At 07:21 AM 6/26/04 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/technology/26ALIB.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=>
The New York Times
June 26, 2004
For Liars and Loafers, Cellphones Offer an Alibi By MATT RICHTEL
Eventually the cellphones will be able to tell another phone approx where they are. Remember the 911-locator fascism? So the 'victim' would ask the 'liar' to press a button authorizing disclosure of the approx location. The marketing reason would be to help people find others geographically. But it can also be used to evidence (or not) your location. "Look mom, I'm *not* at the mall or Cheech's house, I'm at the library." Of course all these locations will be in a database which performs a kind of latitude/longitude Name Service so Mom won't have to fire up a browser and go to a mapping page. GPS/911 services + wireless + inet bridging. I wouldn't be surprised if DoCoMo wasn't working on it now..