Privacy in a connected world, how much do you trust your phone company?

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/25396/?a=f

Many years ago I remember when some company was working on a traffic program in Atlanta, GA.  They had received permission or access to data from cell towers and were able to determine how quickly traffic was moving on a given road/highway by how quickly a cell tower handed off a specific phone to the next tower.  There was a bit of an uproar from privacy advocates on this, the company assured people that private data was stripped from the software and they were not tracking specific people.  (Right, so how do you know when a phone is being handed off if your not tracking each phone independently?  Maybe looking at general data flow?  Possible, but I digress)

Now we have this.  More often than not I am finding myself leaving my cell phone at home.  I am even considering removing the battery when I travel and only plugging it back in when I reach my final destination.