Is Big Brother tracking your every move?

Zeit online (in English) explains how:

'Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet.

By pushing the play button, you will set off on a trip through Malte Spitz's life. The speed controller allows you to adjust how fast you travel, the pause button will let you stop at interesting points. In addition, a calendar at the bottom shows when he was in a particular location and can be used to jump to a specific time period. Each column corresponds to one day.'

Fascinating stuff and it does make you wonder about the position in the UK where all network operators store their customers' historical locations for a year. The police aren't allowed to ask for the kind of data Malte Spitz obtained in Germany, they are supposedly restricted to asking specific questions such as where a phone was at a specific time. However the data is available for interrogation should the law be changed... Please note therefore that it would take only a minor change in the law and a reasonable increase in processing power for all of our telephone's movements to be tracked in real time 24/7.