The Ankle Bracelet Theory

TASK: As a thought experiment: imagine your were forced to wear an ankle bracelet supplied to your governing authority. Perhaps you are given this on entering a country, or reaching a certain age or when you start earning money. This bracelet tracks the following information:

• Location
• Health data: heart rate, temperature, exercise completed, steps taken all linked to your location history.
• Personal identity information
• Health status: vaccinations, some medical history.
• Emergency contact details
• Calendar
• Contacts list
• Social media feeds and resultant metadata
• Recordings of your conversations
• Apps you download and how long you use each one
• Which Wi-FI hotspots you use
• Who's home WI-FI you use
• Which cell towers you connect to
• The full content of your cellular phone calls and text
• Metadata from your photos
• Recent calls list
• Recent destinations from your mapping software
• etc

You can see where I am going here....

WHY: So far most places don't force you to wear this imaginary ankle bracelet. And why is that? Well the work is done for them: Everyone of us desperately clings to our phone, very rarely would you leave home without it. Your phone provides most, if not all, of the data mentioned above. We carry our phones voluntarily, we want to, we can not do without them it seems. So, we wear these ankle bracelets, just in another form.

Admittedly this is a thought experiment but I hope it is a thought provoking one.