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Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

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Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

#41

Post by coldtea »

rtpg wrote: post #3

Meet 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…

>This argument can only hold on water by having a complete lack of faith in the rule of law.

What "rule of law"?

The one who predominantly targets blacks and latinos?

The one that sends people to life terms in prison for non violenet BS crimes, if they do three of them?

The one who, in 2014, jails people for smoking a joint?

The one who, in 2014, in a western democracy nonetheless, still uses capital punishment?

The one who big corporations make a laughing stock of?

The one who has the highest incarceration rate in the world, by a large margin?

Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

#42

Post by coldtea »

rtpg wrote: post #20
angersock wrote: post #16

Earlier 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.

>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.

That's hardly an argument. For one, they collaborate frequently with the FBI. As for local police, well, give it time.

Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

#43

Post by salient »

rtpg wrote: post #20
angersock wrote: post #16

Earlier 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.

Yes?

https://www.aclu.org/national-security/police-requests-cellp...

The type of surveillance NSA can do is quickly trickling down to FBI, DHS, DEA and even the police. Even this wasn't too long ago:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57471570-93/facebook-scans-...

Some police departments are also working on face detection systems, or even "pre-crime" in New York:

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/08/microsoft-and-bloomberg-...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/16942-dhs-creates-...

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/5/22/dissent_or_terror...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0718/Lic...

And these are just examples that I remembered off the top of my head, and did some quick searches on them now.

Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

#44

Post by coldtea »

cjoh wrote: post #40

It's easy to imagine the kind of data government has, imagine its ability to process that data, and easy to interpret that they will do it. But it's also important to recognize that this is conjecture. From my experience in government: they nailed the user experience (check out http://dsbs.sba.gov for some awesome gov UI), but really overestimated government's capacity to build intelligent technology like this. I kno…

>It's easy to imagine the kind of data government has, imagine its ability to process that data, and easy to interpret that they will do it. But it's also important to recognize that this is conjecture. From my experience in government: they nailed the user experience (check out http://dsbs.sba.gov for some awesome gov UI), but really overestimated government's capacity to build intelligent technology like this.

That's not really the point. Even 1/10 as sophisticated technology can be equally potent, especially if they are concentrating on a person (if the data is there, they can even do the correlations manually, say in Excel. It will just take more time).

Furthermore, the creation of the technology (and even the operation) can be outsourced to private entities. Or just bought wholesale.

Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

#45

Post by herbig »

cjoh wrote: post #40

It's easy to imagine the kind of data government has, imagine its ability to process that data, and easy to interpret that they will do it. But it's also important to recognize that this is conjecture. From my experience in government: they nailed the user experience (check out http://dsbs.sba.gov for some awesome gov UI), but really overestimated government's capacity to build intelligent technology like this. I kno…

One day, we'll all be able to pore over our anyone's emails from the last 10 years from an NSA data leak posted on Piratebay. Employers, insurance companies, and ex/potential lovers will have a great time with that.

Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

#46

Post by swalkergibson »

rtpg wrote: post #12
atmosx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because the data is at the NSA doesn't mean they can use it however they want, just like how Google would run into some problems if it tried to sell the contents of your e-mails to somebody. I am not sure you are listening , what is happening around you. > This anger at the NSA should also be directed at the congressmen voting for these laws of large scope in the first place. Hopefully we can get rid of NSLs t…

>It's working for whom? Presumably these laws require a little bit less privacy for a more secure country. The fisa court is an example of laws working in our favor. Before the fisa court, the executive could basically do what it wanted wrt "terrorist/spy" suspects. It's only after Congress intervened that we got something that tries to strike a balance between the need to investigate sensitive subjects and the need…

> You have absolutely no way of measuring how much security a set of laws has given us.

Sure we do. Do you really think they wouldn't plaster the news of a thwarted terrorist attack everywhere? Whenever verifiable potential incidents are stopped, there is always breaking news about them, in great detail.

Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

#47

Post by nswanberg »

This article attempts to show what a local government could do, but does anyone have access to the sort of location dataset that could give one an intuition about how likely it would be that individuals would be singled out using the data shown?

The article uses maps of Peoria, IL, so let's assume we're dealing with Peoria. There appear to be roughly 115K people between 18-64 in its metro area (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+peoria+il...), and 11 traffic cops. (http://www.peoriagov.org/peoria-police-department/police-div...)

These cops appear to arrest 23 people per month for driving under the influence, and hand out about 1750 other traffic citations (not linking directly to the PDF to save their server but you can find it under crime stats).

The article implies that there would be more traffic stops due to increased DUI suspicion, and it certainly seems that it could happen, but given these population, police, and police activity numbers, and given that the article itself gives a false-positive example, how likely would that be? Is it reasonable to think that these cops currently have a lighter load and have time to be dispatched to investigate a potential DUI?

I am not suggesting that it is of no concern for the government to have unfettered access to data, and I can imagine a vast number of possible scenarios in which the data could be misused, but possibly we can better quantify that concern.

Re: Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data

#50

Post by meowface »

cjoh wrote: post #40

It's easy to imagine the kind of data government has, imagine its ability to process that data, and easy to interpret that they will do it. But it's also important to recognize that this is conjecture. From my experience in government: they nailed the user experience (check out http://dsbs.sba.gov for some awesome gov UI), but really overestimated government's capacity to build intelligent technology like this. I kno…

I fully agree. Private industry, as well as fraudsters and criminals who were somehow armed with all of this data could probably end up being far more nefarious than anything the NSA is actually doing right now.

Imagine if a Russian cybercrime gang gained access to NSA's Quantum Insert method, for example.

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