Wherever You Are, Google Will Find You

In today's issue of the Sacramento Bee, there is an article that brings up Google's hope to upgrade their mobile maps to "track people as effectively as it searches for information on the internet." It's called Latitude and supposedly it's a way for inviduals to share their exact whereabouts with friends and family via Google maps software.
Now, first and foremost, I thought of this idea as a serious breach of privacy, but according to Google in order to prevent any accusations of a violation of privacy, they will require the individual to manually turn on the software and will supposedly only keep the last reported location in the Google servers. I suppose that makes it a little better, but to me. It's still weird.

I know that we have internet sites like Facebook and Twitter where everyone knows everything based on your status update. Things like "______ is waiting to leave" make sure that everyone knows what you're doing at any given time. And that's an individual choice, one that I actually partake in as an avid Facebook user. However, I think having the option to divulge your exact location on a map has its major risks. I know it's presumptuous of me to assume that this information could fall into the wrong hands and any other number of worst-case-scenario situations and maybe that's just me being paranoid. And ok, you can pick who receives your updates, but Google is also contemplating making this software available for parents to keep tabs on children. Slowly but surely, I feel like this has the potential to turn into a serious breach of privacy.

Now, I know my parents trust me and I haven't given them any reason not to. But what about parents out there who are just paranoid for the sake of paranoia? I feel like this is will give parents a much more available resource to track their children at all times. As a teenager, isn't the one reason we want to get out of the house and learn to drive is so that we have the freedom to go wherever we choose? Now, naturally, certain teenagers deserve to have tabs kept on them, but I think the major issue for me is not what the software offers now, but what it will lead to.

I'm going to make the assumption that most of us have read 1984 or at least understand what it's about. I know that reference is thrown around a lot, but think about how applicable it is as each year passes by. George Orwell made some very scary and accurate predictions, probably unknowingly, about how society was going to end up. Who's to say how this software will be used later on and by whom and for what? For now, Google might have it under control, but I just think the potential of what it could be is what is most frightening.