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This is cool! Good job on the FBI. Remember it's a good thing to have phones be pinging. 1. I want to be billed correctly 2. If my service drops often in a c

by breck 6y ago

This is cool! Good job on the FBI. Remember it's a good thing to have phones be pinging. 1. I want to be billed correctly 2. If my service drops often in a certain geo, I want engineers to be able to pinpoint exactly where the problem is and fix it. 3. If I get attacked by a shark, I want to provide breadcrumbs for rescuers to find me. 4. If my wife accuses me of going to the arcade, it is important that my dog running in the park with my cell phone in his harness is being properly tracked and creating an alibi for me. If you don't want to leave a trail of geo pings, don't carry around a device that literally could not work if it didn't leave a trail of pings.

grayhatter 6y ago
well, tbf it absolutely could work without a trail of pings. But no system is designed that way because metrics are, unsurprisingly, useful. All that said I still agree 100% with you, don't carry an internet connected GPS with you while you're out criming!
bpodgursky 6y ago
IMO the embedding of electronics and tracking in every aspect of our lives becomes too complex for the average non-techie to make informed decisions about the technology they use. Maybe it should be "obvious" with a phone, but what if your bluetooth headset tried to pair against someone's electronics and got detected? What about the GPS history from your Apple Watch (should that data be available)? How many RFID-tagged devices are in your wallet? I'm not saying that any of these aren't convenient or worth the tradeoff, but the last assertion (telling people to just be smart about what electronics they bring) is not realistic as the vast majority of THINGS we own become trackable electronics, whether the average consumer knows it or not.
- breck 6y ago
  A fair point. Ideally we can build ways to make it easier to learn how tech works. God knows it took me decades to figure it out.
syshum 6y ago
This seems like an extension of "“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” (NTHNTF) fallacy [1][2][3] [1] https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-Trust/Debunking-a-myth-If-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-nothing-to-fear https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-Tru... [2] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-the-wrong-way-to-think-about-surveillance/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-... [3] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-have-nothing-hide-you-still-have-something-fear https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-...
- breck 6y ago
  Not a big deal. Good engineering demands logged pings. Not doing that would be bad engineering. Could it be abused? Sure. But that's why we need to continue to engineer a better democracy as well. We can do both.
  - syshum 6y ago
    No we cant, the US was never to be a democracy, and you can not engineer a better one We are a constitutional republic with a LIMITED government, we as a society has lost respect for those constitutional limits and instead of taking principled stands to restrict government we have taken unprincipled stands based on the outcome we desire for society Attempting to "engineer" a better society is the exact problem we have. That is Authoritarianism not liberty Liberty is not attempting to engineer a better society or democracy, Liberty is allowing people to live their lives unmolested by government laws and regulations
    - throwaway3699 6y ago
      This is a losing battle long term I fear. Far too many people see government as the way to push their ideology onto society as a whole.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > the US was never to be a democracy, and you can not engineer a better one If it wasn't designed to be democracy, it should be trivial to design a better one, just like it's trivial to build a better automobile than a tricycle, which wasn't designed to be an auto. > We are a constitutional republic with a LIMITED government That's not incompatible with democracy, and suggesting that they are exclusive alternatives just means you don't understand at least one of “democracy”, “constitutional republic”, or “limited governmemt”. (And more fully, you want to say “federal republic with constitutionally-limited government and both the federal and state levels, and reserved powers for the states”, but that still isn't exclusive with “democracy”.) > we as a society has lost respect for those constitutional limits I don't see any evidence that respect for Constitutional limits has declined, which seems to be a result of combining a cynical view of the present with a rosy view of the past (the First Amendment is a beautiful set of Constitutional limits, but the Alien and Sedition Acts were adopted when the ink on it was barely dry.) > and instead of taking principled stands to restrict government we have taken unprincipled stands based on the outcome we desire for society Stands made on different sets of principles than you prefer do not thereby become “unprincipled”.
dehrmann 6y ago
I was wondering if they were going to do this, and I'm on the fence. If they can accurately (90%+) get it to a very tight parameter, ok, but a lot of protesters in the general aread weren't actually involved in entering the building, so if they're getting investigated too, it's a bit of an overreach.
ecommerceguy 6y ago
There's nothing about this that's cool! Not even close.

by breck 6y ago

grayhatter 6y ago

well, tbf it absolutely could work without a trail of pings. But no system is designed that way because metrics are, unsurprisingly, useful. All that said I still agree 100% with you, don't carry an internet connected GPS with you while you're out criming!

bpodgursky 6y ago

IMO the embedding of electronics and tracking in every aspect of our lives becomes too complex for the average non-techie to make informed decisions about the technology they use. Maybe it should be "obvious" with a phone, but what if your bluetooth headset tried to pair against someone's electronics and got detected? What about the GPS history from your Apple Watch (should that data be available)? How many RFID-tagged devices are in your wallet? I'm not saying that any of these aren't convenient or worth the tradeoff, but the last assertion (telling people to just be smart about what electronics they bring) is not realistic as the vast majority of THINGS we own become trackable electronics, whether the average consumer knows it or not.

breck 6y ago
A fair point. Ideally we can build ways to make it easier to learn how tech works. God knows it took me decades to figure it out.

syshum 6y ago

This seems like an extension of "“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” (NTHNTF) fallacy [1][2][3] [1] https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-Trust/Debunking-a-myth-If-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-nothing-to-fear https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-Tru... [2] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-the-wrong-way-to-think-about-surveillance/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-... [3] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-have-nothing-hide-you-still-have-something-fear https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-...

breck 6y ago
Not a big deal. Good engineering demands logged pings. Not doing that would be bad engineering. Could it be abused? Sure. But that's why we need to continue to engineer a better democracy as well. We can do both.
- syshum 6y ago
  No we cant, the US was never to be a democracy, and you can not engineer a better one We are a constitutional republic with a LIMITED government, we as a society has lost respect for those constitutional limits and instead of taking principled stands to restrict government we have taken unprincipled stands based on the outcome we desire for society Attempting to "engineer" a better society is the exact problem we have. That is Authoritarianism not liberty Liberty is not attempting to engineer a better society or democracy, Liberty is allowing people to live their lives unmolested by government laws and regulations
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    This is a losing battle long term I fear. Far too many people see government as the way to push their ideology onto society as a whole.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > the US was never to be a democracy, and you can not engineer a better one If it wasn't designed to be democracy, it should be trivial to design a better one, just like it's trivial to build a better automobile than a tricycle, which wasn't designed to be an auto. > We are a constitutional republic with a LIMITED government That's not incompatible with democracy, and suggesting that they are exclusive alternatives just means you don't understand at least one of “democracy”, “constitutional republic”, or “limited governmemt”. (And more fully, you want to say “federal republic with constitutionally-limited government and both the federal and state levels, and reserved powers for the states”, but that still isn't exclusive with “democracy”.) > we as a society has lost respect for those constitutional limits I don't see any evidence that respect for Constitutional limits has declined, which seems to be a result of combining a cynical view of the present with a rosy view of the past (the First Amendment is a beautiful set of Constitutional limits, but the Alien and Sedition Acts were adopted when the ink on it was barely dry.) > and instead of taking principled stands to restrict government we have taken unprincipled stands based on the outcome we desire for society Stands made on different sets of principles than you prefer do not thereby become “unprincipled”.

dehrmann 6y ago

I was wondering if they were going to do this, and I'm on the fence. If they can accurately (90%+) get it to a very tight parameter, ok, but a lot of protesters in the general aread weren't actually involved in entering the building, so if they're getting investigated too, it's a bit of an overreach.

ecommerceguy 6y ago

There's nothing about this that's cool! Not even close.