51–60 of 158 posts
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Come on. There have to be some minimum standards of knowledge required for the citizens of a technological society, and I'd argue that "how radio works" is one of those things one should be expected to know.
minimum standards of knowledge required for the citizens Do you know how the electricity in your wall works? What about the plumbing under your house? Would you be able to fix those things on your own?
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I'd agree, if you mean broadcasting an SSID should be opt-in by default, but not if you mean having a publicly broadcast SSID be mapped should be opt-in by default separately from broadcasting the SSID. OTOH, to the extent this is not true, its ISPs and router manufacturers who are at fault.
I've meant sharing the location of the SSID with $company should be opt-in. Who the fuck do they think they are?
Broadcasting is, inherently, sharing location with everyone with a receiver.
> Who the fuck do they think they are?
People with receivers (see above.)
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Come on. There have to be some minimum standards of knowledge required for the citizens of a technological society, and I'd argue that "how radio works" is one of those things one should be expected to know.
minimum standards of knowledge required for the citizens Do you know how the electricity in your wall works? What about the plumbing under your house? Would you be able to fix those things on your own?
The level of IMO required knowledge I'm talking about here is to know e.g. that water in your faucet is distributed through the building via water pipes, and electricity comes through cables that are inside walls. Even this basic knowledge allows one to infer quite a lot.
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I've meant sharing the location of the SSID with $company should be opt-in. Who the fuck do they think they are?
> I've meant sharing the location of the SSID with $company should be opt-in. Broadcasting is, inherently, sharing location with everyone with a receiver. > Who the fuck do they think they are? People with receivers (see above.)
It should be possible to reconstruct google's BSSID database, right?
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Is it okay for a private company to have detailed positioning data from inside of your office or home? I don't know the answer to that question, but I have a guess at the answer to another question: "is it okay for a private company to create a geodatabase of SSID strings that were freely and willingly broadcast via radio?" I think the answer is "yes". Ten, fifteen years ago, if there were an HN story about how I, ow…
So, then it’d also be legal if I stand near all schools, and photograph every child with a telezoom lens, follow each of them home, and then publish a website with photos of every child and where they live? If they don’t want to be seen, they can just stop broadcasting their face and wear a burqa, right? There is a huge difference between "publicly available in every case seperately" and "publicly indexable". EDIT: I…
There is no such established pattern where we can reasonably assume that a company collecting SSIDs will usually do this to act in a criminal way.
By the way I didn't down vote you, but I think this is the "common sense" reason why people reject your position.
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We should not have to do that.
Talk to your government, or organize a boycott threat. Your house is also visible in Street View, for precisely the same reason: It transmits electromagnetic waves that are visible from public roads.
And slightly less scary.
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Are you sure they do that when wifi is off? I was under the impression that it only happens when wifi is on (and it seems to me that my location on the map is more stable with wifi on). That would be very not ok if it would happen with wifi off. I turn my wifi off to save the battery, and it wouldn't do much if it was still looking for broadcasts.
> I turn my wifi off to save the battery Sending/receiving data over wifi takes roughly ~8x less power than sending/receiving data over cell. If you want to save battery you need to turn off data entirely not turn off wifi. Turning off wifi ultimately costs you battery.
This is not tower triangulation. Android searches for access points even when wifi is turned off. If anyone (with GPS enabled) uses that wifi with any google services the bssid will end up in their database. Also if the google car has been nearby it has recorded the presence of the wifi access point at that location [1]. Before you freak out: Apple and Microsoft also use access point information for positioning, alth…
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> I've meant sharing the location of the SSID with $company should be opt-in. Broadcasting is, inherently, sharing location with everyone with a receiver. > Who the fuck do they think they are? People with receivers (see above.)
Ok, but one thing is broadcasting something that has a limited reach then documenting and storing in various databases around the planet.
I don't know what to tell you other than "I don't like the way I feel about this" is not the basis of good policy.