Indeed, it seems as if sports, in America and beyond, drives a segment of the world economy with the same human necessity and regularity as plumbing or construction. People need their toilets fixed, people need their homes repaired, and people need to watch professional sports.

The side industry of sports analytics has always thrived, seeking new ways to measure individual achievement. This is the great glory of sports: it is a celebration of human beings that push their limits, that smash barriers, that turn the human machine into something that performs in truly magnificent ways. In American football games, sports announcers never seem to run out of odd analytics with which to qualify players—“The most interceptions in Qualcomm Stadium during the first half of a fourth quarter since 1998,” etc.

In Great Britain, only the sports are different. Manchester United dominates as the world’s most profitable sports franchise (America’s Dallas Cowboys trails as a far distant second), while cricket remains a traditional fascination not only for England but for a large portion of the world.

England’s national cricket team recently announced that GPS tracking devices have been installed on the tops of all players’ uniforms. This no doubt has sports analysts worldwide salivating. The GPS monitors track players’ movements with pinpoint precision, allowing entire new metrics of statistics to be created and monitored.

Strangely, England is not the first cricket team to institute GPS tracking. Australia came first, utilizing GPS trackers as a method of recording, then improving, player performance.

Is GPS tracking likely to become an ubiquitous part of professional athletes’ lives? At this point, the answer is yes. Sports make money—and businesses are always looking for new ways to monitor athletes, track changes, and turn them into athletic monsters. It will be fascinating to see how GPS tracking gives sports commentators new stats to breathe into the microphone.

The search was ended, not by law enforcement using sophisticated techniques, but by two men using a combination of high-tech and very low-tech ideas. The student’s ex-husband, who remained close to her back home in British Columbia, and her brother traveled to Mexico to assist in the search. Using the signal from her car’s GPS tracking device, they eventually found the car parked near a beach in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. That’s where the low-tech part of the search came into play: The two men had brought along a dog belonging to the student, and as they began walking the beach, the dog was able to sniff out the location of her body, shallowly buried in the sand along with that of her boyfriend. Eventually, the men found three more bodies in the area after half a day of searching.

Mexico’s notorious drug gang problems have claimed the lives of many innocent people, some of them tourists like these two. The loss is devastating to friends and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, especially since the bodies’ conditions indicated a violent death. Without the advantage provided by the GPS tracking device installed on the student’s car, searchers might not have been able to find the bodies until they were unidentifiable. The finality of retrieving the two bodies and giving them a respectful burial is due in very large part to the guiding signal that the tracker sent out weeks after the car was left at the beach.

The first major point curbs cab driver overwork: the ordinances would mandate that drivers work no more than 12 hours a day. This regulation would appear to benefit not only the Chicago cab industry, but traffic safety in the city as well. Chicago deals with some of the most difficult traffic obstacles in the United States, and if the cab drivers are not well rested, then disaster is in the air.

The second major point may cost taxi companies a bundle: the ordinance would mandate that new cabs have a maximum of 75,000 miles. The current standard is 150,000 miles. This ordinance is designed to keep a better fleet on Chicago’s streets, raising the standard of practice and allowing passengers to have a more secure ferrying experience.

The third point involves GPS tracking: every cab in the city of Chicago would be fitted with GPS tracking devices. They provide the most efficient route through Chi-town traffic and allow the customer a transparent view of the route being taken by the driver (this would curb “wandering cab driver syndrome,” in which a driver takes an indirect route to a destination in order to increase fare).

There are numerous advantages that arise with the installation of GPS tracking in taxis. Since every taxi could be overseen from home base, inefficient behavior may be curved. Additionally, if a criminal act takes place in a taxi, police may subpoena the records for potential use in court.

The City Service Taxi Association of Chicago is not happy with the changes. Its president suggested that the City Council’s mandates might prove too expensive for many Windy City taxi services. However, these sweeping changes may provide benefits that these taxi services are unaware of.

The case began as law enforcement officials tracked a Washington D.C. drug kingpin. As the suspect moved back and forth to various stash houses, law enforcement tracked the suspect’s vehicle with a clandestinely placed GPS tracking device. A warrant for GPS tracking had been obtained, but it had expired before the device was installed.

That the case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court was a windfall, no doubt, for the kingpin. The US legal system as a whole–as well as the GPS industry–waited in suspense, expecting a Supreme Court ruling that could redefine the use and nature of GPS tracking in the legal profession.

The ruling disappointed many–even some that sit on the high court. The Supreme Court’s decision unanimously ruled that the evidence obtained through GPS tracking was null and void, as it was obtained without a warrant. However, the court also unanimously declined to take it any further than that, eliciting questions as to whether the nation’s highest court went far enough to address GPS use in law enforcement.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s opinion may become one of the most legendarily disappointed opinions in modern day Supreme Court rulings. The Justice expressed dismay that, even though most Americans routinely post private information publicly, the government may not act as if the information is public. The decision should have sent shock waves through the legal system. Instead, it was a whimper, with many complaining that the court marginalized the case into a simple situation of surveillance without a valid warrant.

The United States’ legal approach to GPS tracking is still not fully formed. The nation simply does not know how to handle the legal implications of increasing dependence on technology. Facebook, GPS tracking, texting, and Twitter are all too quickly reshaping what it means to have freedom of speech in the US.

A new company called Highlight has released an iPhone app by the same name. It links Facebook to the iPhone’s GPS tracker, enabling seamless flow from the social network to Highlight’s location tracking functionality.

What is the goal? Socially, the implications are quite fascinating. Have you ever logged on to Facebook to discover that one of your old college friends is visiting your hometown? With Highlight, users potentially have the ability to do that. The app has the potential to allow users to keep track of a global network of friends and their location through GPS tracking abilities.

What about the creepiness factor? The potential of modern day social networking combined with GPS tracking definitely implies that Big Brother may be closer than we think–or already upon us. Are there advantages to publicly displaying your exact physical location to your Facebook friends?

Safety concerns may be an asset. If a Facebook user goes into a dangerous situation, and desires to keep a select group of friends on alert, then that option is there. If a natural disaster occurs and a Highlight user wants to display his or her location for rescue, then the Highlight app may be a life-saving asset.

The most fascinating aspect of modern social networking is that the vast majority of “out there” private information has been volunteered by users. No government organization has sanctioned making private information public, which was powerfully illustrated by the recent Supreme Court ruling requiring a warrant for GPS tracking. Most of the negative effects that have occurred as a result of social networking users revealing private information came about because the user voluntarily displayed that information on the Internet.

Highlight gives iPhone users the option to give GPS pinpoint location to friends and family over Facebook. This fascinating–though perfectly logical–application of GPS tracker technology is a profound illustration of how the giant leap forward in modern computing, spearheaded by tablet and smart phone advancement, is changing our social lives. Will the Internet become our global neighborhood? The answer to this question may come sooner than we think.

One such case involves a serial rapist that attacked women in Tennessee from 1994 to 2008. Robert Jason Burdick was finally tried, convicted and jailed after police carefully built a case against the criminal. Days before his arrest, police secretly installed a GPS tracker on the man’s vehicle.

Throughout the trial, Burdick’s lawyer argued that the accused man’s Constitutional rights were violated by the installation of the GPS. Carrie Gasaway, the attorney that defended Burdick, claimed that evidence obtained by the device was not valid. Her case never made it to the Supreme Court. Burdick remains in jail today.

So, does the recent United States Supreme Court ruling invalidate Burdick’s conviction? Should Burdick be released from jail? Analysts say that Burdick’s release will likely not happen anytime soon.

The evidence used to convict Burdick wasn’t obtained with the GPS tracker. Indeed, law enforcement use of GPS was not common in Tennessee during that time, and police were far from dependent on it in building their case against Burdick. What got Burdick convicted was DNA. The serial rapist’s DNA was taken from crime scenes and matched to DNA taken from silverware the man used at a restaurant. The GPS tracker came into the case late in the game. In fact, the GPS only functioned as apart of an already comprehensive twenty-four hour surveillance process used by police.

The case of the “Wooded Rapist” will likely not be overturned due to the United States Supreme Court ruling regarding GPS tracking warrants. Evidence obtained through GPS tracking was marginal–Burdick would have been proven guilty without it. Because of this, a solid conviction stands, and Burdick remains guilty under the law and incarcerated in the state of Tennessee. Burdick was arrested and convicted thanks to solid, careful, methodical police work. There is no replacement for such fine police work–and Tennessee remains a safer place to live because of that.