4 ms·

Step 1: Place GPS tracking device on every car (alternatives include demand GPS tracking devices be built into cars by manufacturers or build them into license

Step 1: Place GPS tracking device on every car (alternatives include demand GPS tracking devices be built into cars by manufacturers or build them into license plates as part of a move to save money on toll collections). Step 2: Analyze data algorithmically, looking for suspicious correlations. Step 3: 1984. Another thought: If you don't need a warrant to place GPS tracking device on a car, you ought to be able to obtain location tracking data from a telephone company without a warrant. Wherever your phone goes, the FBI is simply following you with a virtual agent.

sp332 16y ago
OnStar has been tracking GM vehicles for a long time. I bet Microsoft Sync does tracking for Ford cars now too. Then of course there's LoJack for fleet vehicles etc.
- code_duck 16y ago
  Sure, and of course my phone company knows which cell tower I'm using. Starbucks knows where the device with a certain MAC address that signs in with my account has been. That's not the point, though - the question is, will the government has easy access to that data and will they use it for anything and everything?
rakkhi 16y ago
Agreed it seems a totally Orwellian path for the authorities to be able to track anyone they want without a warrant. Who watches the watchers? http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_pr.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_p...
shasta 16y ago
I frequently encounter people who insist that the US style government, while not perfect, is the greatest form of government, and they question how much room for improvement there really is. And yet, when issues such as increased surveillance arise, everyone is (mostly rightly) alarmed at the increase in power this could provide to the government. Cries of "1984" are an internet staple. But rather than only insisting that this new capability be denied to our government, I wish people would also question whether it is really a fundamental truth that government cannot be trusted with such capabilities or whether it's possibly just our current forms of government that cannot. Just in case it's not obvious why we'd want a government spying on us, I'll briefly make the case. There might be some side benefit, such as automatically identifying emergency situations, but realistically the main benefit comes from increased effectiveness of law enforcement. Yes, that ought to be a benefit. If it isn't, that points to a problem with the laws or the way they're enforced. Increasing the effectiveness with which we can identify violations will not only lead to a reduction in violations, but will also let us lower punishments (speeding tickets would work fine at $10 each if every speeder were cited, etc). Some people will argue that such a government could never exist. "Who watches the watchers?", the cliche goes. Well, why couldn't the answer be "other watchers"? Isn't that the idea of checks and balances? I don't think that there's much chance of a sufficiently better form of government emerging from our current political machine anytime soon, but if it were to happen it wouldn't be accomplished by getting everyone to agree on the details, many of which I probably imagine wrong myself. Rather, I think it would be accomplished by making the very idea of a better system of government popular, and getting people to agree on a transparent process and criteria for working out the details. (Well, there might be other ways. If someone posted instructions for a relatively easy to make, low cost nuclear bomb to the internet I think that, after a few detonations, we'd have mass internment that would give everyone ample free time to discuss whether a surveillance state is really necessarily bad.)
- raganwald 16y ago
  In software development, I am cynical of any tool, language, or process that promises to somehow make a team of ineffective programmers produce software of value. However, given a team of developers with some sort of baseline competence, I strongly believe that some tools increase their effectiveness while others hold them back. Translating this to forms of government, I conjecture that if we elect ineffective and/or untrustworthy officials, and if enough untrustworthy persons obtain power in unelected positions, I doubt there is any system that can somehow prevent them from doing bad things. But given a certain critical mass of honesty and effectiveness in the people placed in charge, some forms of government provide superior results to others. I am not going to say that America has the greatest form of government here, but is it possible that what we have here is a people problem, not a government problem?
  - shasta 16y ago
    I'm not sure I understand to which of my musings your conjecture is directed. Are you saying that without sufficiently many honest and competent people we cannot have great government because we need those people to run the government or to choose it? I think you're saying the former and also maybe taking the position that all we really need to do to fix the present situation is to elect enough honest and competent people. I don't fully agree with either of those points (I think there are ways we could employ technology that would greatly mitigate the damage caused by incompetence or malice of government officials), but also I'd point out that the common failure of our current system of government to get honest and competent candidates elected is itself a failure of government that has room for improvement.
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    This is very well said. I'm reminded of the cliche that the people get the government they deserve. And boy, have we got ours in the United States. As long as the majority remains lazy and ignorant, the successful politicians will be mostly power-seekers, narcissists or agents of industry.
    - raganwald 16y ago
MaysonL 16y ago
I keep getting reminded of the character in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky who said something like: "Any ubiquitous computing environment where local nodes have to run government code will inevitably become an absolute tyranny."

sp332 16y ago

OnStar has been tracking GM vehicles for a long time. I bet Microsoft Sync does tracking for Ford cars now too. Then of course there's LoJack for fleet vehicles etc.

code_duck 16y ago
Sure, and of course my phone company knows which cell tower I'm using. Starbucks knows where the device with a certain MAC address that signs in with my account has been. That's not the point, though - the question is, will the government has easy access to that data and will they use it for anything and everything?

rakkhi 16y ago

Agreed it seems a totally Orwellian path for the authorities to be able to track anyone they want without a warrant. Who watches the watchers? http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_pr.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_p...

shasta 16y ago

I frequently encounter people who insist that the US style government, while not perfect, is the greatest form of government, and they question how much room for improvement there really is. And yet, when issues such as increased surveillance arise, everyone is (mostly rightly) alarmed at the increase in power this could provide to the government. Cries of "1984" are an internet staple. But rather than only insisting that this new capability be denied to our government, I wish people would also question whether it is really a fundamental truth that government cannot be trusted with such capabilities or whether it's possibly just our current forms of government that cannot. Just in case it's not obvious why we'd want a government spying on us, I'll briefly make the case. There might be some side benefit, such as automatically identifying emergency situations, but realistically the main benefit comes from increased effectiveness of law enforcement. Yes, that ought to be a benefit. If it isn't, that points to a problem with the laws or the way they're enforced. Increasing the effectiveness with which we can identify violations will not only lead to a reduction in violations, but will also let us lower punishments (speeding tickets would work fine at $10 each if every speeder were cited, etc). Some people will argue that such a government could never exist. "Who watches the watchers?", the cliche goes. Well, why couldn't the answer be "other watchers"? Isn't that the idea of checks and balances? I don't think that there's much chance of a sufficiently better form of government emerging from our current political machine anytime soon, but if it were to happen it wouldn't be accomplished by getting everyone to agree on the details, many of which I probably imagine wrong myself. Rather, I think it would be accomplished by making the very idea of a better system of government popular, and getting people to agree on a transparent process and criteria for working out the details. (Well, there might be other ways. If someone posted instructions for a relatively easy to make, low cost nuclear bomb to the internet I think that, after a few detonations, we'd have mass internment that would give everyone ample free time to discuss whether a surveillance state is really necessarily bad.)

raganwald 16y ago
In software development, I am cynical of any tool, language, or process that promises to somehow make a team of ineffective programmers produce software of value. However, given a team of developers with some sort of baseline competence, I strongly believe that some tools increase their effectiveness while others hold them back. Translating this to forms of government, I conjecture that if we elect ineffective and/or untrustworthy officials, and if enough untrustworthy persons obtain power in unelected positions, I doubt there is any system that can somehow prevent them from doing bad things. But given a certain critical mass of honesty and effectiveness in the people placed in charge, some forms of government provide superior results to others. I am not going to say that America has the greatest form of government here, but is it possible that what we have here is a people problem, not a government problem?
- shasta 16y ago
  I'm not sure I understand to which of my musings your conjecture is directed. Are you saying that without sufficiently many honest and competent people we cannot have great government because we need those people to run the government or to choose it? I think you're saying the former and also maybe taking the position that all we really need to do to fix the present situation is to elect enough honest and competent people. I don't fully agree with either of those points (I think there are ways we could employ technology that would greatly mitigate the damage caused by incompetence or malice of government officials), but also I'd point out that the common failure of our current system of government to get honest and competent candidates elected is itself a failure of government that has room for improvement.
- danilocampos 16y ago
  This is very well said. I'm reminded of the cliche that the people get the government they deserve. And boy, have we got ours in the United States. As long as the majority remains lazy and ignorant, the successful politicians will be mostly power-seekers, narcissists or agents of industry.
  - raganwald 16y ago

MaysonL 16y ago

I keep getting reminded of the character in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky who said something like: "Any ubiquitous computing environment where local nodes have to run government code will inevitably become an absolute tyranny."