Cameron Murphy, secretary of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties said there was a lack of understanding by many people in the community about how technology could be misused. -The potential is there," Murphy warned.
He said the group had already had several complaints about telcos releasing information about phone usage to policing agencies.
-We need protection in place to ensure people aren't tracked by police, or if they are there has to be a regime that there is evidence that it's warranted," he said.
A spokesperson from the NSW Police said it did not use that functionality in NSW. He confirmed that in order to access people's telephone accounts the police were required to go through the usual legal channels.
When contacted by ZDNet Australia, a spokesperson from the Australian Federal Police would neither confirm nor deny whether it tracked people using their mobile phones, saying that it was not appropriate to make public comment about investigative techniques.
In the US carriers have been ordered by the Federal Communications Commission to make it possible for police to locate phones calling its emergency number 911. Currently the police in the US are unable to do this. The carriers there are planning to use the same functionality to sell services like helping stranded motorists even if they don't know their location, or finding the closest restaurant.
Ross Monaghan, chief executive officer at the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) said that technology to track a mobile phone is already available on some handsets. He cites the use of these phones with GPRS to allow the courier companies to track which vehicle is closest.
Monaghan is adamant that the telcos have very strict privacy regulations in place, particularly regarding the privacy of customer records.
Additional reporting by Ben Charny, special to ZDNet.
