Earlier quoted context omitted.
I down voted and left a comment. Appealing to child stalking as a way to emotionally charge your argument about radio reception is a disingenuous tactic for this conversation. What's more, people who actually work to promote and secure a safer environment for kids don't need people like you constantly exacerbating parental paranoia with a constant back chatter stranger danger. Please refrain from emotionally manipula…
Then assume I'm talking about taking a picture of every living room through the window whenever no one is there. Or anything else that's that personal. The point isn't about what is collected, but that this type of broad data collection exists in the first place. Let's recap: not eventhe government can do video surveillance of public places, streetview became opt in, the phone book is opt in. But Google collects SSID…
No. That's not my job to arbitrarily re-interpret what you said to give you a free pass for your disingenuous rhetoric.
> Let's recap: not eventhe government can do video surveillance of public places, streetview became opt in, the phone book is opt in.
The government CAN do video surveillance though. Both our governments do it. What varies is how its deployed and who has access.
> Collecting only the router mac or BSSID might possibly be justifiable, because it's just a map of technical data, but collecting a string where people but creative works in, or names, or jokes?
Look, responsibility has to be exercised in all forms of data collection. But it's also the case that the light that shines out of your house is subject to public interpretation. Standing nude in your window facing a crowded street CAN be illegal in both our countries, as could placing a sign that says threatening things to passerbys. The trigger conditions for this vary between our countries, but they exist in both cases.
> Collecting such PII can be problematic.
COLLECTING PII is seldom the problem. Storing it or promptly and thoroughly deleting it is the challenge. You might argue that you shouldn't have collected it in the first place, and maybe that's true. But given the modern world where we have a rapidly expanding frontier of data analytics, it's actually difficult for real (re: not rhetorical trashbag arguments on HackerNews) people. Often times it's not obvious what PII is until later.
For example, there are people who claim that transactional data can be "anonymized". Do not believe these people; it is nearly impossible to anonymize transactional data. Even mixing users and attempting to delocalize vendor strings will not fix the problems.