271–280 of 648 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you feel guilt over creating them?
Should they? The vast quantity of users find it incredibly useful and have no reason to be concerned about governments or third parties being able to determine their geographic location, because governments or third parties don't generally care.
Throwaway account. I work in location / mapping / geo. Some of us have been waiting for this to blow (which it hasn't yet). The public has zero idea how much personal location data is available. It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually…
if you want to get it to blow up then (based on past experience of what seems to catch regulator/legislator interest) I'd say that someone tracking the locations of a load of politicians for a while, finding things of interest about places they've visited and then publishing on a news outlet would do the job.
More effective would be to track a few key politicians, such as those on the committees that would deal with regulating these things, and also a few reporters who have agreed beforehand to participate.
Then the tracking on the politicians is turned over to the politicians, but NOT made public. The reporters write stories about this, illustrating the tracking detail by publishing what it showed about them.
This approach gets the news out to the public, personally shows the key politicians the scope of the issue (and that they are vulnerable too), and lets the public know that the politicians have seen proof of how serious the issue is so that the politicians know that they need to get to work on this because their opponents come the next election will certainly be gearing up to use it as an issue if they do not.
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A better idea would be to ban cell carriers (and anyone else) from using location data for anything except explicitly permitted by law, like help in emergencies or conducting investigations. That doesn't do anything to protect your data from being accessed by the State, which is actually the bigger problem.
If it does great harm for the state to have this data, and also great harm for the cell carriers to have this data... Why thwart one great harm yet happily tolerate the other?
If Starbucks knows my location, they can send me a coupon if I enter a Dunkin' Donuts store. If the State knows my location they can falsely accuse me of a murder that I just happened to be near the location of and - if I'm unlucky or have a bad lawyer - execute me for it.
That's not, of course, to say that there aren't some cases where a private business having access to my location could have a deleterious effect. But here's the rub: if you rely on regulation to prevent those cases, you're right back to needing to trust the State, which is - IMO - a foolish proposition.
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How can one prevent this and still carry a cell phone? Would keeping one's phone in a faraday bag defeat this constant tracking?
A good start would be using a prepaid mobile phone (paid with cash, via an intermediary to avoid appearing on store CCTV), plus using phone apps that are not tied to your real identity. A Faraday bag for the phone when it's not in use. Honestly, it just depends on how paranoid you want to get, and who your adversary is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A better idea would be to ban cell carriers (and anyone else) from using location data for anything except explicitly permitted by law, like help in emergencies or conducting investigations. That doesn't do anything to protect your data from being accessed by the State, which is actually the bigger problem.
That doesn't mean banning corporations from exploiting your location is a bad idea, even if it's not the optimal privacy-enabling solution.
The problem with the current setup is that we don't know who's gaining access, when they're gaining it, what they're doing with it, etc. Once the cell carriers have it, there's no easy way of knowing who they are selling the data to, and who that entity sells it to in turn, and so on.
Sadly, I don't see a good way to resolve this at the moment. If you use a cell-phone the carrier can always get your (at last approximate) location through triangulation. And regulation only makes sense if you trust the State, and I would like to think we've all learned better than to do that by now. So what do we do?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
if you want to get it to blow up then (based on past experience of what seems to catch regulator/legislator interest) I'd say that someone tracking the locations of a load of politicians for a while, finding things of interest about places they've visited and then publishing on a news outlet would do the job.
Good way to loose your job very quickly. I don't think we should have to rely on somebody sacrificing themselves to make a difference.
1) Be an investigative Journalist
2) Purchase access to these location vendors data
3) Correlate data with known mobile numbers of politicians
4) Find things in data that might be of interest to readers (e.g. "politician x was noted to be in the same place as Lobbyist y on 5 different occasions")
5) Publish Story :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you feel guilt over creating them?
Should they? The vast quantity of users find it incredibly useful and have no reason to be concerned about governments or third parties being able to determine their geographic location, because governments or third parties don't generally care.
The worst part is there isn't any possible way I know of to defend yourself against this other than not having a phone.
A while ago I thought of a very neat 'future job': you walk around town with somebody else's phone. So if you 'need to be' somewhere, you just hire this service, deliver your phone, which will be returned to you, and there goes your track record.
I need my phone, especially when I'm out
Earlier quoted context omitted.
if you want to get it to blow up then (based on past experience of what seems to catch regulator/legislator interest) I'd say that someone tracking the locations of a load of politicians for a while, finding things of interest about places they've visited and then publishing on a news outlet would do the job.
Your approach starts off by making the very politicians that you want to help you extremely pissed off at you. More effective would be to track a few key politicians, such as those on the committees that would deal with regulating these things, and also a few reporters who have agreed beforehand to participate. Then the tracking on the politicians is turned over to the politicians, but NOT made public. The reporters…
My idea is based on the fact that in my experience people rarely really care about privacy until it personally affects them.