Oh, man, what a missed opportunity to make the average Joe Sixpack become aware of cellphone tracking and surveillance. If the researcher had queried every single cellphone number in the United States (for as long as the API kept working) and then published the location of every cellphone in the USA, then laymen might care. When someone can query the list and see his
own personal information being broadcast, they will understand. When they can look up any cellphone and pinpoint the location of their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, boss, children, or neighbor, they might get an inkling that privacy isn't such a stupid thing to worry about.
I guarantee that by next week, this whole thing will be forgotten and nothing will have changed because privacy and surveillance are too abstract for most people -- they need to see all their personal information that's being collected. I admire the researcher's integrity for exposing it the right way (reporting it to CERT and the company itself), but going full Snowden would have had so much more impact on getting better privacy-preserving laws and technology.
I guarantee that by next week, this whole thing will be forgotten and nothing will have changed because privacy and surveillance are too abstract for most people -- they need to see all their personal information that's being collected. I admire the researcher's integrity for exposing it the right way (reporting it to CERT and the company itself), but going full Snowden would have had so much more impact on getting better privacy-preserving laws and technology.