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They didn't use their metro cards but did use their cellphones, as it can be seen in the pictures. The government can easily know that they were there, as they
by aurelianito 7y ago
They didn't use their metro cards but did use their cellphones, as it can be seen in the pictures. The government can easily know that they were there, as they can be triangulated using the cellphone towers information.
Not using their cards is useless.
- bt3 7y agoMetro station are typically underground as well. So even a very precise triangulation could place you logically in a building above ground.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoUnless there are bluetooth beacons or cell repeaters underground.
- realusername 7y agoWith one million people on the street, I don't know if that information is really useful in this case.
- kazinator 7y agoBut then that reasoning could apply to the train cards.
- joecot 7y agoUsing triangulation to track a single person is one thing. Using it to track a million would be incredibly tedious. Whereas getting a list of everyone who got off at specific stations in specific timeframes is likely a single SQL query.
- throwaway1997 7y agoOur train cards (Octopus card) are often linked to our bank accounts so that we can use the Automatic Add Value Service (AAVS). The only people travelling to Causeway Bay and from Admiralty at that time would be protestors so it would be fairly trivial to link protestors to individual identities using the cards. It wouldn't be too hard triangulating the cell towers because we have a huge population density and, hence, cell towers attached to nearly every building. But I feel this data would be harder to get hold of and may catch the hundreds of thousands of "innocent" people who live in those buildings.
- dbuder 7y agoThis is merely a challenge for the glorious revolution, don't you want to bring harmony to your country?
- ladzoppelin 7y agoYou spot 4 people using their phones without any context or knowledge and say not using the card was "useless". Is there something I am missing?
- fwn 7y agoMost people don't understand the incremental nature of privacy. I don't mean that in a dismissive way: I think that's a seductive thought and the root of many crude, defeatist attitudes towards informational self-determination.
- helloviper 7y agoThere are several factors. - They mainly fear prosecution after the protests and the travel card as a evidence of their presence. Cell tower triangulation fair worse in court. - Many people are also using burner cards which are easy to purchase in Hong Kong. - The protest was decentralized and was mainly organized with internet forums and instant messaging software. Not using a travel card is only a mild inconvenience.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoBurner SIMs or burner phones + SIMs? As long a the government can link the IMEI to a person there's not much anonymity bought with a burner SIM. Using a burner transit card isn't nothing, but there's pretty good surveillance infrastructure in place already (e.g. the hospitals).