Ethical Issues in Location Tracking via GPS

Ethical Issues in Location Tracking via GPS

Geographical Positioning System (GPS) epitomizes the advances in technology that the world has achieved over the past years. GPS is a series of satellites that orbit in the space, collecting and providing real-time information regarding a place where a GPS receiver is located. According to McNamee (2005), GPS has significant potential and benefits as far as retrieval of information is concerned. However, as the technology of tracking continues to advance, it poses a few ethical concerns related to accuracy, privacy, accessibility, and property.

One major ethical issue that arises with the widespread use of GPS is information accuracy. Even the most robust technologies have shortcomings, which means that they are capable of providing wrongful information at one point in time. GPS relies on a collection of many stations, and the failure of one station can impact the overall results, as Mason (1986) confirms. As far as the issue of accuracy is concerned, the ethical questions coming up is regarding the number of refers that are not identified accurately, creating a likelihood for the transference of specific information into the wrong context or person. This ethical issue is further strengthened by the fact that misrepresentation or erroneous information creates damage that is not reversible.

The second, and perhaps the most pertinent, ethical concern created by GPS is privacy. According to McNamee (2005), GPS tracking devices disregard the privacy individual’s privacy, and thus, they are likely to be devastating in the long-run if they become mandatory in society. The functionality of GPS devices is indicative of a technology that infringes on the legal and ethical rights of a person to privacy. At the same time, it provides information about one’s location without first seeking consent (Apte et al., 2019). As such, subjects are prone to feeling insecure, for example, when drivers are bothered by the fact that their information us being transferred to third parties. The gathered information could be sold to malicious individuals or used by enforcement officers to track a person.

Third, the storage of gathered information raises the ethical concern of accessibility by hackers. After collecting information, GPS stores the data in computer systems, which are prone to data breach regardless of the kind of security systems that have been implemented. Ability to access the information means that it can be available to criminals, who can then use it to exploit innocent individuals. The very technology that characterizes the information age, therefore, can be exploited to derails the very efforts of the government and law enforcement agencies to protect citizens.

Finally, GPS has led to ethical questions regarding data ownership. Intellectual property rights are surrounded by various ethical concerns on the attributes of the information and means of transmission. Technology might be challenging to produce, but once functional, the information becomes easy to share. Protecting information is difficult because it lacks the quality of being tangible, thus difficult to keep to self (Khalifa, Chebil, Abdalla, & Hameed, 2011). The government created GPS satellites for military purposes. However, these same assets are now being used to track civilians and other third parties, leading to critical questions of data ownership and whether the data belong to the owner of the GPS unit, the third party that is collecting the information, or the government as the creator of the satellite. This loophole, therefore, opens room for the administration to track individuals without seeking consent, warrant, or reason.

Clearly, GPS has propagated significant milestones in the information sphere but not without ethical concerns. The technology has led to ethical questions of privacy, accessibility, ownership, and accuracy. As such, more efforts need to be dedicated to ensuring that GPS is used for the right reasons and not at the expense of citizens.

References

Apte, A., Ingole, V., Lele, P., Marsh, A., Bhattacharjee, T., Hirve, S., … Juvekar, S. (2019). Ethical considerations in the use of GPS-based movement tracking in health research – lessons from a care-seeking study in rural west India. Journal of Global Health, 9(1). doi: 10.7189/jogh.09.010323.

Khalifa, O. O., Chebil, J., Abdalla, A.-H., & Hameed, S. (2011). Ethical issues in monitoring and based tracking systems. IIUM Engineering Journal, 12(5), 123–129. doi: 10.31436/iiumej.v12i5.187.

Mason, R. O. (1986). Four ethical issues of the information age. Retrieved from http://www.gdrc.org/info-design/4-ethics.html.

McNamee, A. (2005). Ethical Issues arising from the Real Time Tracking and Monitoring of People Using GPS-based Location Services (Thesis, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia).