How GPS tracking threatens our privacy



Background Information:

ABI research says, by the year of 2015, there will be more than 370 million GPS’s in use. This includes both stand – alone and cell phones. Although global positional systems are so useful, they have some downside to them. An article written by Catherine Crump on CNN opinion, How GPS tracking threatens our privacy deals with GPS and privacy issues. Crump is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, Privacy and Technology Project. Crump’s argument is GPS threatens our privacy as citizens of the United States of America.

Link to the article: http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/07/opinion/crump-gps/index.html;

Premise/Conclusion:

Premise #1
- “As a result, the principle at stake in this case may well shape our privacy rights in the years and decades to come.”

Premise #2
- “This kind of tracking is extremely invasive, because if the government knows where you are, it knows who you are. As the Jones appellate court explained in its ruling that the government violated the Fourth Amendment.”

Premise #3
- “The government could make note of whenever people being tracked crossed path or spent time together, showing who our friends, associates and lovers are”

Premise # 4
- And while it may not be realistic to think that the government will install a GPS device on every car, it's not at all implausible to think that the government will ask cell phone providers to turn over location-tracking information en masse -- and it may well be the case that the government is doing so already

Conclusion of the Argument:

- “The genius of the Constitution is that its limits on the government can still be applied in a modern world that the framers could scarcely have imagined. Anyone who values privacy should hope that the Court ensures the government cannot use technological advances to undermine the liberties this country was founded on.”

Analysis: In this argument, the author makes some good points about our privacy being threatened by GPS, but she doesn’t have any evidence to support the claims that she is making in the article. Even though GPS’s are in cell phones that author makes claims that the government is tracking people and the places that they been. Crump jumps to a conclusion without providing any evidence to support her claim.

The two types of fallacies that are in the article are hasty generalization fallacy and slippery slope fallacy.

“Attaching a GPS to a car isn't the only way the government can track people's movements. In fact, everyone with a cell phone is already carrying a device that the government can use to track his or her location. As a result, the principle at stake in this case may well shape our privacy rights in the years and decades to come.”
This seems to be a hasty generalization. A hasty generalization fallacy is informal fallacy when a general conclusion is drawn from a typical specific. The author has no evidence to support her claim, unless she can predict the future in which I highly doubt. I think there are some more studies and research that needs to be done before Crump can make this claim.

“And while it may not be realistic to think that the government will install a GPS device on every car, it's not at all implausible to think that the government will ask cell phone providers to turn over location-tracking information en masse -- and it may well be the case that the government is doing so already”

A slippery slope fallacy is an informal fallacy that occurs when the conclusion of an argument rest on alleged chain of reaction, and there is not sufficient reason to think of a chain of reaction. The reason why this is a slippery slope is because the author starts off writing about how GPS is able to show a person’s location and then makes the leap that the government is tracking every move they make. The author doesn’t have any evidence that the government is tracking anybody.