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I don't buy the "privacy concern" excuse for this one at all. It almost feels like something one would do purely to spite or trick the regulators and/or consume

I don't buy the "privacy concern" excuse for this one at all. It almost feels like something one would do purely to spite or trick the regulators and/or consumers for caring about privacy.

makomk 7y ago
This effectively provided carriers with aggregated, deidentified information about people's locations. It's easy to see from the problems with things like Strava's heatmaps just how much of a privacy headache this could be and how hard it would be to ensure that nothing sensitive leaked out. Also, even if they did people are sensitive enough about privacy that with the right spin it could be turned into a muck-raking story and readers would believe it.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Strava heatmaps? I seem to recall the problem that came up there was exposure of military bases? Google could totally do this properly if it really wanted to.
- kregasaurusrex 7y ago
  I was about to suggest this, because anonymised data is often not-so-anonymous in aggregate. AT&T's recent disclosure of selling this information to bounty hunters[0] shows that sharing across companies isn't always done with the end goal of user privacy. Examples of over sharing can set precedents in court cases showing that such sensitive data can be treated as a liability rather than an appreciating asset in the wrong hands. [0] https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-sues-att-data-aggregators-giving-bounty-hunters-and-other-third-parties-access https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-sues-att-data-aggrega...
- PeterisP 7y ago
  If you're a carrier then you can do coarse-grained detection of everyone's location by timing-based triangulation - modern cell phone standards require knowing your distance from the cell tower (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_advance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_advance for example) so it's measured (and thus can be recorded if the carrier wants) as part of every keepalive connection and if you're in range for more than one tower, which is almost always, you can do triangulation. Of course, getting GPS data will be more accurate, but you should assume that it's unavoidable that the carrier can know roughly where all the phones are right now.
  - liability 7y ago
    I wager that coarse-grain location data is not so coarse these days. My carrier seems to know the instant I crossed a border for instance, sending me a text message about it within seconds. Years ago people used to get nailed with roaming charges simply because they were near a border and happened to accidentally get connected to a tower across the border, but that's not happening anymore. Their system knows enough about your location to know if you are across the border or just near it.
    - pdkl95 7y ago
      Coarse-grain location data becomes very revealing when you have enough timestamped data points. The NSA's CO-TRAVELER[1] program only needs to watch which towers cell phones use to build a very accurate map of each phone's pattern-of-life (where does a phone regularly travel/idle) and social interaction network (e.g. which phones travel/idle together). [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa-is-tracking-people-right-now/634/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa...
    - PeterisP 7y ago
      By course-grained I mean 0.5-1 km; which is very inaccurate compared to GPS accuracy (and isn't sufficient to tell which shop you're visiting, which has commercial value in sale of location data) but is accurate enough to tell which side of the border you're on, or which mall you're visiting, or when you're home or at work and when somewhere else.
  - lloeki 7y ago
    > Distance Don’t modern cell towers use beamforming? In which case they get direction as well as RTT, so triangulation is not even needed (although it makes location more precise)
    - PeterisP 7y ago
      I may be wrong, but I think that at least the vast majority current widely depoyed systems don't use beamforming, it seems more of a "here's a tech demo that we're going to roll out soon with 5G" thing. However, it's a bit the opposite way around - it's not that they can use beamforming to get direction, but it's that they need to know the location before they can use beamforming - so the protocol (5g?) needs to require the device to know or obtain its location, and send it to the cell tower so that it can apply beamforming; similar to how in 3g the protocol includes measurements and adjustments of the timing advance so that the distance can be used when actually transmitting data. So it would be essentially like "the phone can't turn off GPS or transmitting it to everyone, because it needs it for the radio to work".
- the-rc 7y ago
  One could also argue that it also provided law enforcement with another potential target for blanket, large scale search warrants.
- taneq 7y ago
  If they're so concerned about peoples' privacy, perhaps they could disable their own non-aggregated, individually recorded, indefinitely-retained, fine-grained, timestamped GPS data collection? Of course, their definition of 'privacy' is 'making sure nobody but Google gets your data' so they wouldn't see any need to do so.
bmdavi3 7y ago
Between the Nest cam recording light becoming "always on" and this, it's like they've been brainstorming ways to be "pro-privacy" with the caveat that it can't affect the data they collect. We'll probably see another one next week.
- sieabahlpark 7y ago
  Ever notice they do something very shortly after there is a stir about their internal anti privacy memos from the leaker?
- xg15 7y ago
  Not sure if intentional but both moves also seem rather passive-aggressive - i.e., they both affect relatively uncontroversial data uses that might cause noticeable problems for end-users when affected. E.g., they make a camera designed for surveillance helpfully indicate to any burglars whether or not the owner might be watching them - but they don't change the actual capabilities of Google to watch. They turning of location sharing for one feature that people would probably agree to share statistics with but keep the personal location history every android user gets by default untouched.

I don't buy the "privacy concern" excuse for this one at all. It almost feels like something one would do purely to spite or trick the regulators and/or consumers for caring about privacy.

makomk 7y ago

This effectively provided carriers with aggregated, deidentified information about people's locations. It's easy to see from the problems with things like Strava's heatmaps just how much of a privacy headache this could be and how hard it would be to ensure that nothing sensitive leaked out. Also, even if they did people are sensitive enough about privacy that with the right spin it could be turned into a muck-raking story and readers would believe it.

mehrdadn 7y ago
Strava heatmaps? I seem to recall the problem that came up there was exposure of military bases? Google could totally do this properly if it really wanted to.
kregasaurusrex 7y ago
I was about to suggest this, because anonymised data is often not-so-anonymous in aggregate. AT&T's recent disclosure of selling this information to bounty hunters[0] shows that sharing across companies isn't always done with the end goal of user privacy. Examples of over sharing can set precedents in court cases showing that such sensitive data can be treated as a liability rather than an appreciating asset in the wrong hands. [0] https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-sues-att-data-aggregators-giving-bounty-hunters-and-other-third-parties-access https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-sues-att-data-aggrega...
PeterisP 7y ago
If you're a carrier then you can do coarse-grained detection of everyone's location by timing-based triangulation - modern cell phone standards require knowing your distance from the cell tower (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_advance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timing_advance for example) so it's measured (and thus can be recorded if the carrier wants) as part of every keepalive connection and if you're in range for more than one tower, which is almost always, you can do triangulation. Of course, getting GPS data will be more accurate, but you should assume that it's unavoidable that the carrier can know roughly where all the phones are right now.
- liability 7y ago
  I wager that coarse-grain location data is not so coarse these days. My carrier seems to know the instant I crossed a border for instance, sending me a text message about it within seconds. Years ago people used to get nailed with roaming charges simply because they were near a border and happened to accidentally get connected to a tower across the border, but that's not happening anymore. Their system knows enough about your location to know if you are across the border or just near it.
  - pdkl95 7y ago
    Coarse-grain location data becomes very revealing when you have enough timestamped data points. The NSA's CO-TRAVELER[1] program only needs to watch which towers cell phones use to build a very accurate map of each phone's pattern-of-life (where does a phone regularly travel/idle) and social interaction network (e.g. which phones travel/idle together). [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa-is-tracking-people-right-now/634/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/how-the-nsa...
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    By course-grained I mean 0.5-1 km; which is very inaccurate compared to GPS accuracy (and isn't sufficient to tell which shop you're visiting, which has commercial value in sale of location data) but is accurate enough to tell which side of the border you're on, or which mall you're visiting, or when you're home or at work and when somewhere else.
- lloeki 7y ago
  > Distance Don’t modern cell towers use beamforming? In which case they get direction as well as RTT, so triangulation is not even needed (although it makes location more precise)
  - PeterisP 7y ago
    I may be wrong, but I think that at least the vast majority current widely depoyed systems don't use beamforming, it seems more of a "here's a tech demo that we're going to roll out soon with 5G" thing. However, it's a bit the opposite way around - it's not that they can use beamforming to get direction, but it's that they need to know the location before they can use beamforming - so the protocol (5g?) needs to require the device to know or obtain its location, and send it to the cell tower so that it can apply beamforming; similar to how in 3g the protocol includes measurements and adjustments of the timing advance so that the distance can be used when actually transmitting data. So it would be essentially like "the phone can't turn off GPS or transmitting it to everyone, because it needs it for the radio to work".
the-rc 7y ago
One could also argue that it also provided law enforcement with another potential target for blanket, large scale search warrants.
taneq 7y ago
If they're so concerned about peoples' privacy, perhaps they could disable their own non-aggregated, individually recorded, indefinitely-retained, fine-grained, timestamped GPS data collection? Of course, their definition of 'privacy' is 'making sure nobody but Google gets your data' so they wouldn't see any need to do so.

bmdavi3 7y ago

Between the Nest cam recording light becoming "always on" and this, it's like they've been brainstorming ways to be "pro-privacy" with the caveat that it can't affect the data they collect. We'll probably see another one next week.

sieabahlpark 7y ago
Ever notice they do something very shortly after there is a stir about their internal anti privacy memos from the leaker?
xg15 7y ago
Not sure if intentional but both moves also seem rather passive-aggressive - i.e., they both affect relatively uncontroversial data uses that might cause noticeable problems for end-users when affected. E.g., they make a camera designed for surveillance helpfully indicate to any burglars whether or not the owner might be watching them - but they don't change the actual capabilities of Google to watch. They turning of location sharing for one feature that people would probably agree to share statistics with but keep the personal location history every android user gets by default untouched.