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How a “location API” allows cops to figure out where we all are in real-time
- Rjevski 8y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17046632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17046632
- ghba66 8y ago>In one, a woman sentenced to drug rehab left the center but was eventually located by an official using the service. Other examples include an official who found a missing Alzheimer’s patient and detectives who used “precise location information positioning” to get “within 42 feet of the suspect’s location” in a murder case. So a junkie, an Alzheimer's patient and a murdered were found using this system. Yeah, way to make me feel sympathetic
- DenisM 8y agoA lot of crimes can be solved or prevented if we ditch all constitutional protections and give unlimited power to the state. Still not a good idea.
- random4369 8y agoYou can stop 100% of crimes with a 100% effective law enforcement mechanism. The term for that is authoritarian dystopia. Our ancestors recognised this a long time ago, and recognised that there's an intrinsic balance between individual freedoms and the degree to which laws are enforced. We are shifting hard and fast to the extreme authoritarian end of that scale.
- jtbayly 8y agoNot to get technical on you, but you still can't stop 100% in a authoritarian dystopia. That's called science fiction. :) You might be able to punish 100% though.
- random4369 8y agoThere's nothing impossible about it. It's merely a question of resources. Pervasive surveillance+ML coupled with an implanted device which incapacitates an individual would get you there. Fast forward to an Elon Musk future where everyone has a neural lace, feeding their every thought and intent to pervasive surveillance. Futuristic? Sure. But not far off and certainly not impossible.
- philipov 8y agoNeural lace? You are literally telling us a science fiction story.
- jacquesm 8y ago> There's nothing impossible about it. Of course it is. I could be perfectly normal and ok, you invite me to dinner, we sit down, I don't like the way you prepared the potatoes, take my fork and stab you without any warning at all. Even if you survive a crime has been committed.
- Can_Not 8y agoYou can also prevent 100% of crime with 100% decriminalization of unlawful activities.
- JasonFruit 8y agoNo, it's not a balance between our rights and law enforcement; it's laws and law enforcement that stop where our rights begin. A "balance" inevitably ends with all law, all enforcement, and no rights.
- y4mi 8y agoJust like there can only ever be water planets, fire planets or earth planets. A single planets with vulcanos, oceans and continents can't exist. ... Not everything is an absolute. There is a reason why the court of law was generally depicted as an old ... balance (noun)
- JasonFruit 8y agoKind of a tortured analogy, if you ask me. Not everything is absolute, sure — but I think this is.
- ihsw2 8y agoMorality based on external pressures is never sufficient -- an environment where personal responsibility and individual liberties are abrogated in favor of absolute totalitarianism is an environment where violence and criminality can flourish without hesitation.
- vezycash 8y agoArticle said it was used to track a judge and law enforcement officers. The junkie example were cherry picked to elicit your kind of response from people. Can we be sure that stalkers & hitmen don't already use this service? This is one ammo against the encryption backdoor guys.
- jtbayly 8y agoSo if I move to the EU can I send a letter asking for them to remove all my data?
- filoleg 8y agoyou definitely can do that. Doesn't mean that anyone will care about this letter, though. If the data aggregation company doesn't provide services and has no presence within EU, then they aren't affected by your letters. At this point, good luck figuring out where it all aggregated from and trying to chase for sources.
- dannyw 8y agoIs there a way to opt out of this?
- jdavis703 8y agoTurn your cell phone off when you don't need it. I used to turn my phone off more, and should probably resume that habit.
- rcthompson 8y agoWould activating airplane mode be sufficient?
- Simon_says 8y agoHow do you know it’s off?
- rcthompson 8y agoIf you really need to be sure, you have to get a phone with a removable battery.
- amelius 8y agoBut also make sure to discharge those capacitors. Or turn it off and wrap it in tinfoil.
- anoncoward111 8y agoThis is a funny use case. Like, obviously I don't want my location tracked, but clearly I have just accepted that it's happening in exchange for being able to text my girlfriend. But, I'm trying to think of when this would actually be useful in my life. Maybe if I've been accused of a crime and the jail sentence is really steep, I become a fugitive and run away to live in the woods. But I still want to watch videos and take photos on my device offline? So i keep my phone in tinfoil when im using it?? haha
- walterbell 8y agoHere is the demo for tracking the current location of your phone: https://www.locationsmart.com/try/ https://www.locationsmart.com/try/ . Note that the demo requires granting "consent", but is not 100% clear if the consent applies beyond the scope of the one-time demo. If you've opted out of your carrier's privacy preference for "share location with advertisers", and this still works, what will the carrier say if you show them a screenshot of this third-party site providing your live location? That site also claims to provide the location of Wi-Fi mac addresses.
- rdiddly 8y agoWouldn't it be like two wrongs making a right, not to mention deliciously ironic, if these people and other personal data aggregators got prosecuted under FOSTA/SESTA. “...a fine, a prison term of up to 10 years, or both—on a person who, using a facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, owns, manages, or operates an interactive computer service (or attempts or conspires to do so) to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person."
- xg15 8y agoSo, question for the Cryptocurrency (and/or Tor) crowd: The situation described from the article is bad enough as it is - but currently at least all the intermediaries are registered businesses with people behind them. With some effort, a jornalist (or investigator) can track them down, find some humans behind the operations and confront them. The businesses, in turn, can't get away from that because payment probably still happens in dollars (or another fiat currency) and can be tracked. In the world crypto advocates are envisaging, Securus, 3CInteractive, LocationSmart etc presumably wouldn't registered businesses at all - they'd just be anonymous web services ran by some people living anywhere in the world, taking payment via Bitcoin. They wouldn't even need legal excuses like Securos' "authorization documents" because it wouldn't even be clear which jurisdiction applies - not even talking about actually prosecuting anyone. They could simply grant anyone access who pays. So, if all the hopes of the crypto community came true, how would we shut down (or even just "opt-out") of a service like this one?
- walterbell 8y agoHow would anonymous services obtain location info from telcos?
- codingdave 8y agoDon't use a smartphone. There are already numerous people who disavow their use because of security concerns. Join their ranks.
- dingaling 8y agoSmartphone vs featurephone vs dumbphone isn't relevant here. All have potential to be geo-located by a service like this.
- xg15 8y agoAnd once they find another way of tracking me, let's say by identifying my face on any kind of photo or video feed they can purchase, the solution is obviously not having a face, or what? Also, what does any of this have to do with my original question?