Think what you will of former US intelligence agent turned whistle-blower, Edward Snowden. But thanks to him we now know what many suspected for a long time – that government spy agencies around the world are using the mobile devices we take with us everywhere to snoop on our movements and monitor our private communications, not just of suspected criminals and terrorists, but of millions of law-abiding citizens, too.
It’s something that makes me decidedly uncomfortable, even though I have nothing sinister to hide.
But I also have to admit that when similar tech is placed at my disposal, empowering me to make sure my loved ones are safe and track down my electronic gadgets when they go astray, what’s creepy in Big Brother’s hands becomes nothing short of awesome in mine.
I could reel off plenty of examples, but two from the past week should be enough to make my point.
The more recent took place on Tuesday, the first day of school. My wife was away on business so I was in charge of the school run and feeling pretty chuffed that I’d managed to get both teens into the car with a full 20 minutes to go before the school bell rang.
That smugness lasted till I turned the key in the ignition and… nothing. The battery was dead and the clock was ticking.
For a few seconds I was stumped. Any relatives or friends who may have been able to help would never have got there in time. And then I remembered Uber. The ride hailing app is installed on my smartphone and it took mere seconds to fire it up and discover that an Uber cab was just five minutes away.
And that’s almost exactly how it was before two mightily relieved kids had piled into the back seat and were on their way to school.
Any parent reading this will know it’s not exactly a reassuring sight watching your precious offspring disappear from view in an unmarked car driven by a stranger.
But here’s where the ability of technology to reassure, comes in.
You see, although I’d never met the driver, Thobani, before, he wasn’t really a stranger. His name and photograph were clearly displayed on my phone’s screen, right underneath the map charting their progress school-wards. His rating from other passengers he’d ferried – a comforting 4.7 out of 5 – was also displayed on the screen. And I knew he’d passed Uber South Africa’s rigorous selection process and background check.
Still, I didn’t relax completely until the little black car on the map came to halt at the virtual school gates.
My second example is from two days earlier. It was early evening and we’d just returned from a relaxing afternoon of live music at the local botanical gardens. All the chilled vibes evaporated when my son announced his cellphone, a fairly expensive Samsung he’d won in a competition, was gone.
After attempts to call the phone proved fruitless, there ensued a few testy exchanges touching on responsibility, the foolishness of shallow-pocketed shorts and other themes parents of teens will know all too well.
The poor lad was starting to confront the very real prospect of dusting off his four-year-old BlackBerry when I remembered I had installed Android Device Manager on his phone.
This app from Google allows owners of phones and tablets running the search giant’s Android operating system to locate their device and perform various actions, including showing where it is on a map, locking it and remote wiping the contents.
Within minutes my son had logged into the app using my phone and like magic his phone’s location popped up on a map.
We briefly considered calling the police, but we could see the phone was in a pretty upmarket area and assumed someone at the concert had found it and been unable to use its contacts list to call us because my son had locked the phone with a touchscreen pattern lock.
Instead, we decided to just go to the location ourselves, my wife driving, my son monitoring my phone and I running the PC version of Android Device Manager on my laptop. Amazingly, the app is accurate to within 20m and we knew we’d found the right house when the dot representing our location on the map intersected the circle around the dot depicting my son’s phone.
I rang the bell and with confidence I didn’t feel, announced that we’d come to collect the phone they’d found and kindly been keeping safe for us. The silence that greeted this, followed by an awed, “How did you find us?” was the final confirmation we needed.
As we’d suspected, they’d picked up the phone in the car park and had been trying, unsuccessfully, to contact us through the service provider. A happy ending for all concerned.
But in retrospect it wasn’t very clever of us to go it alone. A good area isn’t a guarantee you are dealing with good people. The experts advise that in such cases you always go with the police.
I know that now, but at the time I felt like Big Brother and it felt good.
I still don’t like the idea of government spooks using ever more powerful and all-seeing tech to keep tabs on us all. But after this week, boy, do I understand why they want it.
How to get the tech
The Uber app is available for mobile devices running Android, Apple’s iOS, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. Download it free from the appropriate app store.
Android Device Manager is a free download from the Google Play store. If you have the latest version of the Chrome web browser you can also locate your phone by saying “OK Google” followed by “Find my Android”.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, use Apple’s Find my iPhone facility – visit iCloud.com from a web browser and log into your iCloud account.
The Windows Phone equivalent can be accessed at account.microsoft.com/devices. You’ll need to sign into your Microsoft account.
To find your BlackBerry phone, first install its Protect app. After that you will be able to locate your phone by visiting protect.blackberry.com.
Be aware, whichever make of phone or tablet you own, you’ll have to first enable location services before you can take advantage of its tracking capabilities. I would strongly recommend you do regular dummy runs to be sure it works and that you know what to do when your phone goes awol for real.
Got any questions or comments? E-mail alanqcooper @gmail.com. Follow