Europe's New War on Privacy • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#81

Post by 8fingerlouie » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 7:53 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #71

TeMPOraL wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cellular telephony. Electronic banking. Both have been "status quo" for decades, and subject pretty much everyone in the western world to significant, continuous surveillance. We can discuss whether it's desirable, but it's been like this for a while and people very much like benefits both provide.

I'm fairly sure I definitely don't want to be surveilled by my phone, yep.

Too late.

Your phone (GSM anyway) continuously reports back to the cell tower it's connected to, the strength of every other cell tower it can "see". The cell network, not the handset, decides which is the better cell tower for your handset to transfer to, which is why this information is being sent in the first place.

That information, the strength of cell towers, along with the knowledge of exactly where a cell tower is placed, can be used to triangulate your position down to a few meters in crowded areas with many cell towers. It's also how your phone establishes its position without GPS.

Besides that, you probably also have a handful or more apps that tracks your location within 100m constantly.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#82

Post by stavros » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 7:58 PM UTC

8fingerlouie wrote: post #81

stavros wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure I definitely don't want to be surveilled by my phone, yep.

Too late. Your phone (GSM anyway) continuously reports back to the cell tower it's connected to, the strength of every other cell tower it can "see". The cell network, not the handset, decides which is the better cell tower for your handset to transfer to, which is why this information is being sent in the first place. That information, the strength of cell towers, along with the knowledge of exactly where a cell tow…

That's not the point of this thread. The original point is whether there's any desirable mass surveillance. I think we've pretty much shown there isn't.

Re: Europe's New War on Privacy

#83

Post by torginus » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 7:24 AM UTC

8fingerlouie wrote: post #78

torginus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this whole thing stinks - The data was collected in 2016, and was used in 2023 - a retention period of 7 years, way longer than the specified maximum of 2 - I'd argue that the basis of lawmaking is weighing the advantages versus the costs - supplying partial evidence in a case once a decade does not meet the requirements for introducing mass surveillance with infinite retention The police work was slopp…

"- The data was collected in 2016, and was used in 2023 - a retention period of 7 years, way longer than the specified maximum of 2" Normally, when there's an ongoing police investigation, the police can either request and retain a copy of the data, or request the holder of the data retain it until "further notice". I'm assuming that's what was going on here. "If he was, I'd argue the dragnet-collected evidence is on…

I've read on a bit and found the additional details about the tape with DNA on it, which makes him look more guilty - but this wasnt mentioned in the wikipedia article, and the phone logs which you mentioned as justification for mass surveillance are less than worthless.

Establishing that both the perp and victim was at the same train station some time during a longish window time doesn't mean jack.

As for DNA I'm not a criminology expert, but if courts don't accept it as conclusive evidence means there's something wrong with it - courts have a long history of accepting official sounding bunk ('expert' witnesses, polygraph etc) in order to manufacture evidence to their conclusions.

Anyways I don't want to detour from my main argument that even from the official PoV the phone evidence is very weak, I'd argue it's meaningless, and using this as justification as mass surveillance is a counterargument if anything.

Though I can imagine it's incredibly easy to deliberately misrepresent it as 'we used digital records to catch a pedo murderer' by dishonest supporters of the policy.