Is Your Phone Listening In?

According to an article posted on Technology Review, there is growing interest in using cell phones to monitor behavior of people and study various aspects of social life.

Researchers are increasingly using cell phones to better understand users' behavior and social interactions. The data collected from a phone's GPS chip or accelerometer, for example, can reveal trends that are relevant to modeling the spread of disease, determining personal health-care needs, improving time management, and even updating social-networks. The approach, known as reality mining, has also been suggested as a way to improve targeted advertising or make cell phones smarter: a device that knows its owner is in a meeting could automatically switch its ringer off, for example.

Now a group at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, NH, has created software that uses the microphone on a cell phone to track and interpret a user's activity. The software, called SoundSense, picks up sounds and tries to classify them into certain categories. In contrast to similar software developed previously, SoundSense can recognize completely unfamiliar sounds, and it also runs entirely on the device. SoundSense automatically classifies sounds as "voice," "music," or "ambient noise." If a sound is repeated often enough or for long enough, SoundSense gives it a high "sound rank" and asks the user to confirm that it is significant and offers the option to label the sound.

Now this may be ok for college professors who are studying some who are signing up and being paid for this, but I have some major problems with the natural course that this could run. The cell phone companies already know a huge amount about their customers, and their restrictions on using or selling the information that they have on customers could keep them from doing too much, but if there's a buck to be made somewhere, than I'm sure they'll take advantage of that.