The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Abstract

There are 24 satellites owned by the United States government orbiting the Earth that are able to calculate location, navigation, and time called the Global Positioning System. This now highly evolved system gives anyone the ability to always access position information anywhere in the world. With this lies ethical issues when people can have their location sent to a secondary party. Although, not all bad things are coming from GPS tracking, there has not been enough research that looks into the ethical concerns behind it. This paper explores the wide-variety of ethical concerns of real-time tracking of people including tracking of mentally ill individuals, parolees and law enforcement; along with tracking of children, employees and terrorist tracking. The problems and results found relating to GPS tracking include invasion of privacy and property, accuracy, and the ability to edit the tracked data.

Introduction

RQ1: What makes GPS tracking unethical?

H1: GPS accessibility is being taken advantage of and is not completely accurate.

RQ2: What are the benefits of GPS tracking?

H2: Having accessibility to GPS tracking could potentially save lives.

On June 26, 1993, the U.S. Air Force launched the 24th Navstar satellite into orbit, thus implementing a network known as GPS. GPS, or Global Positioning System, is a “U.S. – owned utility that provides users with positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services” (gps.gov, 2020). There are 24 operating satellites circling the Earth on 6 different orbital paths that transmit signals to provide geolocation and time information to any GPS receiver on or near Earth. It does this every 12 hours by timing calculations and triangulation.

Background

Although the last Navstar wasn’t fully operational until 1993, the concept and testing began in the 1960s. The GPS was intended to be used for the military upon its inception. It was established to help troops organize and find their way back to base. It could also locate enemy targets and positions. In 1983, GPS was first made available for civilians. For national security reasons, it wasn’t nearly as accurate or reliable, but over the years, GPS has come a long way. It is now a central piece of life for people around the world.

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