Loopt is a the location-aware social-working tool that was demonstrated alongside the launch of the iPhone 3G at WWDC '08, and it's now available for download from the Apple apps store via iTunes. Let Loopt get a fix on your location using the iPhone's a-GPS, and it will tell you where in your area your friends are. It will even, I think, allow you to send them short notes. (I say think because I don't actually have any contacts on Loopt yet, so it's difficult to try out some of the apps more social features.)

I got a chance while at the recent Focus on Locus conference at Columbia to talk with Brian Knapp, Loopt's chief privacy officer. The main takeway from both that discussion and Brian's formal presentation is that Loopt is eager to set themselves up as brave protectors of their users' privacy, even as the law around location records remains extremely fuzzy. Brian: "When the government comes knocking -- even if they have their hats on backwards and look tough -- we're going ask for a warrant." Huzzah.

But I refer to Loopt's "users" in the paragraph about on purpose. You're not paying anything for Loopt. Your contract is with your service provider, which is likely AT&T. There's a deal implicit here. You get a neat service that lets you know your friends are knocking back Negro Modelos at Burrito Bar, but Loopt has to find a way to keep the lights on in their Mountain View offices.

Brian was asked at the conference about Facebook's Beacon, a feature that broadcast off-site behavior to a user's social network. Advertisers loved it. It made privacy advocates cry themselves to sleep. Brian conceded that Beacon raised all kinds of privacy concerns but offered a defense, saying "Facebook is free and an amazing service. In some ways, there are tradeoffs here..." In other words, nifty online tools carry a price, even if they're free. Given the wealth of information Loopt and other location-aware apps will have on us, it's worth asking what that cost is.

Another tidbit from the conference on location-aware tech I'm at today. But first, let me point you to an intriguing post my good friend Josh Levy has over on HuffPo. Josh suggests that some of us -- and you know who you are -- are making too big a deal about the iPhone's ability to change the world. As neat as the 3G is, it's not going to end world hunger, make the janjaweed stop their murderous rampage, so on and so forth.

Josh's note of caution is wise and healthy. I will suggest, though, focusing on a slightly different point. I think it's fair to say that, given the events of the past decade or so, the Internet has proven the ability to change the world in ways both large and small. And why the iPhone is as exciting as it is is because it presents the possibility of changing the Internet.

Let me try to explain what I'm thinking by using the one feature I'm most excited about when it comes to the new iPhone: GPS. Location-awareness is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest undertapped resources we have going on the tech front -- with the possibility of revolutionizing distribution, emergency services, defense, and even how we interact with our communities.

What makes the iPhone exciting on that front? My new favorite smart guy, Ted Morgan of Skyhook, just made this point here at the conference. Location-based services (LBS) have long lagged behind where everyone working in the field expected them to be by now. But with the new iPhone apps store, people can try and toss any number of new free and low-cost LBS apps, and that high-churn rate can refine location-aware tools in a way that just wasn't possible before.

I'm telling you, there are a number of very excited business types here who are pretty psyched about what the next few years are going to bring on the location front, and there all talking about the iPhone and its clones. GPS is one way that the iPhone might actually shape how we engage with the global network. Josh is right -- this shiny gadget alone won't change the world. But it does raise the possibility of shaping the future of something -- the Internet -- that has demonstrated a pretty remarkable ability to do just that.

I'm at Columbia Business School for Focus on Locus, a conference on location-aware gizmos and gadgets, and I've got a hot tip for you on this, iPhone Day. Tom Ted Morgan is CEO of Skyhook Wireless, and he says that turning the new 3G sideways, like you might do to use the new scientific calculator feature, hugely decreases the accuracy of the iPhone's GPS. So if you're using your unit to find your way around, keep it oriented straight up to the sky. So now you know.

As promised, I've been digging into the mini poo storm over the Barabási study that tracked the movement patterns of several thousand unsuspecting Europeans, and it's looking very much to me like Barabási and his team are unfortunate victims of our current cultural and legal confusion over just how we're supposed to think of the location information our personal mobile devices are constantly beaming out into the ether. A story on the controversy in the school newspaper at Northeastern, the home university for the study, makes a good point: MIT recently used the AT&T call and IP records of New Yorkers to generate maps that were considered beautiful enough to be hung in the Museum of Modern Art. No one seems to have bat an eye over that use of location data. But something about the Barabási's study rubbed people the wrong way, and he and his team are finding their work caught in the thicket of consumer uncomfortability with the idea that where we happen to be on the planet at any one moment is anything other than our own damn business.

The Barabási study was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (though it's unclear what their interest is), but Barabási et al conducted the research outside the U.S. because it would be illegal to use call records the way they did here. Researchers didn't go through the university research ethics review process because the Navy had decided that it was a physics study didn't actually involve human subjects and, it seems, because the way the experiment was run it was anonymous. Even so, plenty of people are up in arms about what the study means for privacy, and both the school and the journal have tried to defend the study.

But let's get to the question I'm really interested in. What was tracked in the Barabási study were calls and text messages, which enjoy a certain level of protection in the U.S. But in the U.S. every mobile phone is required under e-911 legislation to be capable of sending back to the mothership a fairly accurate location read, within 150 yards most of the time. And now comes the next generation iPhone, equipped with assisted-GPS that pinpoints location using a powerful combination of true GPS (which alone is accurate, I think, within something like 30 feet), cell tower triangulation, and wifi location data.

An expert I recently grilled on the topic tells me that the law on location records in the U.S. -- separate and apart from call records -- is a matter of some controversy and is still fuzzy. If a U.S. company, either carrier or location-aware app provider like Loopt or BrightKite, wanted to work with researchers on a study like this that used location data, would that be illegal here? Will keep digging...

(Photo thx Vagamundos)

There have been some important developments in my paranoia-fueled obsession over just who has access to the location information that modern cell phones are constantly sending out into the ether. Under e-911 legislation here in the U.S., all cell-phones must be capable of pin-pointing location within a certain range (I think it's 150 yards, but certainly don't quote me on that -- though if you'd really like to know I know I have the figure somewhere in my notes.) And once the new iPhone comes out on Friday, woowee -- with enhanced GPS, you're pretty much carry around a tracking beacon in your pocket. Between cell tower triangulation, wifi network info, and honest-to-goodness GPS, AT&T is pretty much going to know which comfy couch you're sitting in at your favorite coffee shop.

Which is all fine and dandy -- and really, a testament to the amazingly powerful and relatively affordable personal technologies we can all get access to today, god bless America -- expect for the fact that there is no real control over who can get access to those records and for what reason. This is one of the many legal areas where the software has yet to catch up with the hardware. And all too often, the question of location records gets conflated with call records, which are an entirely different story. With call records, I'm largely in control -- I know that if I want to go commit a crime somewhere and not get caught, all I need to do is not ring up a friend in the process. The creation of location records, though, is a a constant background process. It takes quite a tech-savvy consumer to really make an informed choice about whether it makes sense to turn off your phone's location tools altogether.

Thankfully, I'm not alone with my fears. EFF and the ACLU have filed suit against the Justice Department concerning how U.S. attorneys offices are accessing cell phone location records. The two groups want to know how often that data is requested by government officials from telecom companies without the establishment of probably cause. Let's hope the suit goes some of the distance towards clearing up the law around who can know where we are when and why.