Ride the Lightning

Cell Phones That Can Calculate Your Altitude – They are Here

November 25, 2014

The last vestiges of privacy are slipping away. Cell phones once struggled to determine altitude, but that is becoming a thing of the past.

As The Washington Post reported, cell phone tracking is about to go vertical as the location services industry, prodded by our government, solve the problem of "the z vector." Soon we will know not only that you are in a high-rise building, but what floor you're on.

The key is the adoption of barometric-pressure sensors, which are standard in Apple's iPhone 6 and several Android devices. More than 100 million of these devices are already in the hands of consumers, making it possible to estimate a user's altitude to within a few feet.

Clearly, there are good uses – for instance, to locate people trapped in an office tower fire. But, as always, there is the worry that cybercriminals will find a way to get and use that information – ditto for private detectives, the government, etc.

The Federal Communications Commission may adopt a proposal as soon as January which would require wireless carriers to build more precise location systems. Previous generations of FCC location rules created for 911 services eventually led to the FBI (and probably other governmental entities) gaining the enhanced ability to track cell phone users.

Time to go home and watch "Enemy of the State" again . . .

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