Gowalla Is My Alibi

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I woke this morning thinking of the rediculous demands of the Spanish authorities in asking me to check into my local police station so they can record my whereabouts.

I'm hardly at the address I gave.

All they need do is follow me on Gowalla and they'll know where I am with pinpoint accuracy, in realtime.

That said, I did check into the local police station. And the not so local one. In person and on Gowalla.

I'm @Documentally on Twitter
Posted June 11, 2010
Jun 12, 2010
minxlj said...
Does it concern you, the possibility in future (or already!) that Gowalla and this sort of location-aware service will be used to track us in that manner, by police/government etc? I'd not really thought much about it, to be honest, until you posted this. Hmm.
Jun 12, 2010
Documentally said...
I'm very aware yes. That's why it's my alibi. We need to be mindful of all we post.
Jun 12, 2010
Nik Butler said...
Christian , you know how I have talked about this before. What people DONT get is that we are suddenly in control of the data about us in a way not previously available.

Privacy advocacy WORKS in the favour of authority since it removes your ability to clearly identify or deliver upon an alibi.

Lets face it if you publishing your location then how can a Credit Card company authorise a payment for you in America when your clearly in spain. What if your children grow up sharing their details first with their parents and then with their friends and so forth. We change the nature of the Village from the small physical community ( which we have been loosing ) to a connected, automated, digital village which is controlled and automated by each other and not managed by centralised and uninvested govts.

but yeah I should probably blog about this shouldnt I!

Jun 12, 2010
minxlj said...
Yes, very true - my personal check is not to post anything I wouldn't like to tell anyone face to face or couldn't back up with truth. And not to rely on simply deleting anything as we all know that's not final...

Also the alibi thing is an excellent point to bear in mind - perhaps in the future that may become a useful tool rather than a Big Brother type one.

Anyway I hope the rest of your holiday goes swimmingly without any further interruptions or police station checkins - not quite the Gowalla activity list you were thinking of, eh? ;)