According to a recent report in the The Economist, the Dutch firm TomTom has recently teamed up with Vodafone in a partnership that has sinister implications. TomTom’s Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) will soon offer real-time traffic information that will allow PND users to avoid traffic jams, in the way that many car satellite navigation systems already allow. The TomTom system will abstract information from the Vodafone network to determine the median speed of traffic in given areas and if it falls below a pre-determined threshold, divert instructions will be implemented. The secret lies in the tracking of all mobiles within Vodafone’s network. The system can tell how fast the mobile ‘phone within the car is travelling by the time it takes to move from one transmission cell to the next. And if Vodafone knows, who else might be sold the information? It could become yet another fiendish means of enabling speed-over-distance surveillance, at little cost to the Exchequer. Imagine driving down the A3 at 85: no GATSOs, no Trafpol, no Talivans; you’re home and dry. Or so you think. Then you get a text message: u r nkd. Soon there will be no hiding place.
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