Picture the scene. You are supposed to be attending a sales conference in Crewe when you are woken from your slumbers by the ring tone from your company- issue mobile phone.
"I'm there now," you lie to your boss from the comfort of your hotel bed, safe in the knowledge that she will never know otherwise.
But, alas, your mobile phone uses a new technology which means your boss can pinpoint your exact location. You are soon collecting your cards and handing back the phone.
It is the stuff of slackers' nightmares. But "location-based track-ing" -- to use the mobile phone industry's terminology -- is about to become reality.
Mobile-phone networks will soon be able to pinpoint the precise location of a handset owner to within 10m or less. From the middle of next year many phones will carry Global Satellite Positioning chips, while another new technology, known as "Triangulation," can pinpoint a mobile-phone user's whereabouts by bouncing signals off three phone masts to establish an exact set of coordinates.
The concept has already been warmly embraced by a number of firms.
"It's popular with fleet and logistics firms who want to know where their lorries [trucks] are," said Julie Ramage of mobile-phone consultancy Analysys.
But the move has sparked huge controversy among civil liberty groups who fear that mobile-phone companies will be able to play Big Brother.
"It's a very worrying development. The scope for the misuse of this technology is enormous," said Barry Hugill, spokesman for the British civil liberties group Liberty.
At the heart of the issue is who should be allowed to track a mobile phone.
"If you have a mobile phone, your network operator must know where you are in order to provide a service. The issue is whether they make that information available to third parties," Ramage said. "That information cannot just be used by anybody. People have to sign up to have the information shared."
Some experts are worried that firms might make it a condition of an employee's job specification that they give their consent for their phone to be tracked.
"It's a complex area," Hugill said. "If your company issues you with a mobile phone, providing they tell you it can track you it's probably within the law. If your company does it covertly, then our view is that this would be illegal."
And not everyone is convinced that this "opt-in" system is foolproof. There have been suggestions that the software has already been hacked into by university students in Scotland who then tracked mobile-phone users across the UK.
Hugill said: "We all know that information gets passed on and ends up in the wrong hands."
There is further concern that mobile-phone users may respond to spam messages sent to their handsets without really knowing what they are signing up to. Children's charities have also expressed alarm that pedophiles might be able to exploit such a system.
Some pro-privacy campaigners go as far as to argue that the technology is part of a wider, more sinister trend to surveillance.
Simon Davies, director of campaign group Privacy International, said that a recent change in the law has meant mobile-phone networks must store a user's data for a year in case the police or the security services need to access it.
"There is a trend in Britain towards absolute identification, to a system of perfect tracking which eliminates the anonymity of movement," he said.
So worried are the mobile-phone firms at a possible backlash that they have drawn up an industry code of practice designed to see off the threat of legislation regulating the issue.
It is also something which concerns the European Commission. This week the UK will adopt the EC's Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive which decrees that a mobile-phone user can be tracked only if he or she explicitly gives consent.
Even those in favor of tracking acknowledge the issue needs to be handled sensitively.
"With any new technology, much depends on how you sell it," said Emma Hardcastle, managing director of mapminder.co.uk, which recently launched an online service that allows people to track an individual's mobile phone.
"In the next couple of years there will be huge change in this area. We need to make sure it doesn't invade anyone's privacy," she said.
Since Hardcastle's company launched the tracking service a month ago it has received hundreds of registrations.
"Most of it is coming from companies, but not all. We had one person who wanted to be able to track his mother who has Alzheimers," Hardcastle said.
A similar service -- mapAmobile -- offered by the Carphone Warehouse retail chain has also reported brisk interest.
"We were targeting the service at children," said a spokeswoman for the retailer. "It's a good way for parents to keep track of their kids rather than phoning them constantly to find out where they are."
"But we've also had some interest from taxi companies," she said.
The mobile-phone networks believe the location-based tracking services -- which will allow firms to target specific customers when they enter designated locations -- will become a major marketing weapon in the future.
Edward Brewster, spokesman for the mobile-phone company 3, which this month launches a tracking service incorporating satellite positioning technology, said: "We already offer some location-based services, but now you will be able to be guided to everything from restaurants to the nearest cash machine via your mobile phone."
"This is going to offer the customer a whole new experience," he said.
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