4 ms·

I saw an article saying that the government was conducting contact tracing of people arrested at the protests. At the time I wasn't sure what that meant, but n

I saw an article saying that the government was conducting contact tracing of people arrested at the protests. At the time I wasn't sure what that meant, but now my guess is that it means precisely what it sounds like: the authorities are using the same tools they use against COVID-19, for the purpose of identifying looters and rioters. Personally I think we must dismantle a large portion of our surveillance apparatus.

coolgeek 6y ago
Contact tracing, in the epidemiological sense, is a process of interviewing and mapping out contact graphs. What is presumably going on here is tracing through devices and accounts. Those are very different processes.
thephyber 6y ago
> conducting contact tracing of people arrested I'm pretty sure this is standard when police think that more than one person committed the crime. I don't think "contact tracing" in this case is any different than just "investigate the crime and follow the leads". The 50 states and many large metros have fusion centers that were already gathering, collating, and redirecting national security info. If the NSA was given authority to target the protests (probably, because the president and DoJ are claiming other nations are agitators), this might be happening.
- 8bitsrule 6y ago
  Given the current admins' penchant for blaming others for what happens here, pointing at other nations seems like par for the course by now. It's easier than looking in the mirror, and a convenient distraction.
  - thephyber 6y ago
    I don't disagree with what you say, but I don't see how it's relevant to my comment.
olliej 6y ago
Which is why the google/Apple system is better than any of the state ones.
- salawat 6y ago
  No, it isn't. Once the police seize a large enough network of phones, all those id's are trivially correlated, even if they are ostensibly decentralized. If the capability exists to contact trace for epidemic tracking purposes, the capacity for abuse by law enforcement for mixing with bad actors whose id's are also known through device seizure also exists.
  - olliej 6y ago
    no, because you need to publish your data to do anything, which means they can't track anyone who's phone they don't have, and they can't track anyone who's details haven't been published. So all the can actually track are people's who's phones they already have complete unlocked access to. At that point they can just read out the google and Facebook tracking data and subpoena them for the full information.

coolgeek 6y ago

Contact tracing, in the epidemiological sense, is a process of interviewing and mapping out contact graphs. What is presumably going on here is tracing through devices and accounts. Those are very different processes.

thephyber 6y ago

> conducting contact tracing of people arrested I'm pretty sure this is standard when police think that more than one person committed the crime. I don't think "contact tracing" in this case is any different than just "investigate the crime and follow the leads". The 50 states and many large metros have fusion centers that were already gathering, collating, and redirecting national security info. If the NSA was given authority to target the protests (probably, because the president and DoJ are claiming other nations are agitators), this might be happening.

8bitsrule 6y ago
Given the current admins' penchant for blaming others for what happens here, pointing at other nations seems like par for the course by now. It's easier than looking in the mirror, and a convenient distraction.
- thephyber 6y ago
  I don't disagree with what you say, but I don't see how it's relevant to my comment.

olliej 6y ago

Which is why the google/Apple system is better than any of the state ones.

salawat 6y ago
No, it isn't. Once the police seize a large enough network of phones, all those id's are trivially correlated, even if they are ostensibly decentralized. If the capability exists to contact trace for epidemic tracking purposes, the capacity for abuse by law enforcement for mixing with bad actors whose id's are also known through device seizure also exists.
- olliej 6y ago
  no, because you need to publish your data to do anything, which means they can't track anyone who's phone they don't have, and they can't track anyone who's details haven't been published. So all the can actually track are people's who's phones they already have complete unlocked access to. At that point they can just read out the google and Facebook tracking data and subpoena them for the full information.