Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.

This was the content of a text message received by cell phone carrying protestors in Kiev by the Ukranian government. Using mobile technologies, the government was able to identify all of the phones in certain areas and target them with this warning. It's a message that lets the carrier of the phone know they, or the phone owner, has been identified by private records as participating in the protests - or at least being in the vicinity.

It is possible pre-paid phones or SIM cards could provide some anonymity, but if the government has access to phone accounts, it is just as easy to get a record of the numbers called and attempt to identify the protestor - and probably do this with great accuracy.

It's a sign that governments have caught up with the power of technology and know how to wield it. It's an interesting and terrifying reality. Think back 25 years. If a government agent wanted to follow someone, they had to shadow that individual or use radio technologies for signal tracking. It might require shifts of agents watching a suspect and then tracking that person over hours or days or months.

After the Global Positioning System was made available to civilians in 1998, it became possible to identify your own location and only a matter of time until the devices were capable of being used to track others. A year later, in 1999, Benefon began selling the first GPS phone, capable of dentify your location.

In 2004, Qualcomm combined GPS and cellular tower signal for devices to more accurately identify their location. In America, Enhanced 911 service was required by 2006 in the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act of 1999. Once the system went live on every capable phone and vehicle (OnStar as an example), the system wasn't just able to track you, it was capable of maintaining a database of our movements.

The good news is, individuals are concerned about protecting this data. In 2011, the techworld focused on the ability to recreate a map from unencrypted GPS data stored in each iPhone. This issue penetrated mainstream media enough that it showed some concern, or at least interest, in the misuse of technology. Privacy watch groups such as the ACLU and individuals such as Senator Al Franken demanded answers and forced Apple to change this practice to protect their users.

In 2014, there are court cases where the warrantless access of phone data has been challenged in the courts. According to Stanford law professor Jeffrey L. Fisher, in this Washington Post report, six courts have allowed warrantless searches and three have ruled this data is protected without a warrant. This issue now goes to the supreme court, who will decide whether we citizens should expect privacy for the data we carry on our person in a digital device. They may find our phone data, at least what is on the phone if not what is on cellular provider servers, does not meet requirements traditionally allowing for warrantless searches such as protecting someone or preventing the destruction of evidence.

I wonder if the recent ruling allowing border agents to seize and inspect data based on reasonable suspicion isn't a precursor to how they will rule for individuals in the country. If you're not familiar with the case, United States v. Cotterman, a US citizen returning from Mexico was identified as a convicted sex offender. The border agents seized laptops and cameras, sending them to be inspected. The devices included images identified as child pornography. Cotterman attempted to suppress the evidence, but the supreme court upheld there was reasonable suspicion for border agents to search his belongings - including his data. It is, as so often happens today, an win for protecting the innocent while also a loss of individual privacy from governmental access.

The future of privacy

Though the text message in Kiev was meant to scare off protestors, attempting to end months of a volatile clash between citizens and their government, at least they received a warning. It's now possible for the government to pull time stamped location data of our entire lives as long as we carry any cell phone on our person or have a car with location enabled services. Some privacy groups believe the police could reconstruct our travels based on automotive black-box recorders that records acceleration, distance, and braking.

Someone once told me, "Every technological step forward equals a loss of privacy." Looking over the past decade, I know this to be true. I have a decade of emails and chats in server based email. I have hundreds of purchases recorded in online retailer databases. My credit card data alone could reconstruct a good look at my lifestyle patterns. The details are there, all it takes is a government agency with the clout to force a handover of the data...or a hacker capable enough to steal these details.

In America, we have the Fourth Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The spirit of the law, from all the articles I've read, is about protecting American citizens from being forced to hand over incriminating evidence without a reason. This could keep someone from being arrested for one thing and having their house torn apart until evidence is found of another wrongdoing. Or used as a form of harassment.

As we look into the future, it's clear every government will attempt to simplify their efforts to identify and prosecute criminals. In truth, if a person has been hired in a role responsible for protecting the citizenry or nation at large, we expect them to fulfill that duty to the extent of their ability. As such, there will remain constant attacks on our privacy. In countries such as Saudi Arabia and China, where there is no ability to vote for candidates who wish to protect citizen data, technology has become a noose around each neck. But in "free" countries, our only true protection is to quit technology or push our representatives to support the protection of our personal data from questionable use by corporations or the government itself.

If we don't find a way to provide protections for individual data, there will reach a point where technological progress slows - first from adoption and later from development. The growing ability to track the details of our lives grow ever more granular. Looking at my habits on common media, I give away these details:

Online retailers - Shopping habits for my entire family from tools to devices to books to my daughter's gifts. Pull together a few more and you can get a pretty good impression of what we prefer as a family.

Social media - My personality including sense of humor, political and religious beliefs, emotional responses to stimuli, and people I count as friends.

Credit cards - Almost every shopping experience in the last ten years.

Phone - Travel details in the last three and a half years.

Email - Website membership, thoughts I didn't share on Facebook, notes to myself, jobs I have applied for, and ideas and plans for things I've never managed to do.

Browser history - Topics of interest, how I waste my time, favorite sports, recipes which represent my eating habits.

It's scary, but at the same time these conveniences have added to my life by allowing me to communicate, to access information about the world, to buy products I never would have known of without a massive online store, and the ability to go places or buy things without carrying wads of cash on my person. There are great benefits to these products and services, but as long as the law allows the resulting data to be used in ways we will never know of, they are also a risk to our freedoms.