“There are four circumstances under which law enforcement agents can use the Sprint website and obtain GPS data: 1) under the authority of a court order; 2) to track the location of a customer who has made a 911 call; 3) in an emergency situation, such as tracking someone lost in the wilderness or trying to locate an abducted child or hostage; 4) with a customer’s consent.” (From Sprint response in Wired article)

If you fall under #2 or #3, you are probably extremely thankful Sprint did this. If you fall under #1, you get what you deserve for breaking the law! #4, well, that is just kinda weird but hey it probably is used for something.

This Big Brother stuff is generally nonsense and sensational. The original article and this post should be take into consideration the context of the usage.

Did Paul Taylor do a poor job of representing what the data was to the public? Yes, but he wasn’t talking to the public. Was he in a closed conference where audience members were invited and had an understanding of the subject matter to know what the number meant? Yes.

Lastly, will this article cause me to have a headache at work tomorrow explaining GPS on phones? Most undoubtedly yes