Could? The government may know you better than you know yourself; and perhaps the only reaction to be had upstairs is when you change a habit; i.e. quite unexpectedly break the prediction model for your life.
Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
21–30 of 110 posts
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#22Meet Jack. Or what the government could do with all these planes >Article showing how half of San Francisco gets bombed This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law. The biggest issue I have with this is that this describes a massive , coordinated system to use all this location data in ways that are way outside the legal framework in place by the initial court order from…
Lots of people have picked up on your thesis statement : This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law.
We aren't talking about 'law' here, we're talking about 'people.' That gets lost some times.
Someone with access to these tools might decide the shake down Jack with a bit of blackmail. They might decide to sell union organizing 'alerts' to business. These are not legal but there are many people who work in an organization with these tools available who could justify abusing them.
Consider another hotbed subject which gets argued the other way all the time, gun ownership.
Now we can all agree that someone owning a gun who follows all of the safety precautions, and doesn't wave it about irresponsibly Etc is no threat to society. And yet the argument is put forward that the capability is the threat and people other than the owner may exploit that capability (a thief steals the gun, a spouse grabs it in a fit of rage, Etc.) and that it is "better" to not allow the person to own a gun because the risk of that gun falling into the wrong hands and doing something bad are non-zero enough.
This is the same argument we should make on surveillance technology, which is that the potential for its abuse and damaging the lives of innocent civilians, out weighs the 'benefit' the law enforcement agency gets from having it. There are other ways for the agency to do its job, just as there are other ways for our homeowner to protect their property, that don't require this capability.
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law. A lack of faith pretty well justified at this point. I appreciate the annoyance at "oh noes teh NSA!", but this article exactly points out the problem: local, not state or federal, authorities are where this will be an issue. Everyone is busy hopping on the "fuck the NSA" bus, and that conveniently draws fire from the numerous…
do local police have access to this data though? Maybe I've missed something, but the cell phone data has been through PRISM, and that local police doesn't have access to this sort of information.
...local police doesn't have access to this sort of information.
Yet?
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law. A lack of faith pretty well justified at this point. I appreciate the annoyance at "oh noes teh NSA!", but this article exactly points out the problem: local, not state or federal, authorities are where this will be an issue. Everyone is busy hopping on the "fuck the NSA" bus, and that conveniently draws fire from the numerous…
do local police have access to this data though? Maybe I've missed something, but the cell phone data has been through PRISM, and that local police doesn't have access to this sort of information.
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law. A lack of faith pretty well justified at this point. I appreciate the annoyance at "oh noes teh NSA!", but this article exactly points out the problem: local, not state or federal, authorities are where this will be an issue. Everyone is busy hopping on the "fuck the NSA" bus, and that conveniently draws fire from the numerous…
do local police have access to this data though? Maybe I've missed something, but the cell phone data has been through PRISM, and that local police doesn't have access to this sort of information.
The issue is that the local Police are aggregating the same types of data E.G. Auto scanning tags of cars within sight of a police car and it's only a matter of time before the links are made to pool the data. All that needs to happen for this to become a reality is one piece of legislation be snuck into a spending bill or farm bill etc.. and bam - all police forces are required to send their data to the national data pool that all other police forces can access for the "greater good".
Not being involved in this myself I don't know the extent or the checks in place but police do have access to cell phone location data since about ten years ago? (if you call 911 on a cell phone they use it to find you)
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#26Meet Jack. Or what the government could do with all these planes >Article showing how half of San Francisco gets bombed This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law. The biggest issue I have with this is that this describes a massive , coordinated system to use all this location data in ways that are way outside the legal framework in place by the initial court order from…
Lots of people have picked up on your thesis statement : This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law. We aren't talking about 'law' here, we're talking about 'people.' That gets lost some times. Someone with access to these tools might decide the shake down Jack with a bit of blackmail. They might decide to sell union organizing 'alerts' to business. These are not legal…
Exactly. Consider how often cases of police officers (or even spooks; remember that they coined the term "LOVEINT" for cases of people doing exactly this) abusing their authority to spy on, stalk, and harass the objects of their a̶f̶f̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ obsession have come to light.
Now contemplate how many happen, but don't come to light.
As much as I want to decry TFA for fear-mongering, slippery-sloping, and straw-manning, extant — even rampant — abuses of authority give it ever so slightly too much "plausible" to dismiss out of hand.
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#27This is why its important for people to get their respective states to start writing laws which protect people's privacy and usurp the Federal Preemption of states rights in regards to people's private information.
This is a great paper which addresses this in regards to environmental laws. This kind of argument can also be made in protection of people's private information. It's about restraining and balancing the federal laws with state laws and not allowing the feds to overstep state laws.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/v102/n2/649/LR102n...
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law. A lack of faith pretty well justified at this point. I appreciate the annoyance at "oh noes teh NSA!", but this article exactly points out the problem: local, not state or federal, authorities are where this will be an issue. Everyone is busy hopping on the "fuck the NSA" bus, and that conveniently draws fire from the numerous…
do local police have access to this data though? Maybe I've missed something, but the cell phone data has been through PRISM, and that local police doesn't have access to this sort of information.
You can do a lot of tracking without cell phone data.
Local police have access to license plate scanners (both at fixed locations and mounted on police vehicles). The data is not as fine-grained as GPS data from a person's phone, but it can also yield information about the patterns of a person's movements over time (e.g., they pass these ten intersections every weekend night between 2:30 and 3:00am). Of course, this can only track people with cars (but in some cities, that's pretty much everyone).
Facial recognition software can track people who walk, but I don't know how widely deployed it is at this time. As soon as it gets attached to all of the millions of surveillance cameras that are out there (some of which are operated by police departments, like in NYC), tracking pedestrians will become easier.
And, of course, the local police can get a warrant to attach a GPS device to somebody's car or to pull cell tower data if they have probable cause.
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#29Maybe I'm just a huge data nerd, but this article made me really excited.
Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data
#30Meet Jack. Or what the government could do with all these planes >Article showing how half of San Francisco gets bombed This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law. The biggest issue I have with this is that this describes a massive , coordinated system to use all this location data in ways that are way outside the legal framework in place by the initial court order from…
If it's the laws that are bad, why are so many congressmen surprised at the scope of the NSA's actions?