5 ms·

Radiated energy in the radio spectrum is very different than radiated reflected energy in the optical spectrum?

shadowgovt 6y ago
It goes through walls and curtains, for starters. In radio, we're all living in glass houses. ;) Privacy guidelines and analogies around what is and is not acceptable to view emitting from someone's domicile start to break down when everyone's in a glass house.
- afiori 6y ago
  but we do not live in glass houses[1] and privacy is not defined in such specific terms. I am told that I am no good at making analogies, but I will try my best. Assume I am cursed with the magical ability of seeing through walls. I can freely spend my time staring at my neighbors an spy all of their domestic lives. This is clearly different than if a non-magical me were to install spy-cams in their houses, but we agree that I should not _stare_. Given the hypothetical and magical nature of the situation it is impossible to say whether this would be illegal or not, but soft-anonimity is an important social concept. [1] off topic: I caught myself pondering about how the thickness of walls/ceilings necessary to build a stable house out of glass (especially considering seismic areas) would probably make the walls quite opaque.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    > but we agree that I should not _stare_ In the radio spectra, we do not. It is generally neither punishable formally in US law nor considered informally to be bad form to hook up an aerial and see what you can hear. There's a whole hobby space around amateur radio, and in the US, it's never been considered the fault of the listener if they hear something the sender would have preferred they not. Your analogy breaks down because your neighbors aren't sitting passively in their homes while you stare at them; they're having a rave with all the wall-penetrating radiation emitters they've installed. They could cease doing that if they wanted a bit more privacy. Or, more practically, they could take the basic necessary steps to encrypt their inter-device communications. If I pop my laptop open right now and look at the SSID list I can receive from the dozen houses on my block, am I being rude?
    - afiori 6y ago
      > In the radio spectra, we do not. But in the neighbor analogy we do, that is it is perfectly fine for my neighbor to stare at their walls, less so if they can see through it. > If I pop my laptop open right now and look at the SSID list I can receive from the dozen houses on my block, am I being rude? As far as I know I would need to play with my wifi drivers to store all the unencrypted data packets that reach the wifi antenna. I know that I am broadcasting some information about my wifi (at least the name, probably more), but I expect my neighbor not to methodically try and spy on me. The same way I expect them not to install a security camera pointed at my windows. I am blasting "radiation" also every time I speak or press a key on my laptop and similarly I expect my neighbor not to install a matrix of super sensitive microphones to record every word I say or try and reconstruct what I am writing from the sound and rythm of my key-presses (it was possible in some research projects I saw some time ago). In the radio spectra the only difference I see is that it is unreasonable to demand of people that are already using antennas to filter out all unencrypted wifi data. I understand why this might be legal, I still think that google exploited and is clearly on the wrong side of morality regarding storing also the unencrypted payloads.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        I think we don't disagree that soft anonymity is an important social concept. We disagree that radio broadcast fits the soft-anonymity space. It never has in the past and we probably do more harm than good adding it (for starters, we kill the hobby radio industry. We give massive power to the largest owners of radios---broadcast conglomerates---that could start claiming their broadcasts were intended for only their audience and hit people with a cudgel for tuning in. And there's a lot of ugly corner cases where the radio specturm is shared; if my neighbor's broken wifi is stomping all over my signal quality and I record packets to prove it, should I be held liable that I grabbed that data when their radio activity was harming my ability to use my radios?). We'd be better served by teaching people "What you broadcast with a radio is broadcast. Make decisions about what you broadcast accordingly." > google exploited and is clearly on the wrong side of morality regarding storing also the unencrypted payloads It doesn't sound like Google intended to do that, but I think the fact they didn't highlights why it's important people understand the need to not broadcast that which you don't want public; accidental data collection is too easy. If I flip my router into debug mode because it stops talking to my laptop, I'm going to see the packets of my neighbors. I don't want to see them, and if they don't want me to either, they really ought to stop sending them unencrypted like that.
- jbay808 6y ago
  Optical energy goes through glass windows, which brings us right back to "someone looking in through your window, taking notes in a notebook", which most people seem to think merits calling the cops.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Who, if we're still talking about radio, will tell you that if you don't want your packets collected and understood, don't broadcast them in the clear. The FCC guidelines and the law are real clear about this, and it is a very specific way that the analogy to glass and visual EM spectrum breaks down. Discussions and sibling threads have run to ground why it works that way. There's a reason the specific word used to describe the transmission of data via radio is "broadcast."

It goes through walls and curtains, for starters. In radio, we're all living in glass houses. ;) Privacy guidelines and analogies around what is and is not acceptable to view emitting from someone's domicile start to break down when everyone's in a glass house.

afiori 6y ago
but we do not live in glass houses[1] and privacy is not defined in such specific terms. I am told that I am no good at making analogies, but I will try my best. Assume I am cursed with the magical ability of seeing through walls. I can freely spend my time staring at my neighbors an spy all of their domestic lives. This is clearly different than if a non-magical me were to install spy-cams in their houses, but we agree that I should not _stare_. Given the hypothetical and magical nature of the situation it is impossible to say whether this would be illegal or not, but soft-anonimity is an important social concept. [1] off topic: I caught myself pondering about how the thickness of walls/ceilings necessary to build a stable house out of glass (especially considering seismic areas) would probably make the walls quite opaque.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  > but we agree that I should not _stare_ In the radio spectra, we do not. It is generally neither punishable formally in US law nor considered informally to be bad form to hook up an aerial and see what you can hear. There's a whole hobby space around amateur radio, and in the US, it's never been considered the fault of the listener if they hear something the sender would have preferred they not. Your analogy breaks down because your neighbors aren't sitting passively in their homes while you stare at them; they're having a rave with all the wall-penetrating radiation emitters they've installed. They could cease doing that if they wanted a bit more privacy. Or, more practically, they could take the basic necessary steps to encrypt their inter-device communications. If I pop my laptop open right now and look at the SSID list I can receive from the dozen houses on my block, am I being rude?
  - afiori 6y ago
    > In the radio spectra, we do not. But in the neighbor analogy we do, that is it is perfectly fine for my neighbor to stare at their walls, less so if they can see through it. > If I pop my laptop open right now and look at the SSID list I can receive from the dozen houses on my block, am I being rude? As far as I know I would need to play with my wifi drivers to store all the unencrypted data packets that reach the wifi antenna. I know that I am broadcasting some information about my wifi (at least the name, probably more), but I expect my neighbor not to methodically try and spy on me. The same way I expect them not to install a security camera pointed at my windows. I am blasting "radiation" also every time I speak or press a key on my laptop and similarly I expect my neighbor not to install a matrix of super sensitive microphones to record every word I say or try and reconstruct what I am writing from the sound and rythm of my key-presses (it was possible in some research projects I saw some time ago). In the radio spectra the only difference I see is that it is unreasonable to demand of people that are already using antennas to filter out all unencrypted wifi data. I understand why this might be legal, I still think that google exploited and is clearly on the wrong side of morality regarding storing also the unencrypted payloads.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      I think we don't disagree that soft anonymity is an important social concept. We disagree that radio broadcast fits the soft-anonymity space. It never has in the past and we probably do more harm than good adding it (for starters, we kill the hobby radio industry. We give massive power to the largest owners of radios---broadcast conglomerates---that could start claiming their broadcasts were intended for only their audience and hit people with a cudgel for tuning in. And there's a lot of ugly corner cases where the radio specturm is shared; if my neighbor's broken wifi is stomping all over my signal quality and I record packets to prove it, should I be held liable that I grabbed that data when their radio activity was harming my ability to use my radios?). We'd be better served by teaching people "What you broadcast with a radio is broadcast. Make decisions about what you broadcast accordingly." > google exploited and is clearly on the wrong side of morality regarding storing also the unencrypted payloads It doesn't sound like Google intended to do that, but I think the fact they didn't highlights why it's important people understand the need to not broadcast that which you don't want public; accidental data collection is too easy. If I flip my router into debug mode because it stops talking to my laptop, I'm going to see the packets of my neighbors. I don't want to see them, and if they don't want me to either, they really ought to stop sending them unencrypted like that.
jbay808 6y ago
Optical energy goes through glass windows, which brings us right back to "someone looking in through your window, taking notes in a notebook", which most people seem to think merits calling the cops.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Who, if we're still talking about radio, will tell you that if you don't want your packets collected and understood, don't broadcast them in the clear. The FCC guidelines and the law are real clear about this, and it is a very specific way that the analogy to glass and visual EM spectrum breaks down. Discussions and sibling threads have run to ground why it works that way. There's a reason the specific word used to describe the transmission of data via radio is "broadcast."