6 ms·

I see the "if you don't like it, don't use it" suggestion quite a bit. Can't we advocate for better public understanding of, and decentralization of, location s

by rmxt 10y ago

I see the "if you don't like it, don't use it" suggestion quite a bit. Can't we advocate for better public understanding of, and decentralization of, location services while also acknowledging that the best way right now is to leave it in a metal box turned off? The concepts of privacy and location services are at odds with one another, but reducing it to "love it or leave it" leaves the potential middle ground of preserving some privacy while reaping the benefits of location-aware information unexplored.

tw04 10y ago
The general public thinks Edward Snowden is a traitor who should be hanged. How exactly are you planning on getting them onboard this cause? Hey guys - this is going to make a bunch of your apps work poorly or not at all, but it protects you from something you aren't informed enough or smart enough to be scared of in the first place. Please support me? Oh, and by the way, it'll make your phone cost more money.
- rmxt 10y ago
  I'm not sure that what people believe about Snowden is inextricably tied to people's perception of location tracking. In fact, I speculate that there are probably some people who both think Snowden is a traitor and think that corporations or the government shouldn't be location tracking them. (That's ignoring the futility that is speaking in broad strokes about "the general public".) Furthermore, I am not sure that any of those are necessarily a given. I'm not advocating for breaking apps or an abrupt shift to no location services, I'm not dismissing your average end-user's needs/desires or insulting their intelligence. I'm hypothesizing that there might be ways to get non-GPS location services out of the hands of a few big players. It theoretically wouldn't make your phone cost more money, but it might take the time-money-effort of people who build the systems (maybe open-source?). I'm trying to appeal to the people who build the systems and brainstorm ways to do that, not really rally the end-users to this particular cause.
  - tw04 10y ago
    >I'm trying to appeal to the people who build the systems and brainstorm ways to do that, not really rally the end-users to this particular cause. The people that "build the systems" are paid for by those corporations who make money by tracking you. Who exactly do you think is going to: A. Fund this new decentralized non-tracking utopia. B. Convince users already embedded in existing systems to switch to something less functional in order to not be tracked? EVERY project that's tried what you're describing has failed miserably because end-users just don't care. Can you cite even ONE example of a competing system that has focused on privacy that has garnered what can be considered even a modicum of success against an already entrenched player?
    - rmxt 10y ago
      Fair points. Someone has to "pay", whether through effort or money, for the new systems to garner traction. I agree that it is hard to see where the momentum could or would come from, and no I cannot name an instance where something has garnered significant traction. Some of the alternative android location services are at least functioning for technical users. (https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp) We return to my issue: does it being difficult and yet to be achieved mean that the people that are aware of potential drawbacks of the status quo should lay down and give up? That seems to be your implication.
      - tw04 10y ago
        No, my implication is it's (almost) an all-or nothing game. What good does it do me if out of all my friends and family, I'm the only one not using the popular services that track? So... the 2 hours a day I'm not with a family member or coworker or friend I can't be tracked? And to do so I literally have to disable everything on my phone manually (no more bluetooth streaming in the car, manually turn off the wifi on my phone every time I leave the house, somehow magically prevent the cell towers from tracking me). If you cannot get the general populous to agree and actively vote for privacy, you're fighting a battle that's already been lost.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > The general public thinks Edward Snowden is a traitor who should be hanged. At least in Germany there is hardly anybody who says something like that about Snowden. There are mostly two opinions about Snowden in Germany: 1. He is a hero - the opinion of the minority 2. They hardly care (but also have nothing negative to say about Snowden) - the opinion of the majority But there is hardly any opinion that he is a traitor (or even should be hanged - death penalty is a red line in Germany) - quite the opposite.
  - rebuilder 10y ago
    Then again, he didn't work for the German government. I don't doubt that Germans have a different view on such issues than USians, I'm just saying it would be surprising if they cared enough about a US whistleblower to want Snowden killed.
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > Then again, he didn't work for the German government. As I outlined in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272352 in Germany many people don't consider the government as "us", but as "them" (those who rule "us"). So I don't believe that there would be large hatred in the German population (in opposite to the politicians) if Snowden betrayed the German government instead.
  - tw04 10y ago
    So where's your public outcry to give him asylum? Sorry, what you claim to be the public perception, and the actions of your populace are completely misaligned. If the two prevailing mindsets were he's a hero and I don't care, then the he's a hero would be making a lot more noise, and the "I don't care" would probably give them half-hearted support just because they don't have a horse in the race and could therefore be easily convinced.
    - PavlovsCat 10y ago
      > So where's your public outcry to give him asylum? So where's the public outcry to jail the traitor? Just live with it, Germany's mileage varies drastically from the US, and the main reason is experience with the Nazis and the GDR. We know something you absolutely do not, and the world us asking Germany to learn from it, instead of the other way around, at its own peril. edit, just as a bonus, though I think the Spiegel isn't really that great: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/index-2013-45.html http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/index-2013-45.html This and variations of that exist aplenty.
- diegoperini 10y ago
  I live in a country with almost 80 million people and 99% percent of the population (this is optimistic) has never heard of Snowden. The country is Turkey therefore this may sound irrelevant but actually it can suggest that the real source of harm is not the opposing people, but the ignorant. Some reports: About freedom: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/turkey https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/turkey About education: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf
- YCode 10y ago
  > The general public thinks Edward Snowden is a traitor who should be hanged. Not really: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/22/most-young-americans-say-snowden-has-served-the-public-interest/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/22/most-young-a... Views are even better abroad.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
snoman 10y ago
> Can't we advocate for better public understanding of, and decentralization of, location services... No. It's a futile effort. There's too much to know about too many things in this world, and of the important things that people should know, this is pretty low on the list. It's up to the professionals (ie. us) to make decisions on behalf of those who can't, don't, and won't be able to understand the ramifications of those decisions (be it because they don't have the time, capability, capacity, or willingness to understand).
- hackuser 10y ago
  > There's too much to know about too many things in this world, and of the important things that people should know, this is pretty low on the list. It's up to the professionals (ie. us) to make decisions on behalf of those who can't ... Agreed. That also is what government is for, to protect citizens from abuse and dangers, via regulation. Banks and automobile companies can't sell fraudulent or dangerous products to everyday consumers, for example.
  - dhimes 10y ago
    I think this is so far beyond what your average professional politician is capable of understanding that it is hopeless. Their only choice is to believe the loudest voice.
    - easuter 10y ago
      The guy does have a point, yet is bring downvoted into oblivion. Government can play a role in the improvement in the everyday life of it's citizens. As an example, I pay 25 euros/month for 200mbps fibre internet thanks to my government's antitrust laws. How are you doing on this front, Americans?
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > Their only choice is to believe the loudest voice. Almost everything politicians - as well as other decision makers from CEOs to investment advisors to you and I - decide is outside their personal expertise. We all retain experts, one way or another, to research and report on the technical details, and our analysis isn't at all limited to the loudest voice. Governments regulate airplane safety, but the politicians aren't aeronautical engineers and pilots. It doesn't just regulate but operates entire militaries, soup-to-nuts, with incredibly advanced technology, complex situations, and high stakes, yet it is civilians who are in charge (in the U.S. and most advanced countries) - the likely next U.S. Secretary of Defense will be the first ex-military officer since 1951.
unicornporn 10y ago
> I see the "if you don't like it, don't use it" suggestion quite a bit. It's the liberals standard reply: vote with your wallet. This way of thinking sometimes reduce democracy to economics.
- nxc18 10y ago
  Since when is voting with your wallet a liberal thing? If anything, that whole concept is a strong argument against traditional regulation (driven by actual votes), trusting the market to take care of it.
  - rebuilder 10y ago
    I'm guessing parent meant liberalism as the term is used in Europe. Roughly, liberal(EUR)=conservative(US), although mostly I see both terms used with the "neo" prefix nowadays.
    - jakobloekke 10y ago
      Yes! It's an important difference. In Denmark for instance, the term "liberal" in politics denotes free-market enthusiasm and almost nothing else. I can imagine this would cause some misunderstandings when read into an American context.
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      Economic liberalism i.e. lowered regulation and absence of tariffs. "Liberal" the way Americans use it is an Americanism, and "neoliberal" was a term invented to talk about economic liberalism in the US.
- megablast 10y ago
  > It's the liberals standard reply What an odd thing to say.
Frondo 10y ago
Yes, yes we absolutely can. Tracking people is a technological thing, but the power to do anything with that information is a legal and social thing. The information's out there, and it'll never go away. What we need to do is work to steer the societal expectations that one's location is private, important, protected by law, not divulgable by the phone company except under penalty of law, not sellable for marketing purposes, etc. This is a social problem. We fix it with laws.
yarou 10y ago
> Can't we advocate for better public understanding of, and decentralization of, location services... Could you clarify what you mean by this? Positioning technologies in general are decentralized. You don't have to rely on the GPS L1 signal, most receivers support GLONASS, BeiDou, and Galileo outside of the box. You don't need to use WiFi positioning, Bluetooth ranging, or cellular positioning. These tools just give you finer granularity for your current position, minimizing Dilution of Precision.
kevin_nisbet 10y ago
While the poster your responding to mentioned a number of technologies, let's look at CGI/CGI-TA/UTDOA via the cell network, as that's what I have experience with. While I'm honestly not that familiar with CGI-TA/UTDOA, the CGI is referring to the Cell Global Identity, which you can think of as a unique identity for every cell in existence (tower + direction + frequency IIRC). This might cover a very large area (a rural cell site might be 10+ km's away), or very small area (like an in building wireless system). The carrier tends to have a database of the location of each CGI, along with GPS coordinates of where the cell is located. So, what happens, is by standard your CGI (or technology equivalent, because different technology use slightly different terminology), get's included in most messaging the cell network sends internally. While not perfect, this can be used to make guesses about your current location. This is actually important for the cellular network, because if you have millions of devices, every message you send to the wrong location costs you money. So whenever your radio active (on a phone call, downloading a web page, your email in the background), all of the data for these services is sent to the cell servicing you. There isn't enough radio bandwidth to deliver this somewhere else or to a wide area. It also get's used when you're radio inactive, to keep track of how to page you. Paging, is when the network needs to notify your UE (User Equipment), that it needs to do something (incoming call, sms, or data). Again, from an efficiency perspective, I don't want to page Vancouver when you're in Toronto. So one of the way's the network does this, is even when you go radio idle, it remember's the cell you were last connected to. Because when the network wants to page you, it thinks the best location is the same location it saw you last. Now I don't remember UMTS as well as I should, but in LTE there are a few gotcha's. When the device is idle, it only needs to re-register every 1.5 hours, which means the device will also talk to the network every 1.5 hours to say, I'm still registered, don't clean up your resources, which will include the CGI. There is also a rule, that say's when you exit your tracking area list, you must notify the network to register with the new tracking area you can currently be paged at. The Tracking Area, is a way to group cell's together into usually a relatively small area, but will be based on what the engineering group at your operator has decided. And you can have multiple of these assigned to the device. The idea basically is, you can make small movements around the network, but don't need to update the network for every cell change when idle. The network paging algorithm, will then page your last registered cell, followed by the tracking area list (and possibly some other heuristic features), to find your device and deliver your call. From a privacy point of view, you can then imagine what this allows, was your phone near your girlfriends all night, or your own residence. However, if your local store is close enough, it might not be able to tell if you walked over to the corner store, especially if the CGI doesn't change (1.5 hour re-registration timer), someone might think you were just sitting at home if each registration is at the same location. So, while this is all public standard, it's definitely difficult to articulate in terms, even technologists can follow, because cellular technology is it's own complicated piece of technology. This is why I believe it generally get's distilled down to the if you don't like it don't use it argument, because it's too difficult to articulate accurately, and in the end the cell network tracks the relative position of your phone in order to just service you as a customer. Even some of what I just said is likely slightly wrong / miss-leading / only applied to the network I worked on, as I haven't read all these standards recently. And the CGI/TAI is generally the type of historical information that might be available from your operator, however, if you're the active target of an investigation, they can basically just ping (page) the device and wake it up to see where it is slightly more accurately. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to test whether the messages used by e911 GPS tracking gave a notification on the handset or not, but that's another way, at least in LTE, where you can ask the phone for it's current GPS coordinates. I honestly don't know what the middle ground is, or how to have a truly informed public. I'm honestly not even sure how to have an informed discussion about this with technologists, as I think there is quite a lot of miss-information floating around. I suspect it's something easy to complain about, or make assumptions, like the cell network has perfect GPS style coordinates on every device every minute of every day, which is simply untrue. What it can be used for, is catching a criminal in a lie. I didn't even see my girlfriend that night, I was at home in bed. If a record say's otherwise, it can focus the investigation because the investigators found a discrepancy in the story. Could this be used to catch a politician in a lie, or blackmail someone, I'm sure it certainly could. Does that actually happen, I have no idea, and I suspect if it does it's far more limited that most people would imagine. However, perhaps I have a poor imagination, but having worked many times with these records (including plotting), I highly suspect most people have nothing to worry about. Are there exceptions, absolutely. So if your a criminal, I'd say don't use your phone to commit the crime, or if your worried that a state actor wants to track you down for something your working on, also, don't use your phone. And just in closing, personally, I'm far more afraid of the carriers trying to make money off my data and personal information, and interfere with my service to achieve their profit margin, than I am of any state collecting my CGI and network signalling and being able to use that information in a meanginful way.

by rmxt 10y ago

tw04 10y ago

The general public thinks Edward Snowden is a traitor who should be hanged. How exactly are you planning on getting them onboard this cause? Hey guys - this is going to make a bunch of your apps work poorly or not at all, but it protects you from something you aren't informed enough or smart enough to be scared of in the first place. Please support me? Oh, and by the way, it'll make your phone cost more money.

rmxt 10y ago
I'm not sure that what people believe about Snowden is inextricably tied to people's perception of location tracking. In fact, I speculate that there are probably some people who both think Snowden is a traitor and think that corporations or the government shouldn't be location tracking them. (That's ignoring the futility that is speaking in broad strokes about "the general public".) Furthermore, I am not sure that any of those are necessarily a given. I'm not advocating for breaking apps or an abrupt shift to no location services, I'm not dismissing your average end-user's needs/desires or insulting their intelligence. I'm hypothesizing that there might be ways to get non-GPS location services out of the hands of a few big players. It theoretically wouldn't make your phone cost more money, but it might take the time-money-effort of people who build the systems (maybe open-source?). I'm trying to appeal to the people who build the systems and brainstorm ways to do that, not really rally the end-users to this particular cause.
- tw04 10y ago
  >I'm trying to appeal to the people who build the systems and brainstorm ways to do that, not really rally the end-users to this particular cause. The people that "build the systems" are paid for by those corporations who make money by tracking you. Who exactly do you think is going to: A. Fund this new decentralized non-tracking utopia. B. Convince users already embedded in existing systems to switch to something less functional in order to not be tracked? EVERY project that's tried what you're describing has failed miserably because end-users just don't care. Can you cite even ONE example of a competing system that has focused on privacy that has garnered what can be considered even a modicum of success against an already entrenched player?
  - rmxt 10y ago
    Fair points. Someone has to "pay", whether through effort or money, for the new systems to garner traction. I agree that it is hard to see where the momentum could or would come from, and no I cannot name an instance where something has garnered significant traction. Some of the alternative android location services are at least functioning for technical users. (https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_UnifiedNlp) We return to my issue: does it being difficult and yet to be achieved mean that the people that are aware of potential drawbacks of the status quo should lay down and give up? That seems to be your implication.
    - tw04 10y ago
      No, my implication is it's (almost) an all-or nothing game. What good does it do me if out of all my friends and family, I'm the only one not using the popular services that track? So... the 2 hours a day I'm not with a family member or coworker or friend I can't be tracked? And to do so I literally have to disable everything on my phone manually (no more bluetooth streaming in the car, manually turn off the wifi on my phone every time I leave the house, somehow magically prevent the cell towers from tracking me). If you cannot get the general populous to agree and actively vote for privacy, you're fighting a battle that's already been lost.
wolfgke 10y ago
> The general public thinks Edward Snowden is a traitor who should be hanged. At least in Germany there is hardly anybody who says something like that about Snowden. There are mostly two opinions about Snowden in Germany: 1. He is a hero - the opinion of the minority 2. They hardly care (but also have nothing negative to say about Snowden) - the opinion of the majority But there is hardly any opinion that he is a traitor (or even should be hanged - death penalty is a red line in Germany) - quite the opposite.
- rebuilder 10y ago
  Then again, he didn't work for the German government. I don't doubt that Germans have a different view on such issues than USians, I'm just saying it would be surprising if they cared enough about a US whistleblower to want Snowden killed.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > Then again, he didn't work for the German government. As I outlined in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272352 in Germany many people don't consider the government as "us", but as "them" (those who rule "us"). So I don't believe that there would be large hatred in the German population (in opposite to the politicians) if Snowden betrayed the German government instead.
- tw04 10y ago
  So where's your public outcry to give him asylum? Sorry, what you claim to be the public perception, and the actions of your populace are completely misaligned. If the two prevailing mindsets were he's a hero and I don't care, then the he's a hero would be making a lot more noise, and the "I don't care" would probably give them half-hearted support just because they don't have a horse in the race and could therefore be easily convinced.
  - PavlovsCat 10y ago
    > So where's your public outcry to give him asylum? So where's the public outcry to jail the traitor? Just live with it, Germany's mileage varies drastically from the US, and the main reason is experience with the Nazis and the GDR. We know something you absolutely do not, and the world us asking Germany to learn from it, instead of the other way around, at its own peril. edit, just as a bonus, though I think the Spiegel isn't really that great: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/index-2013-45.html http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/index-2013-45.html This and variations of that exist aplenty.
diegoperini 10y ago
I live in a country with almost 80 million people and 99% percent of the population (this is optimistic) has never heard of Snowden. The country is Turkey therefore this may sound irrelevant but actually it can suggest that the real source of harm is not the opposing people, but the ignorant. Some reports: About freedom: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/turkey https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/turkey About education: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf
YCode 10y ago
> The general public thinks Edward Snowden is a traitor who should be hanged. Not really: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/22/most-young-americans-say-snowden-has-served-the-public-interest/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/22/most-young-a... Views are even better abroad.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

snoman 10y ago

> Can't we advocate for better public understanding of, and decentralization of, location services... No. It's a futile effort. There's too much to know about too many things in this world, and of the important things that people should know, this is pretty low on the list. It's up to the professionals (ie. us) to make decisions on behalf of those who can't, don't, and won't be able to understand the ramifications of those decisions (be it because they don't have the time, capability, capacity, or willingness to understand).

hackuser 10y ago
> There's too much to know about too many things in this world, and of the important things that people should know, this is pretty low on the list. It's up to the professionals (ie. us) to make decisions on behalf of those who can't ... Agreed. That also is what government is for, to protect citizens from abuse and dangers, via regulation. Banks and automobile companies can't sell fraudulent or dangerous products to everyday consumers, for example.
- dhimes 10y ago
  I think this is so far beyond what your average professional politician is capable of understanding that it is hopeless. Their only choice is to believe the loudest voice.
  - easuter 10y ago
    The guy does have a point, yet is bring downvoted into oblivion. Government can play a role in the improvement in the everyday life of it's citizens. As an example, I pay 25 euros/month for 200mbps fibre internet thanks to my government's antitrust laws. How are you doing on this front, Americans?
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > Their only choice is to believe the loudest voice. Almost everything politicians - as well as other decision makers from CEOs to investment advisors to you and I - decide is outside their personal expertise. We all retain experts, one way or another, to research and report on the technical details, and our analysis isn't at all limited to the loudest voice. Governments regulate airplane safety, but the politicians aren't aeronautical engineers and pilots. It doesn't just regulate but operates entire militaries, soup-to-nuts, with incredibly advanced technology, complex situations, and high stakes, yet it is civilians who are in charge (in the U.S. and most advanced countries) - the likely next U.S. Secretary of Defense will be the first ex-military officer since 1951.

unicornporn 10y ago

> I see the "if you don't like it, don't use it" suggestion quite a bit. It's the liberals standard reply: vote with your wallet. This way of thinking sometimes reduce democracy to economics.

nxc18 10y ago
Since when is voting with your wallet a liberal thing? If anything, that whole concept is a strong argument against traditional regulation (driven by actual votes), trusting the market to take care of it.
- rebuilder 10y ago
  I'm guessing parent meant liberalism as the term is used in Europe. Roughly, liberal(EUR)=conservative(US), although mostly I see both terms used with the "neo" prefix nowadays.
  - jakobloekke 10y ago
    Yes! It's an important difference. In Denmark for instance, the term "liberal" in politics denotes free-market enthusiasm and almost nothing else. I can imagine this would cause some misunderstandings when read into an American context.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    Economic liberalism i.e. lowered regulation and absence of tariffs. "Liberal" the way Americans use it is an Americanism, and "neoliberal" was a term invented to talk about economic liberalism in the US.
megablast 10y ago
> It's the liberals standard reply What an odd thing to say.

Frondo 10y ago

Yes, yes we absolutely can. Tracking people is a technological thing, but the power to do anything with that information is a legal and social thing. The information's out there, and it'll never go away. What we need to do is work to steer the societal expectations that one's location is private, important, protected by law, not divulgable by the phone company except under penalty of law, not sellable for marketing purposes, etc. This is a social problem. We fix it with laws.

yarou 10y ago

> Can't we advocate for better public understanding of, and decentralization of, location services... Could you clarify what you mean by this? Positioning technologies in general are decentralized. You don't have to rely on the GPS L1 signal, most receivers support GLONASS, BeiDou, and Galileo outside of the box. You don't need to use WiFi positioning, Bluetooth ranging, or cellular positioning. These tools just give you finer granularity for your current position, minimizing Dilution of Precision.

kevin_nisbet 10y ago

While the poster your responding to mentioned a number of technologies, let's look at CGI/CGI-TA/UTDOA via the cell network, as that's what I have experience with. While I'm honestly not that familiar with CGI-TA/UTDOA, the CGI is referring to the Cell Global Identity, which you can think of as a unique identity for every cell in existence (tower + direction + frequency IIRC). This might cover a very large area (a rural cell site might be 10+ km's away), or very small area (like an in building wireless system). The carrier tends to have a database of the location of each CGI, along with GPS coordinates of where the cell is located. So, what happens, is by standard your CGI (or technology equivalent, because different technology use slightly different terminology), get's included in most messaging the cell network sends internally. While not perfect, this can be used to make guesses about your current location. This is actually important for the cellular network, because if you have millions of devices, every message you send to the wrong location costs you money. So whenever your radio active (on a phone call, downloading a web page, your email in the background), all of the data for these services is sent to the cell servicing you. There isn't enough radio bandwidth to deliver this somewhere else or to a wide area. It also get's used when you're radio inactive, to keep track of how to page you. Paging, is when the network needs to notify your UE (User Equipment), that it needs to do something (incoming call, sms, or data). Again, from an efficiency perspective, I don't want to page Vancouver when you're in Toronto. So one of the way's the network does this, is even when you go radio idle, it remember's the cell you were last connected to. Because when the network wants to page you, it thinks the best location is the same location it saw you last. Now I don't remember UMTS as well as I should, but in LTE there are a few gotcha's. When the device is idle, it only needs to re-register every 1.5 hours, which means the device will also talk to the network every 1.5 hours to say, I'm still registered, don't clean up your resources, which will include the CGI. There is also a rule, that say's when you exit your tracking area list, you must notify the network to register with the new tracking area you can currently be paged at. The Tracking Area, is a way to group cell's together into usually a relatively small area, but will be based on what the engineering group at your operator has decided. And you can have multiple of these assigned to the device. The idea basically is, you can make small movements around the network, but don't need to update the network for every cell change when idle. The network paging algorithm, will then page your last registered cell, followed by the tracking area list (and possibly some other heuristic features), to find your device and deliver your call. From a privacy point of view, you can then imagine what this allows, was your phone near your girlfriends all night, or your own residence. However, if your local store is close enough, it might not be able to tell if you walked over to the corner store, especially if the CGI doesn't change (1.5 hour re-registration timer), someone might think you were just sitting at home if each registration is at the same location. So, while this is all public standard, it's definitely difficult to articulate in terms, even technologists can follow, because cellular technology is it's own complicated piece of technology. This is why I believe it generally get's distilled down to the if you don't like it don't use it argument, because it's too difficult to articulate accurately, and in the end the cell network tracks the relative position of your phone in order to just service you as a customer. Even some of what I just said is likely slightly wrong / miss-leading / only applied to the network I worked on, as I haven't read all these standards recently. And the CGI/TAI is generally the type of historical information that might be available from your operator, however, if you're the active target of an investigation, they can basically just ping (page) the device and wake it up to see where it is slightly more accurately. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to test whether the messages used by e911 GPS tracking gave a notification on the handset or not, but that's another way, at least in LTE, where you can ask the phone for it's current GPS coordinates. I honestly don't know what the middle ground is, or how to have a truly informed public. I'm honestly not even sure how to have an informed discussion about this with technologists, as I think there is quite a lot of miss-information floating around. I suspect it's something easy to complain about, or make assumptions, like the cell network has perfect GPS style coordinates on every device every minute of every day, which is simply untrue. What it can be used for, is catching a criminal in a lie. I didn't even see my girlfriend that night, I was at home in bed. If a record say's otherwise, it can focus the investigation because the investigators found a discrepancy in the story. Could this be used to catch a politician in a lie, or blackmail someone, I'm sure it certainly could. Does that actually happen, I have no idea, and I suspect if it does it's far more limited that most people would imagine. However, perhaps I have a poor imagination, but having worked many times with these records (including plotting), I highly suspect most people have nothing to worry about. Are there exceptions, absolutely. So if your a criminal, I'd say don't use your phone to commit the crime, or if your worried that a state actor wants to track you down for something your working on, also, don't use your phone. And just in closing, personally, I'm far more afraid of the carriers trying to make money off my data and personal information, and interfere with my service to achieve their profit margin, than I am of any state collecting my CGI and network signalling and being able to use that information in a meanginful way.