GPS was created by the U.S. Department of Defense in the late 1970s. It was originally designed to allow for worldwide delivery of high-precision navigation and weapons delivery. It is now used to support commercial and civil applications.

Privacy concerns have resulted from the use of GPS. Should an individual be able to conceal one's own communications? Should an individual have the right to conceal where they are currently located?

Cell phones and vehicle tracking devices transmit a persons location.

Ankle bracelets and devices that deliver electric shocks to individuals that move into restricted regions is another application of GPS.

GPS is made up of three different systems: satellites, a radio receiver, and ground tracking and control centers.

The satellites are arranged in orbit so that any point on earth has a direct line of-sight to at least four satellites at any given time. Time signals from atomic clocks on satellites are transmitted via radio wave. Individual receivers compare these time signals with their own to calculate the distance from any given satellite. Once the distance and location of these four satellites are known, latitude, longitude, and altitude can be determined using a geometric formula called a trilateration.

Perhaps GPS would have never been released to the private sector had it not been for Korean Airlines flight 007. Civilian flight 007 strayed off course and accidentally went into Soviet airspace where it was shot down killing everyone on board. President Ronald Reagan announced publicly that had GPS technology been made available to the private sector, such a tragedy would not have been possible.

In May 2000, President Clinton ordered the military to shutoff "selective availability", the intentional scrambling of GPS signals for nonmilitary users. The result was the a massive improvement in GPS capabilities.

Another privacy concern was created by the continued micro miniaturization of GPS receivers. GPS receivers use to be the size of a suitcase. They now can be packaged into cell phones and even wristwatches.

In the mid-1990s, emergency calls increased 100 fold due to cell phone technology. The problem was that many people were unable to identify their exact location. As a result, the FCC ordered cell phone providers to put GPS receivers into all cell phones.

Ad servers such as Google used this technology to deliver ads to cell phones and mobile devices based on where a person is located. This opened up the capability of the private sector to track what stores a person visits. Knowing that you visit Toys R Us twice a month might be valuable information to Babies Unlimited who is intent on stealing some of Toys R Us's customers. In this kind of commercial marketing battle, the individual has lost some of her privacy.

A new information services sector has been created called location-based services (LBS) to exploit GPS data.

You are not doubt aware of privacy notices that are sent to you regarding how a business can share your customer data. But what if a business does not obtain data from customer transactions but instead by GPS data? Indeed the legal system is slow to respond to emerging technologies.

The profit to be made from location information is a valuable commodity to be bought and sold in the same way as telephone numbers or demographic profiles.

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