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Yeah, I’d just buy a $100 android phone and use it as my keypass whilst at uni. Don’t take it off-site with you - you’d have virtually unlimited freedom if you
by aetherspawn 6y ago
Yeah, I’d just buy a $100 android phone and use it as my keypass whilst at uni. Don’t take it off-site with you - you’d have virtually unlimited freedom if you leave it in your room, or turn it completely off before leaving campus.
It is a straightforward response to a ridiculous request on user privacy: you can’t force me to use my personal phone how you’d like unless you provide it. You can force me to buy into an app that tracks the location of my device in order to enter buildings and such, but you can’t control which device I choose to use, nor force me to carry it in my personal life. The flaw in the underlying assertion (one-to-one phone/person relationship, location of a phone = location of a person) is not my problem.
- crooked-v 6y ago> $100 You don't need to go nearly that high. Right now, Tracfone has a sale for a SIM-locked refurb Android 8.1 phone for literally $5, and even outside of sales the low end is only about $20.
- swiley 6y agoI bought one as a balloon tracker the other year (I didn’t realize this was illegal). As soon as you connect it to a network (including WiFi) it will automatically download gigabytes of malware from the play store which will keep launching in the background and crashing things by using up all the ram. It was pretty eye opening to realize what people actually deal with if they can’t afford nicer phones and don’t know how to (or can’t) replace the firmware. Cheap android phones make cheap PCs look nice. Also an emulator or container is $0.
- Akababa 6y agoYou can even use an android emulator for this - some of them come with location spoofing too.
- closeparen 6y agoIf you don't want to participate in contact tracing, just stay home. The people who get sick and die because of your untraceable contacts are your problem.
- nostrebored 6y agoThis has never been the approach we've taken for any other virus. This sets a precedent that anyone who values privacy should be very, very against.
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- closeparen 6y agoContact tracing is how every outbreak until this one got contained. If people took this attitude with human contact tracers, pandemics like this would be routine.
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- nostrebored 6y agoThis comparison isn't reasonable. Yeah, contact tracing can be an effective tool, but there's something very different between that and homespun apps to track who has run into who. If you don't think these apps will be used 1) during wartime 2) to track political dissidents 3) to gather data on interactions between people in a country for things like 'urban planning' 4) as a monetized version of each of these Then I don't think you're treating distributed, scalable contact tracing like other technology.
- pjc50 6y agoOh, they certainly will - as will the routine tracking from everything else, including Google Play Services, Facebook etc. At least the pandemic contact tracing has a clear public benefit.
- maccard 6y agoI remember being a uni student, and an extra $100 outlay (plus a sim presumably to keep it connected to a network) for privacy was definitely not something I would have had the budget for. I was a fairly typical student, but I don't think at any point in my 5 years of uni I would have been free to drop $100 on something like that. I was very cash flow restricted the entire time.
- gowld 6y agoIf you were cost conscious, you probably didn't pay for a $50K/yr tier-3 liberal arts degree then. And as a US student (the sort who think Albion is a good investment) you'd have loans to cover your cash flow.
- avianlyric 6y ago> you can’t force me to use my personal phone how you’d like unless you provide it. You can force me to buy into an app that tracks the location of my device in order to enter buildings and such, but you can’t control which device I choose to use, nor force me to carry it in my personal life. While I appreciate what you're trying to say, and agree that it's draconian. The assertion that they can't force you isn't quite true. The collage is private property, they can absolutely make entry conditional on using this app on your personal device. If you don't agree with their measures, then you simply aren't allowed on the colleges private property. Just as equally they can make compliance a condition of providing your education (it's a private contract after-all). Again, don't like it, don't get educated. Ultimately college education is a contract between private individuals, none of the protection you have against government overreach apply.
- gowld 6y agoContracts are only enforceable (a) if they are conscionable, and (b) if they exist. Is there a contract saying the user must carry the tracking app everywhere they go?
- XMPPwocky 6y agoProbably not but there almost certainly is the standard set of "industry standard" clauses that inevitably end up in any sort of consumer contract, basically saying "we can kick you out for any reason we want, what are you going to do, all our competitors have the same language".
- qserasera 6y agoI eagerly await legal challenges for this.