Does the flood of information ever end?  Do we have to know everything about everyone—in real time?  While location-tracking software is not new (well, not too new, anyway), Google’s expected move into this market only further reinforces Scott McNealy’s eerily prophetic saying, “You have zero privacy anyway.  Get over it.”  But now when you “get over it,” all of your friends will be able to see exactly where you were and when.

Google just launched its Latitude software that lets mobile phone users share their mapped location with their network of contacts—if they so choose.  This is nothing new, per se, given the existence of other companies such as Loopt, BrightKite, and Dopplr (for example), as well as most people’s familiarity with GPS, but Google’s entry into the marketplace provides further evidence that the technology is becoming even more widespread.  Maybe too much so.  But when the 800 pound gorilla talks, everyone listens.

According to the article, Google “hopes it will help people find each other while out and about and keep track of loved ones.”  Those are helpful and noble intentions.  What parents wouldn’t want to know where their teenagers are?  Or be able to direct a lost friend to your precise location?  But hope is a fickle thing.  And what Google hopes for and how Latitude will actually be used are two entirely different things.  We all know what the road to hell is paved with.  Lawyers make their living off of it (more on that in a moment).

Google requires that people expressly sign-up for the service and gives them the opportunity to tailor their preferences as to who they can share their location with, as well as the type of information shared.  While that gives the user some degree of control, it’s probably only a matter of time before a bored 16 year-old in hacks into the system and tracks people. 

Even if this doesn’t occur anytime soon, a disgruntled ex-husband may be able to track his ex-wife who forgot to take him out of her “network.”  While entire companies have sprung-up offering this type of GPS-based (and typically illegal) service, now a person can do so without any special equipment whatsoever.  Just a little bit of software and a forgetful spouse.  It goes without saying that stalking is a very real problem in this digital age and tools that used to be available only to law enforcement are becoming increasingly more common.

The fact that such software is even available is part of the larger privacy debate that will be with us for quite some time.  There are no easy answers in a society that never seems to have enough information about others.  Yet from a litigation perspective, few people may realize that all of this location data is stored by a provider for varying degrees of time and subject to subpoena and disclosure in the proper circumstances. 

Thus, in criminal or civil cases where a person’s time and location is an issue, it provides yet one more tool for lawyers to pursue when representing their clients.  Just ask those divorce attorneys in Massachusetts and elsewhere about getting all of that “E-Z Pass” toll information to discover cheating spouses.  Modern convenience has its costs.

So the age old Perry Mason question, “Where were you on February 4, 2009?” now becomes, “Why were you on the corner of 53rd and 7th Avenue at 3:12 p.m. on February 4, 2009?”  And while it may—may—help lawyers such as myself get to the truth faster in a courtroom, the human part of me (and yes, that still exists) finds it it to be unsettling.  So bad grammar aside, the question, ”Where you at?” now becomes, “Why you there?”  Ah technology . . . .