4 ms·

Surely the first thing you do while trying to hide is ditch the GPS enable microphone and camera you carry everywhere?

NikkiA 8y ago
As others have stated, ANYONE can get this data with the money. I used to work for a company in the mobile phone space, we had access to triangulation APIs and my ex-boss, often requested we track people who owed him money, just because we could.
philwelch 8y ago
The set of people who consistently make good life decisions rarely intersect with the set of people who are wanted by bounty hunters. (The vast majority of "bounty hunters" are bail bondsmen, or agents of bail bondsmen, trying to recapture someone who skipped bail. Skipping bail is rarely a good life decision, nor are the set of decisions that typically lead one to get arrested in the first place.)
- ghaff 8y ago
  The intersection of people who are familiar with maintaining operational security, have sufficient cash on hand to go on the lam for an extended period of time with some fake ID, etc. with those that Dog the Bounty Hunter is looking for is likely pretty small.
soneil 8y ago
That does seem to rather miss the point. What if you substitute "bounty hunter" for "the private investigator your ex-wife hired". "The stalker who's willing to put a couple of hundred dollars into an internet grudge", etc. At some point you have to realistic that perfectly innocent people can care about their privacy too.
- swerner 8y ago
  And those are still the harmless examples. Look at it from the female perspective: Got a violent ex-husband? A stalker? Are you a teenager who’s walking home alone after school? You have done nothing wrong, but you have a lot to hide.
  - hdfbdtbcdg 8y ago
    Sex/gender doesn't really come into it. A male with a violent ex wife should be just as afraid. Or indeed anyone of any gender with a violent ex of any gender.
- fixermark 8y ago
  Correct. Though if that's the point one is trying to make, one should probably make it via stories of those scenarios and not "This technology makes it easier for the justice system to find people trying to dodge the justice system."
jopsen 8y ago
This assumes criminals are thinking their actions through. Most probably haven't, yet we treat them as though they have when we apply a punishment..
- toss1 8y ago
  Are you saying that punishments should be lighter because some criminals don't think things through? In some cases they already are, e.g., killing someone by accident or in a fit of passion vs a premeditated murder are usually charged differently. Beyond that, it seems not unreasonable to apply the maxim that "maybe you should stay in jail here as if you'd thought it through, so you might actually think it through next time...".
  - jopsen 8y ago
    Maybe the entire concept of punishment is a mistake? I don't have a solution or a better alternative, just saying that punishment only really makes sense if agents in the system are rational.
    - toss1 8y ago
      Well, that's a whole different discussion. Assume that the criminals are 100% irrational, random, and not influenced by external inputs; even then, inprisonment has a value to society of containing the possibility of bad actions by those bad actors during the prison term. The fact that the recidivism rate is far less than 100% also tells us that criminals are not 100% random, irrational, and unresponsive to external inputs. A significant number do actually rehabilitate, whether by taking advantage of counseling, rethinking their choices, or simple fear of re-inprisonment. So yes, it seems that until we come up with something better, making the system more accurate is the way to go.
OJFord 8y ago
You didn't have to read TFA very far at all to see it's not about GPS.

As others have stated, ANYONE can get this data with the money. I used to work for a company in the mobile phone space, we had access to triangulation APIs and my ex-boss, often requested we track people who owed him money, just because we could.

philwelch 8y ago

The set of people who consistently make good life decisions rarely intersect with the set of people who are wanted by bounty hunters. (The vast majority of "bounty hunters" are bail bondsmen, or agents of bail bondsmen, trying to recapture someone who skipped bail. Skipping bail is rarely a good life decision, nor are the set of decisions that typically lead one to get arrested in the first place.)

ghaff 8y ago
The intersection of people who are familiar with maintaining operational security, have sufficient cash on hand to go on the lam for an extended period of time with some fake ID, etc. with those that Dog the Bounty Hunter is looking for is likely pretty small.

soneil 8y ago

That does seem to rather miss the point. What if you substitute "bounty hunter" for "the private investigator your ex-wife hired". "The stalker who's willing to put a couple of hundred dollars into an internet grudge", etc. At some point you have to realistic that perfectly innocent people can care about their privacy too.

swerner 8y ago
And those are still the harmless examples. Look at it from the female perspective: Got a violent ex-husband? A stalker? Are you a teenager who’s walking home alone after school? You have done nothing wrong, but you have a lot to hide.
- hdfbdtbcdg 8y ago
  Sex/gender doesn't really come into it. A male with a violent ex wife should be just as afraid. Or indeed anyone of any gender with a violent ex of any gender.
fixermark 8y ago
Correct. Though if that's the point one is trying to make, one should probably make it via stories of those scenarios and not "This technology makes it easier for the justice system to find people trying to dodge the justice system."

jopsen 8y ago

This assumes criminals are thinking their actions through. Most probably haven't, yet we treat them as though they have when we apply a punishment..

toss1 8y ago
Are you saying that punishments should be lighter because some criminals don't think things through? In some cases they already are, e.g., killing someone by accident or in a fit of passion vs a premeditated murder are usually charged differently. Beyond that, it seems not unreasonable to apply the maxim that "maybe you should stay in jail here as if you'd thought it through, so you might actually think it through next time...".
- jopsen 8y ago
  Maybe the entire concept of punishment is a mistake? I don't have a solution or a better alternative, just saying that punishment only really makes sense if agents in the system are rational.
  - toss1 8y ago
    Well, that's a whole different discussion. Assume that the criminals are 100% irrational, random, and not influenced by external inputs; even then, inprisonment has a value to society of containing the possibility of bad actions by those bad actors during the prison term. The fact that the recidivism rate is far less than 100% also tells us that criminals are not 100% random, irrational, and unresponsive to external inputs. A significant number do actually rehabilitate, whether by taking advantage of counseling, rethinking their choices, or simple fear of re-inprisonment. So yes, it seems that until we come up with something better, making the system more accurate is the way to go.

OJFord 8y ago

You didn't have to read TFA very far at all to see it's not about GPS.