By tracking mobile phone use, a recent study suggests that humans are creatures of habit and rarely travel more than a few miles from home (Mobile phones expose human habits; Study secretly tracks cell phone use outside US).
This would have been an interesting, benign study if it weren't for the fact that the study authors didn't obtain consent from the 100k people they tracked. The authors violated the privacy of 100k individuals. They already had their mobile numbers -- they could have requested consent, but they did not.
The authors acknowledge their own concerns regarding privacy but instead of taking their study proposal to a recognized ethics board they declined, merely because it wasn't required of a physics experiment.
Nonconsensual tracking is illegal in the USA. I imagine the authors chose their victims from a country with no such prohibition. Nevertheless, my mobile itself and my use of it is private, not public, and I definitely would not want to be tracked without my knowledge and consent regardless of its legality.
Big Brother is watching, but it's not the government, it's the scientists. :o(
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