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This makes me want to get a tinfoil hat. Now do I give up one of my most vital tools because someone knows where I am at almost all of the time? Do I trust the government to make sure this data is not misused? Or do just go all in and make sure the google, fb, twitter etc have it too and continue to whistle through the graveyard? There has to be a realistic middle ground to protect privacy but with the global data cloud surrounding us I have no idea what that would be.

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It's a tough question and I think there is a drought of answers, even from those who think about the subject quite a bit. I'm not sure it's the best idea to go all in, but that's certainly an approach. I suspect one of the mid term answers (in general) may involve creating a ton of contradictory noise on your behalf, but I'm not even sure if that could be applied to mobile location. Privacy is clearly not winning the match so far.

While it's not quite on topic, this presentation by moxie marlinspike last year at defcon europe has some interesting thoughts on how we voluntarily surrender our privacy. It's definitely worth a watch if you're thinking about the subject.

http://vimeo.com/11303353

You can get a pay-go phone, sometimes with cheaper unlimited rates than AT&T and Verizon, although they won't subsidize the purchase of a nice smart phone. (And I'm not too happy with the data transfer speed on Boost.)

This obviously wouldn't prevent against a targeted attack. If the phone company or the government wanted to track YOU specifically, they could probably figure out your phone number by looking at the calls your family and friends have made and finding the union, and retrieve the info from there.

But if someone wants blanket info, i.e. a list off all the people at a G-20 protest or whatever, a computer won't be able to instantly figure out who you are. Someone would have to start investing real man-hours to accomplish this. This hopefully gets too cost-prohibitive for large scale tracking of the general population.

I think there is a move afoot to have to sign and show ID to get a pay-go phone so that they can tie the number back to an individual.

I got a prepaid SIM at t-mobile recently and they asked for id. You can buy unused sims and such although.

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