Evidence from mobile devices: various issues

I've just been to a seminar discussing issues related to"Position and time technology and the law" http://www.intellectuk.org/component/option,com_events/task,view_detail/agid,1204/year. The presentations will be soon on line. A number of issues have been tackled, issues that for different reasons affect me as individual, as researcher and as member of a number of wider collectives: citizen, worker, friend.
1st issue - Personal data, privacy, awareness, control, security. Dave Evans from the Information Commissioner's Office has drawn a picture of current society where we as individuals have very little understanding on how much data we release on the public sphere and what that data is being used for. We are not very good about protecting our personal details - for a number of reasons - and he believes the key issues are related to consumer awareness (needs to be increased), data minimisation, security (at a number of levels from device to organisation) and purpose limitation ("if I signed for this, why you use it for ...").
I would add to this list that of control, why? because awareness of a situation (potentially dangerous) opens the door for action, but the possibility of action is only fulfilled if there is a real opportunity for taking control of it.
He concluded saying a couple of very interesting things: that people need to learn about protecting their personal details and that attitudes harden if collection of personal data is unavoidable (i.e. government driven). Now, we live in an information society where convergence of a number of technologies implies use, and many times that means unprotected use, of personal data around multiple devices: mobile phones, laptops, smartcards (oyster in London, smart swipe cards). I think the moral of the story is that individuals need to be more aware of this, but industry needs to be more transparent i nteir privacy policies (less jargon more real language) and about use of data by third parties.
2nd issue: Mobile phones, those scary information broadcasters devices. Mike Hawkwes, for mthe Mobile Data Association, has shown how easy (reallllllyyy easy) is to forget that we are continously broadcastingto the world our position, our thoughts, our habits, and how easy is to get to that information. The examples he's used are good, are real, and people are making use for them for the good - finding a good pub, and ofr the bad - "sexting" by minors, bullying (the bully lives in my pocket), remote abuse and abuse broadcasting, stalking and paparazzi activity.
It makes you think about getting an iPhone and using all those cool APIs because the more you use them the more digitally visible you are, and, who knows, your neighbour, work colleague, firend, can use it against you.
He concludes saying that to protect ourselves (and users in general) from abuse, need to think about the data we provide. For me is again a question of awareness and control.
Conclusions, or discussion, goes around the need to explain to individuals what data is being asked for by different providers/telecoms/devices/organisations/etc , what is it going to be used for and what are the potential consequences of doing it.
It is about the trade between the benefits provided and the information released, about the balance between them.