Fear of Locatability

In this age of place, at the dawning of the locative technology "era," a countertrend is emerging - fear of locatability. Stories have emerged of countries blocking updates of Google Earth datasets to protect assets - nothing new here. Now Gizmodo points to a new category of personal technology - the GPS signal blocker. Of course, one only needs a simple building to do this, but high tech can be applied as well apparently to block devices in a certain location from being able to lget coordinates using GPS.

Reasoning given? The excuse du jour: terrorism. Personal or public safety may indeed be one motivating factor for throwing up a 50m or 50km cone of un-locatability around oneself, home, or facility, but such blank zones will become more and more conspicuous as location services ferret out the "value" in every place.