privacy and location services

In a brilliant interview given to the San Francisco Chronicle, Paul Saffo from the Institute for The Future spells it out while talking about privacy and location services:

"Most people don't realize that our Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Communications Commission have all mandated that cell phones need to have position recording built in. They want to be able to pinpoint your location with a global positioning chip in your phone or some other way of identifying your location. This costs the telephone companies money, so the bargain they made with the Feds is that we'll implement it, but then we get the right to use this for commercial purposes. You will get location-based marketing. People don't realize but their cell phone will become their personal billboard."

Welcome to the future.