Dear Mr Thomas,

MOBILE TELEPHONE TRACKING

As a result of increasing concern about mobile telephone tracking, especially in the way it can be used by paedophiles and others seeking to harm or abuse children and vulnerable people, at the end of last year I put an oral question to the EU Commissioner for the Information Society, Mrs Vivian Reding. Specifically I asked whether she agreed that, under the terms of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC, it was the case that when a person agrees to become the subject of a passive location service he or she should be informed on every single occasion that the locator wishes to locate him or her, and in each instance the locatee would have to give permission to be tracked.

Unfortunately Mrs. Reding did not allay the concerns on this important issue of tracking. Her reply stated that the European Commission is not of the view that the Directive requires the user or subscriber to be informed or to consent to the location prior to every single attempt by the locator to locate him or her.

Mrs Reding also suggested that, since the interpretation of the Directive is related to national law, I refer the issue to you. It would seem to me that the very least we can do to protect children and vulnerable people from abuse as a result of their being tracked via their mobile telephone is to ensure that permission is required every time tracking is to take place. It is not hard to imagine any number of circumstances where one might forget that one’s phone, or one’s child’s phone, is on a tracking service, some of these circumstances may be very stressful. It may very well be the case that one would not wish one’s location, or one’s child’s location, to be disclosed to anyone and yet, without some sort of prior alert, that information will be transmitted and may well lead to the individual being placed in great danger.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Mary Honeyball MEP