Contextual Mobile Apps: Avoiding the "Big Brother" Fallout

As smartphones and tablets become more integrated into our lives, mobile applications provide an unprecedented opportunity to engage users. One of the more dramatic shifts with mobile apps is the use of contextual information to make them more relevant to the user. This use of contextual information creates unique opportunities as well as risks for government agencies, with the main question being how much user information the government can gather without being perceived as George Orwell's "Big Brother."