The Government Must Be Using Cell Phone Lookups

A recent federal study based on 2007 data reports that Oklahoma and Utah are leading the country toward the cell-phone-only norm. One out of every four households in these states has given up on landlines. Following closely behind are Nebraska, Arkansas, Idaho and Iowa. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware and South Dakota are the slowest to catch on, with only one out of every 20 households relying entirely on wireless technology. Surprisingly, New York and California are slacking off; there, only one in every ten families no longer bothers with a landline.

Whether you live in Utah, New York or Vermont, it's only a matter of time before we all recognize that landlines are obsolete and give in to the absolute reign of cell phones. The government has serious reasons for conducting its first-ever cell-phone-use analysis: it can no longer conduct household surveys on landlines alone. Unless it quickly figures out a way of reaching every cell phone, its research data threatens to become highly inaccurate. For agencies like Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Census, and some others that rely heavily on phone-survey data collection, it means they can no longer conduct business as usual.

As private wireless phone numbers become the norm, traditional landline phone directories are becoming obsolete, as well, and there really isn't a way to replace it with a similar cell-phone number directory. So far, there really is just one way to determine someone's cell phone number, and that's cell phone lookup. The government must have thousands of data entry technicians working overtime on cell phone lookup databases, creating new internal cell phone directories.

And what about the ethical side of things? What are the legal implications of such data mining? What about the fact that once they start to make survey calls to people's cell phones, the recipients will be stuck with charges for the call? Nobody has figured out all the answers yet: the lawmakers can't keep up with technological advances, and such issues are not regulated as of yet. We live during chaotic, yet fascinating times!