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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

#91

Post by aestra »

neil_s wrote: post #58

Am I the only one for whom the article had the opposite than intended effect? I was expecting some real life horror story of a false positive or deliberate framing, but instead I was given examples of how this data could be used constructively to try and evaluate where there might be a high likelihood of crime occurring, and trying to prevent it. In my eyes, using tax dollars to prevent crime rather than punishing it…

There was a false positive in there. There was a "probable criminal activity" that turned out to be a real estate agent.

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

#92

Post by aestra »

doctorshady wrote: post #78
KrisAndrew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think a system like that being public would cause a great deal of interpersonal problems until ways to circumvent the data collection were found (even if it meant tearing GPS receivers out of mobile phones). I remember reading a meta-analysis of lie detection and deception studies in humans, and there was one social psychology experiment where the participants were asked not to lie for the duration of the exp…

Trying to remove location tracking from a cell phone is essentially impossible; they're capable of using a system called Assisted GPS which when GPS isn't available, can use things like WiFi signals to help determine where you are; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS#Description Even if you were to build your own cell phone or dig out an old brickphone without this capability (thanks to the FCC's efforts, basic…

Right, this was a requirement so if you dialed 911 the emergency responders know where to find you even if you didn't know where you are. It is called e911 or enhanced 911.

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

#93

Post by hnha »

antimagic wrote: post #88
_mulder_ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At some point a telecom is going to realize that they could make a tidy profit by selling location traffic data to third parties, and that sort of thing needs to be prevented in law. The year 1990 called and wants it's comment back!

You're saying that telecoms are already selling the data? Or that there are already laws preventing the sale of such data?

They sell it. See eg Vodafone and tomtom for a publicized example.

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

#94

Post by BrokenPipe »

w_t_payne wrote: post #80
herbig wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ha! My wife reads my email anyway. (And probably does other things to spy on me too).

Would you stop wasting time on the internets and just take out the trash ? While at it, can you bring upstairs the mirror in the garage ? I may have a cookie for you.

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

#95

Post by twoodfin »

dwaltrip wrote: post #64
blah32497 wrote: post #63

This is fear mongering. You could have some person out in the field tailing you and get the same info (maybe even more). You can also put up a camera and tag people as potential DUIs based on how close to the middle of the lane they are driving. So what? What's important to ask is what can the government do with the data. And NSA or not, what they are can do is limited by the law. No database changes that.

It's not the same goddamn thing. The article describes programmatic policing. THEY CAN APPLY THESE TECHNOLOGIES TO THE ENTIRE POPULATION AT ONCE AS THEY ARE NO LONGER LIMITED BY NUMBER OF OFFICERS AVAILABLE. This carries new, complex risks for society at large. How hard is that to understand? Relying solely on unclear "policy" and "access controls" to protect us from these risks is extremely foolish. Now, I'm not say…

It's not a serious risk, because people would hate it. If people in your community don't hate this kind of policing and continue to support it with their votes, you can move somewhere else.

Look at the fun local police departments have had trying to install "mere" red light cameras.

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

#97

Post by exarch »

rtpg wrote: post #34
ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. The situation described in the article would require coordinating a lot of data together. I have a hard time seeing how individu…

>The situation described in the article would require coordinating a lot of data together.

Do you think the federal government cares more about protecting your personal data, or their own top secret data?

Edward Snowden was able to single-handedly pull together reams and reams of data on a cornucopia of the most highly classified top secret projects of our government. He wasn't noticed at all, except for the fact that he outed himself.

Had Edward Snowden actually been a spy working for a foreign government, he probably wouldn't have been caught at all, and would still be working for the government.

>It's not just cell data that you need, but also license plate scans, court records, etc. These are all fairly independent things, unlikely to be stored in the same place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_fusion is the process of unifying disparate data sources in order to glean information not readily apparent by looking at the sources individually. Guess who is leading the charge in this budding field?

>Institutions can be built to be a lot harder to corrupt.

Once all this information is stored, its value is essentially incalculable. Almost no expense at all will be too high for a foreign government or a multinational corporation to pay for access to it - it is too profound a leg up on Bob the competitor, Joe the union organizer, and Sally the investigative reporter. The act of collecting and storing the information is, itself, opening Pandora's box.

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

#98

Post by puppetmaster3 »

That is not how this task is done by programmers, here's a newsflash: We use Bayes! A lot of it.

(ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network#Inference_and_... )

Translated for 'non programmers: computers don't think the way we do, they look at (big) data, there is no causality.

(ref: for example, if human brain can't diagnose disease, since we are limited in thinking to causality, we use computers: http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/opre.46.4.491?... )

Please don't talk about how computers detect something in big data, if you don't know some math, ex(' causal calculus')

Item to discuss: Getting pulled over and being told, we don't know why we pulled you over, but there's a 85% chance you are non-compliant.

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

#99

Post by summerdown2 »

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…

> The narrative has always seemed to be "check out how the NSA is going crazy over here!". But the reality is "check out how all these politicians are voting in these new laws allowing this to take place!"

I'd like to beg your pardon, because I'm not from the US. I'm British, so I'm sure there are large contextual elements of this situation I'm not understanding. But can anyone explain to me how this can happen?

I mean, I've grown up being told that there are two types of legal framework for a country: ones with a constitution and ones without. In countries without a constitution, like Britain, the politicians can do whatever they like. In fact, it's always a big principle in the UK that parliament cannot bind its successors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty

But in a country with a constitution, I always thought that wasn't correct. If a politician wants to change the law they can, except where that conflicts with the constitution.

Now, my understanding of America is that it has strong constitutional safeguards in place for such things as free speech and unreasonable searches.

Isn't there some constitutional court that people can take this kind of thing, to find out if it all really is legal? Because if politicians really can make any law they want, surely you don't actually have a constitution in the US at all?

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

#100

Post by summerdown2 »

csandreasen wrote: post #56
wissler wrote: post #37

Yet another example of how the government can use this information to "discredit radicalizers": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_...

Stewart Baker, who was quoted extensively for that article, had some interesting words regarding it[1]: When one of the authors, Ryan Grim, called me for comment, he said that while Glenn Greenwald was transitioning to his new Omidyar-funded venture he was temporarily publishing his Snowden leaks with HuffPo. So when he asked for my take on the NSA story, pretty much the first words out of my mouth were, “Why wouldn’…

> “Why wouldn’t we consider doing to Islamic extremists what Glenn Greenwald does routinely to Republicans?”

I think this is disingenuous. Of course the US should do to extremists what Glenn Greenwald does routinely to Republicans. I don't think anyone is saying exposing hypocrites is a bad thing, and it's certainly good jounalistic practice.

What people are upset about is the US spying on the whole internet to do it.

In addition, there's the slippery-slope argument that once this mechanism of surveillance is in place, they'll use it to modify everyone's behaviour, not just "the bad guys."

But it's hardly controversial that journalists reveal hypocrisy, is it?

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