Richmond pre-school in Richmond, California will begin tracking pre-schoolers with GPS tags installed on basketball jerseys.[1] The jerseys will be worn while the kids are in school and will track the kid’s whereabouts during the day.   Sung Kim of the county’s employment and human services department suggested that eventually 3,000 man hours of teacher’s labor could be saved from having to track the kids and check them in and out.  The system cost $50,000 and was paid for with Federal Grant money.  3,000 hours of labor for tracking pre-schoolers?

In another case outside Chicago, Palos Heights School District 128 is using GPS technology to track not only buses but also is beginning to install GPS trackers on students’ backpacks. [2] Allegedly some parents feel safer knowing the school has GPS tracking on each kid’s backpack. The district spent $16,000 for the technology.  If a child is missing or unaccounted for, the school can look up the location of the bus, and look up the student’s ID and determine the location of each.

Is this legal?  Some have suggested that students do not have a reasonable right to location privacy while they are in school “custody.”  Perhaps they don’t.  But do teachers or school administrators have a right to location privacy while at school?  Why not equip teachers with GPS devices along with the kids?   Whenever the two are separated by a pre-defined distance, then an alarm can be sent showing that the kids are not under human supervision.  And if schools are equipping students with GPS devices, then how about doing it in other workplaces?  You could track the location of each person in the building and determine how long they spent in the break room, lunchroom, smoking area, or other.

Using GPS devices to track convicted sex-offenders and other felons makes sense.  Tracking product shipments and assets (like buses) makes sense.  But GPS tracking of students is a slippery slope.

But how far will this go?  Do two make a trend?

[2] http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/GPS-palos-heights-school-district-128-zpass.html

Many people today ride into Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, and other social network sites with their masks on, expecting privacy and anonymity. But how hard is it to find them?

I was looking for an old colleague of mine who is not on any social sites so I searched Linkedin for his friends in the Washington DC area. I figured they could tell me how to find him.  While looking at the company listings in the area, I came across a guy who, figuratively speaking, had his mask on.  His name was listed as “Private” because he had clicked on some privacy setting in Linkedin.   Wearing a privacy mask in a public room tends to draw more attention to oneself so out of curiosity, I wanted to know who he was.  (Out of respect for Jon’s privacy I won’t disclose him.)  But it took me about 10 seconds. I will show you how easy it is.

But first, back to the Lone Ranger. We can assume the Lone Ranger lived in the area because he was always foiling bad guys within the same desert geography. One can only travel so far and so fast on horse.  So from a given population within a reasonably limited radius, we are looking for someone with the following characteristics:

1. Unique facial features-Square jaw, dark eye color, short black hair

2. Race (White)

3. Body type-Estimated height (5’10-6′), weight (185-200 lbs), and build (muscular)

4. Social circle-Hangs around with an Indian named Tonto.  If you find and “friend” Tonto, you find LR.

5. Pets-Rides a white stallion. It’s the biggest horse in the area and it leaves BIG tracks for ease of following.  It’s also the only white horse living in the area. Goes by the name Silver. Find white stallion, find LR.

So who was the masked man? If they had Internet connectivity at the ranch back then, they could run this query in the Google search box:

location: los angeles county “lone ranger” “tonto” “white stallion”

Go ahead and copy and paste that line as is into Google.  You should find his name pretty quickly.  He passed away in December 1999 at the age of 85.

To find a Linkedin private profile, you follow the same logic.  Search the area with 3 or more characteristics.

So in practice you would search among the web population of Linkedin profiles and pick for example: Job Title, Company, Location, and Educational Institution as identifiers.  The odds are very low that two people have the same set of identical backgrounds but you might have to narrow your search by adding more identifiers if you get multiple profiles. Searching within Linkedin will likely lead you to privacy blocks.  But search from outside in, via Google, and you’ll see things from a new angle.

Here’s the sample query I ran and confirmed with 100% certainty the identity of the Linkedin masked man:

Site:Linkedin.com “Company name” “Washington DC” “ABC University”

The Site command tells you where on the web to conduct your search. In this case, the Linkedin.com domain.  Put quotes around your identifiers to make your query more specific and add a few more if you need to, like previous employer.

There are over 1,000 private profiles in Linkedin.  If you have a real need or desire to remain private on a social network site then maybe you need to rethink your strategy.