If I were inclined toward conspiracy theories and overblown “Big Brother is watching you” stuff, I would be afraid to 1) ever use my little old cell phone, 2) ever own a new car, or, 3) ever buy a hand-held GPS device.
Because if you are of the school of “better watch out” behavior — someone somewhere may be tracking your whereabouts using all that new technology.
A few years ago, when they were still new and not all that advanced, my son bought one of the early models of those Garmin GPS hand-held devices. He took it on hiking and climbing trips to Colorado. He wasn’t all that impressed because it was often inaccurate. But he had fun with it.
Earlier today, I read a small news article about a guy who had his “smart phone” cell phone stolen. He used the built-in GPS functions to track the guys who had it and lead the police to the suspects for an arrest, and he got his phone back.
Remember the days when a mystery novel used such naive plot devices as phone calls from the bad guys? Remember how those despicable villains always knew they should hang up the phone in less than X number of seconds or minutes because it would take that long for the police to track them? And the tense “I’ve got them on the line and we’re frantically tracing it right now” cop sequence — always ending with the bad guys hanging up just BEFORE police discovered the location of the phone they were using?
Well forget that stuff. I would be embarrassed, if I were a villain, to try that sort of thing today. Between caller ID and built-in GPS in most cell phones — and the almost total absence of pay phones in most cities anyhow — the bad guys choices are really limited. Which is probably a good thing.