By Michael Napolitano

A recent study by Northeastern researchers secretly tracked the movements of thousands of anonymous cell phone users outside of the United States, which some say has called into question the privacy of billions of people worldwide.

The study, which recorded data signals near cell phone towers whenever someone made or received calls or text messages, lasted six months and tracked 100,000 people. Every time someone made or received a call or text, researchers knew which cell phone tower relayed the signal to the phone. They would therefore know an approximate location of the user of the phone from the signal area of that cell phone tower. Researchers said this type of information could be helpful for public services based on human mobility, from urban planning to epidemic prevention.

Though the study has potential benefits, some said it doesn’t respect people. Others, however, think it’s fine

“If they just recorded the usage, it’s not really recording their personal lives, so it’s not really an invasion,” said middler biology major Adriana Rodriguez.

Technically, the methods used to monitor phones are illegal in the United States, so the scientists said the study took place in an unspecified European country.

“With respect to research ethics, conducting research elsewhere that would be illegal in the United States always raises concerns,” said Ronald Sandler, an assistant professor of philosophy and religion. “Why should other people not have the same protections and rights of informed consent that we have in the United States?”

Albert-Lazlo Barabasi, a co-author of the study and director of Northeastern’s Center for Complex Network Research, said the country choice was not based solely on national laws.

“Our choice was determined simply by data availability, not by country considerations,” he said.

According to a Northeastern press release, the school consulted an ethics board to get an unbiased opinion of whether the study should be done with professionals with expertise on the subject before the data was gathered. The Institutional Review Board at the US Office of Naval Research approved the proposal last June, because it did not have human subjects, they said.

“This seems an odd determination,” Sandler said. “Suppose that rather than using cell phone towers, someone just followed a person around without their consent … This seems a pretty clear violation of privacy and informed consent.

“The primary difference between this case and the research conducted is that the research was mediated by technology – the cell phones, towers and so on. But why should the fact that the data was collected through this technological medium make an ethical difference?”

He added that not enough details about the study were presented to definitively say whether it was a violation of privacy, although it raises concerns.

According to the report published in the June 5 edition of the scientific journal Nature, 100,000 phones were randomly chosen from an initial sample of more than six million in an unspecified industrialized European country. In a separate set that was part of the study, the locations of 206 phones were captured every two hours for one week.

Results showed that nearly three-quarters of those studied typically stayed within a 20-mile circle, following predictable patterns of movements based on time. The point is to see how far most people travel and how many follow a regular schedule and pattern of movement. The results indicated that most people do not travel very far from home except for a few occasions, and go to the same few places at the same time most days.

According to a June 4 article published by the Associated Press, the researchers did not know which phone numbers they were using, as they were disguised as 26-digit-and-letter codes.

“In the wrong hands, the data could be misused,” said study co-author and physics researcher Cesar Hidalgo in the article. “But in scientists’ hands you’re trying to look at broad patterns. …. We’re not trying to do evil things. We’re trying to make the world a little better.”

Barabasi said Northeastern is “by no means the first” to use phone data in this way. According to a June 10 Wall Street Journal article, researchers at Massachusetts Institution of Technology have used anonymous data to monitor crowd movements in places like Rome and Milan. Most recently the group has captured the social network patterns of New York City using data supplied by AT’T. The resulting maps, called the New York Talk Exchange, were exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art.

– News staff writer Anne Baker contributed to this report.