Tracking your friends by their laptops

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9668317-1.html?tag=head

This software that MIT just put out is a little bit like AIM - you create a buddy list, and can talk to people. But it also throws in mapping technology to tell you exactly where your friends are, based solely on the location of their laptop.

It's a cool software project, and really cutting edge, but i think it raises some concerns. Currently, only people you want to be able to see your location can, which is good. But what's to stop someone from using a similar approach - detecting which wireless nodes a person is connected to - to track someone unknowingly? If you know the layout of the wireless access points (which can, in many cases, be painstakingly discovered and mapped by a determined individual), you could easily find someones location - through either installing a program unknowingly on their machine to broadcast it, or through other means, just as tracing their IP through the routers...

All in all, it raises a lot of privacy concerns about wi-fi networks in general, especially since there's currently a big push to increase the number and breadth of them.

What are your takes on the potential privacy violations that could occur with such abilities? Do you think the wireless standard should be changed with the upcoming 802.11n release, or a future one after that in order to prevent something like this from being effective?

I'm afraid i don't really have an answer yet myself of what i would want... I think i kind of want to wait for the code to be released (they're publishing it under the GPL, so everyone can see how it works) to see how they actually did it as a way of evaluating the threat level - but i'm still not sure how i feel about the implications of tracking someone based on the location of their laptop.

 

The difference with that, however, is that the IP can be used to determine a general area, like a city or a university - this new software they came out with pinpoints you within a couple of feet...