To Protect and Intrude

By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post Staff Writer

SAN DIEGO -- John Phillips peered down at the computer screen.
Something didn't look quite right. It was 9:11 a.m. on the West Coast,
or just past noon in the East, and all the bus drivers were supposed
to be on break. The map of the District of Columbia showed hundreds of
red blips representing vehicles that had been parked for more than an
hour. But then there was one black dot, a lone bus, moving rapidly in
the northwestern quadrant of the city.

Could the D.C. Public Schools bus have been stolen -- or worse --
hijacked with children still on board?

Phillips quickly clicked on the icon representing the vehicle and
relaxed at what he saw. The bus was in front of the Kennedy Center. 
It was on a field trip.

From inside a dimly lit room behind two-foot-thick concrete walls, a
steel door and jail gate, Phillips and eight other staffers in this 
24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week command center are like all-seeing 
gods, watching over thousands of people across the continent.

Phillips works for Satellite Security Systems Inc., or S3, one of a
growing number of private companies providing satellite tracking
services to anyone willing to pay. Once a fabulously expensive tool
for the military, the technology is becoming part of everyday life,
spawning dozens of new uses.

S3's clients include school districts such as the District and Fairfax
County, state and federal government agencies, police departments and
companies. But there are plenty of individual customers, too -- people
interested in keeping tabs on new teenage drivers, Alzheimer's
patients, philandering spouses.

The position of vehicles or people is determined by gear they carry
that includes Global Positioning System, or GPS, technology, which
uses a network of satellites orbiting the Earth to pinpoint the
location of things on the ground. The information is then beamed to
S3's computers.

On a recent weekday, the screens were flashing through maps almost too
quickly for the human eye to process. A computer technician was making
his way along Sully Avenue in Centreville. Milk delivery trucks were
swarming all over Houston, making their morning drop-offs. Tank cars
of oil were traversing the Midwest.

S3 tracks so many vehicles that federal homeland security officials
rely on it to make sure none venture near sensitive areas. One map
showed that all was quiet near an anonymous red-marked mass outside
Denver.

(snip)

S3 is only one company making use of GPS. In the past year or so,
prompted in part by a federal mandate requiring most cell phones to be
GPS-enabled by the end of 2005 for enhanced 911 service, the price of
the technology and other location-based gadgets dropped low enough to
make them affordable for mass consumption.

Nextel Communications Inc., for example, offers its subscribers phone-
tracking ability for as little as a $15 activation fee, and Sprint
Corp. is expected to roll out a similar offering this year. A company
called Wherify Wireless Inc. plans to sell an inexpensive GPS tracker
at Wal-Mart stores starting this spring. Companies such as United
Parcel Service Inc. and SuperShuttle International Inc. are requiring
workers to keep a GPS system on them throughout the day. Police in
several major cities are tagging cars of suspects in criminal
investigations with GPS units.

(snip)

So many people and vehicles are now being tracked by GPS that the
White House announced in December that President Bush had ordered
plans for shutting down the GPS satellites in the event of a national
crisis to prevent terrorists and other enemies of the country from
using them.

The D.C. public school system is in the midst of implementing one of
the largest tracking systems, a five-year, $6 million endeavor. Over
the past few months, some 650 buses have been equipped with GPS
locators. By this fall, the 4,000 special-needs children who ride
those buses will be issued high-tech ID cards that will log when they
get on and off the bus. Parents will be given secret codes that will
enable them to use the Internet to track their children.

Parents of D.C. public school students have complained for years about
problems with buses that were running late or just didn't show up,
prompting a federal court to appoint an independent transportation
administrator. Some parents expressed mixed feelings about the new
program.

"I like that the system lets you watch them, because you never know
what's going on on the bus, and I want to be sure my kids are safe,"
said Deneen Pryor, mother of three children, ages 5, 7 and 10, who
ride D.C. Public School buses. But, she added, "I worry about
criminals getting the information. I don't want anybody watching 
them that's not supposed to be watching them."

(snip / snip)

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Cheers, Steve...

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