I think the very point that we’re talking about--should there be phones with buttons -- that may very well be an excellent solution, but I know that that would take a longer period of time than we have to work to create the solution. Currently, we’re running up on October, and we have no rules really to explain how it should work. And, there was some discussion earlier from Dan about how the accuracy levels. As I said earlier, I think if you would just explain to the consumer the here is an optional device that you can put on your phone if you’d like to which if you care to would send us to your location, that would be one thing. But, the FCC requirement is nothing as voluntary as that. So, I would be very willing to put an accessory in our stores that said ‘use this if you want to,’ but the requirement we’re running up to in October is far more intrusive than that, and I think we need to step back and take a moment to address what it is we’re trying to do ands when. If we’re all agreed in directional terms of where we need to be, and I think indeed most of the industry feels they could get somewhere by October, then I think they can get to the stage where the FCC was envisioning we’d be when they made the rule some while ago. I think it’s that technology just hasn’t caught up quite as quickly as perhaps people had hoped.
MR. ROONEY: Just before I go back to the microphone, I wanted to point out a third item in your packets, these blue evaluation cards. We pay a lot of attention to what you say, and we’d really appreciate it if you would give us feedback. Please take a moment while we’re winding down here to fill out these cards. You can drop them off at the registration desk on your way out. Now, we’ll go to the microphone.
DREW CLARK (Audience Member): Yes, I’m Drew Clark with National Journal’s Technology Daily. My question is first, could we have some clarification of when location tracking information is transmitted, is it continually all the time -- that is if I have a modern phone with a GPS device in it -- or is it only when a 911 button is pressed? Is there some difference between Mr. Heinrichs and Mr. Carter on that? And secondly, what is the current availability for law enforcement or people filing civil suits to get that location information post facto, i.e. not in an emergency setting, but for law enforcement to say, "Hey, where has this suspect been every hour of the day for the past two months?"
MR. CARTER: The technical aspects you ask about, I can address those. It really does depend entirely on the method you use. Some methods would be purely on when the call is made, but there equally are other methods that could be used that would be more continuous or even periodic. It does depend on the technology.
MR. ROONEY: David, do you have anything to add to that?
MR. SOBEL: Just on the question of law enforcement access to location information, as I said initially, there is not any clarity currently in the law on this question, but I think if what we’re talking about is stored location information -- in other words, a listing of where a particular user was a week ago -- that is probably just subject to standard subpoena procedures. What is more controversial and questionable right now is law enforcement access to real-time location information. The best we know is that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last year in the so-called ‘CALEA Decision’ or Communications Assistance Law Enforcement Act, which is a long story that we won’t go into, but the court did say that law enforcement needs something more than a pen registered or trap-and-trace order, but didn’t tell us what that something else is. We know that law enforcement has to meet a higher standard just to get real-time access to numbers a user is dialing, and as I said there have been legislative proposals to set a probable cause standard, the highest standard for access to real-time location information.
MR. ROONEY: This is going to have to be the last question.
MR. HEINRICHS: One more comment on the question. I am aware of a program trial that I believe the Department of Transportation is involved with where what they’re doing is using wireless location technology to monitor traffic speeds, and in that particular case, they’re not recording or storing individual phone numbers. It’s done on an anonymous basis. What they do is monitor the location of one vehicle, and then wait a fixed period of time and check its location again, and can determine the velocity of the car. What that does is functionally give them what traffic flow looks like through a traffic system. I think it’s interesting to note that the Department of Transportation has taken a very strong position that they don’t want to see individual data collected a part of those trials. So, they’re purposely excluding uniquely identifiable information in their record keeping. So even post facto searches for data would not reveal the identity of the car that was checked.
AMY LEVINE (Audience Member): I’m Amy Levine from Covington & Burling. I have a question for David which is you mentioned the importance of having technology neutral rules so that consumers have the same expectation of privacy with respect to using a land line phone as with a mobile phone. As you know, the Tenth Circuit struck down an opt-in approach to revealing consumer privacy information with respect to land line phones. I’m wondering if you think that if opt-in should be the base line, that is something that the FCC can remedy, or whether it needs to go back to Congress.
DAVID SOBEL: First of all, I didn’t mean to suggest that the rules should be the same with respect to land line and wireless. My point was that any wireless technology should be subject to the same rules. But, on the question of the relationship between privacy protection for wire line phones and wireless, Congress in effect answered that question by including as part of the so-called CPNI location information, but setting a different standard in the expressed prior authorization standard for location. This basically means that Congress thinks those things should be treated differently. I think that was a question after the Tenth circuit decision, and I was happy to see that the wireless industry economy isn’t interested in challenging the location information privacy opt-in requirement, and the FCC petition seems to indicate that they can live with that and that is a good sign.
MR. ROONEY: Well, thank you very; very much we’re now at the end of the session here. I want to ask you to please fill out these blue evaluation cards and drop them off at the end, and take a moment to thank our speakers for coming today.
(Applause)
(Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded.)