13 ms·

Proposed bill to ban US government from buying location data [pdf]

439 points by jbegley 6y ago

eatbitseveryday 6y ago
How about we forbid the sale of our location data as a general principle, rather than just forbidding the government from purchasing it? Couldn't they just contract with a non-govt-entity that does have access to the information, and achieve results that way?
- superkuh 6y ago
  That is partially how they do things now, yes. This bill is a step in the right direction but doesn't actually fix anything. Since the cell phone system literally cannot work without location data (base stations need to know where the handset is) the data will always be there. But there's no reason to store it for 2-5 years as is currently done by US telcos. A "fix" for this situation would be to limit the stored location data to, say, a week. Then there would be no incentives for the companies to sell the data.
  - atat7024 6y ago
    Yes there would. They'd just sell it to the same buyer, or an intermediary, as it happens.
  - mjburgess 6y ago
    That data is absolutely vital in many criminal investigations to, eg., determine whether alibis are accurate. Many criminals have been caught in lies by taking calls that place them not-where-they-said-they-were. There's a please clear justification for holding that data and making it accessible via a warrant. What here needs reform is the warrant process, and more precisely, the incentive structures around policing. US DAs/Judges/Police/etc. need to be independent and impartial. At the moment excessive US electoral "democracy" creates pathological incentive structures.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      They did just fine before location data. They'll do just fine after location data. Especially with all the other digital breadcrumbs left around (security cameras and whatnot). If you don't think someone was somewhere they say they were there's a million other ways than phone data to check it out. Besides, it's not like "oh look his phone was elsewhere" ever stopped police from investigating someone. They just assume you left it at home or gave it to someone for the purposes of an alibi.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        > They did just fine before location data. I hear this sort of argument a lot, and often use it myself, but... did they? Sure, law enforcement existed and solved cases before they had access to location data, but are there some (more recent) cases that would have been unsolvable without it? Or has police efficacy not increased at all because of access to location data? Do we have data on this? As much as I'm not positive on law enforcement in general, I think it's reasonable to have access to location data. But that access should be gated behind a limited-scope court order, and judges should not be rubber-stamping them. On the other hand, it seems like any capability granted to law enforcement ends up getting abused, so I'm sympathetic to the idea of just banning all location data use.
    - Sleepytime 6y ago
      Most criminals know to use burner phones or at least turn off their phones, I'd be shocked if anything more than a token number of them were caught with this data. Meanwhile it can and does put innocent bystanders (often minorities) at risk of arrest or defamation for simply being in the area. >US DAs/Judges/Police/etc. need to be independent and impartial. This is like wishing hell had an air conditioner.
      - pupdogg 6y ago
        Agreed! Also note that violent Criminals have absolutely 0% incentive to purchase firearms via legal means or actual background checks leading to denial. Their intent to commit harm is by any means possible and they WILL figure out a way.
  - jfrunyon 6y ago
    > Then there would be no incentives for the companies to sell the data. That's just not true. You do realize that they sell your live location data, right?
- teawrecks 6y ago
  Or how about a GDPR for the US.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Absolutely! Please contact your federal Congressional representatives and ask them to draft and assemble cosponsors for such legislation. California has made headway with CCPA, you don’t need many more states before it becomes the default without federal action. There is momentum, and it’d be a shame to waste it.
  - GloriousKoji 6y ago
    As much as I love the spirit of the GDPR it hasn't done much other than add in an extra layer of annoying float over bars to webpages harassing me about cookies.
    - jfrunyon 6y ago
      Then you haven't been looking or you aren't in the EU and it therefore doesn't even apply to you...
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      I'm in California so our similar law produced a similar result, but it's only once per website and (importantly) it's extremely clear and gives me a simple choice focused on my preferences, rather than those of the website operator. Now if we could just do something about js popups...
- Mountain_Skies 6y ago
  It's pretty clear that the US government has become very comfortable using corporate entities to do their dirty work for them. This, along with agreements with foreign governments such as the Five Eyes Alliance, means the government has pretty much limitless power to ignore the spirit of any privacy law while still complying with the letter of the law. Unfortunately many are fine with this because they believe it benefits their ideological group, which is more important than individual rights.
  - barbacoa 6y ago
    >Unfortunately many are fine with this because they believe it benefits their ideological group, which is more important than individual rights. Sadly true. A good example from this year: https://theintercept.com/2021/02/22/capitol-riot-fbi-cellphone-records/ https://theintercept.com/2021/02/22/capitol-riot-fbi-cellpho... >...the FBI relied in some cases on emergency orders that do not require court authorization in order to quickly secure actual communications from people... I remember back in the day when this would outrage people.
    - colpabar 6y ago
      What really scares me is that it feels like in today's climate, the press would not even touch a story like the Snowden leaks. Not only that, but any outlet that did would be labeled as a spreader of misinformation, and banned. After all, it's a conspiracy theory, which means it's verboten.
      - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
        It’s not like the press really did all that much with Snowden. The few journalists that were involved haven’t exactly jumped in fame or popularity greatly. In fact, looking at Greenwald who was recently ousted out of the outlet he started, pretty much the opposite. The press ran the story in my opinion half heartedly and imo forgave the transgressions because it was Obama in at the time. Most of the kick was directed right or wrong back to Bush. It’s not like Brennan or Clapper or Rice or Yates ever faced even a degree of heat for directly lying to Congress about domestic spying. I don’t at all disagree we live in a different world now, I just don’t have a perspective that this specific example was really that big at the time. Blurbs and tweets and Snowden Celebrity withstanding, the leaks had little to no actionable effect I can recall. I could be forgetting though.
- mLuby 6y ago
  Outlaw the sharing (and therefore resale) of all personally identifiable information. If companies want PII from their users, they should ask those users directly for permission. The legal test for a violation is straightforward: if a user can be de-anonymized from what the company shares along with public information.
- joshka 6y ago
  >Couldn't they just contract with a non-govt-entity that does have access to the information, and achieve results that way? On page 2 of the bill, the definition of 'covered customer or subscriber record' includes the following: (II) an intermediary service provider that delivers, stores, or processes communications of such covered person;
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  This is missing the forest for the trees. There isn't like, a piece of evidence presented here that any of this will matter. Wyden and others introduce bills of little substance all the time, they turn the best polling headline / title into bills. So in one perspective this is just politics as usual. Wyden's idiosyncratic donor focus groups ranked this highest this month and we're only hearing about it because this is Hacker News, and on some other forum there's some other bill we don't care about but also polled well with some other senator's donor focus groups. This isn't saying much, that legislation is reactionary, but it's interesting the specific mechanisms nowadays are super-representative, super-cheap focus groups and polling, enabled by services like Facebook and Instagram that these bills, ironically, target. Do these bills advance the cause of privacy? I don't really need location tracking data to guess that most of the time, you're at home or at work. And if you're eeking out such a subsistence existence that you don't have a permanent home or you're jobless? The bigger injustice is that the government has set an adversarial sight on you in the first place.
williesleg 6y ago
Google and apple can keep it! Same with verizon, I trust them all!
minikites 6y ago
Why are private companies more trustworthy than the government?
- superkuh 6y ago
  Private companies cannot use physical force against you or deprive you of your volition.
  - site-packages1 6y ago
    i.e. not necessarily less trustworthy, but less able to enforce their will upon you
  - Natsu 6y ago
    That doesn't exactly make them trustworthy. Also, that hasn't always been true... e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    I don't think the "deprive you of your volition" part is true. Private companies can absolutely do this to you as an individual - either as an employee or a consumer. And, they can do it through both direct and indirect means.
  - username90 6y ago
    Neither can the government, there are laws against that. If you argue that they can ignore the law since they are politicians, then what use are laws stating that the government can't keep your private information?
  - meowster 6y ago
    Apple disagrees with you. https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/09/02/apple-security-personnel-search-house-allegedly-for-missing-iphone-prototype/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/09/02/apple-security-person... https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/09/sfpd-investigating-involvement-in-bizarre-case-of-lost-iphone-prototype/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/09/sfpd-investigating-i...
tediousdemise 6y ago
Counterpoint: perhaps companies could still "donate" location data to the government, maybe even for exclusive perks such as tax write-offs or access to information and resources. This bill sounds nice in principle, but like everything else, could be completely negated by simple loopholes. It could even be smoke and mirrors, so that they can say this issue has already been addressed by legislation. Defective legislation is rampant.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  IANAL, but those perks would seem to be covered by "in exchange for anything of value".
the-dude 6y ago
Is this a proposal or a new bill?
monkeybutton 6y ago
Whenever I see articles about this topic I'm left with so many questions. Where does one go to buy such location data? Is it expensive? Are there minimum orders or do I have to buy all of it and hope what I'm looking for is contained in it? Are there restrictions on who is allowed to buy it? Who are other consumers of the data besides the government, insurance companies? Private investigators?
- meowster 6y ago
  I'd really like for someone to get a contract, then sell the information a la carte for $1-$5 a pop. Until that happens, people won't care.
  - monkeybutton 6y ago
    After some light research, you can apparently subscribe for as little as $5k per-month [0]. Not sure how you'd link a GAID/IDFA to a person's identity though. [0] https://datarade.ai/data-products/lifesight-mobility-data https://datarade.ai/data-products/lifesight-mobility-data
    - meowster 6y ago
      Interesting, thank you. I did some light research in the past, and it was always "contact us for a quote".
IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago
what is the indication on how this bill vote will go ? I see that the cosponsors cross party lines. But is it enough that it will make it into law ?
lolthishuman 6y ago
So just use a contractor with access to it?
- joshka 6y ago
  On page 2 of the bill, the definition of 'covered customer or subscriber record' includes the following: (II) an intermediary service provider that delivers, stores, or processes communications of such covered person;
  - sgc 6y ago
    Who will interpret what is meant by "service provider"? If it is just a data seller who buys it without receiving it in the course of providing a service to the first company, is it covered? Will it require a ruling to know for sure?
  - lolthishuman 6y ago
    Sounds easily bypassed through layers of indirection. Sadly this is just legal noise. It doesn’t solve the core problem.
klvino 6y ago
Understand the intent behind the bill. Wouldn't the bill be closer to effectiveness if it banned corporations from selling to any government and not only the US government? By only banning the "US government" in the "purchase" of the data, it doesn't prevent acquiring the same data from another governmental body (Canada buys the data and shares with US Intelligence community, suddenly & mysteriously trade relations with Canada improve). So many loopholes, the bill becomes 'feel good' legislation instead of effective legislation.
- xxpor 6y ago
  I'm not sure it'd be constitutional for congress to ban selling something to a state government if the goods aren't themselves illegal
  - cfqycwz 6y ago
    Not a lawyer but I think this would be constitutional in the same way that international sanctions are constitutional. The regulation of interstate and foreign commerce is an enumerated power given to congress and usually interpreted pretty broadly.
    - xxpor 6y ago
      That's right, but a company in a state selling to a state gov isn't engaging in interstate commerce. Maybe SCOTUS will use the cockamamie "but the market is nationwide so it still affects it" excuse but normally...
      - willcipriano 6y ago
        Wickard v. Filburn pretty much ended the idea of any real limitations in regards to calling something interstate commerce: "An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The US government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone 'interstate" commerce'..." Roscoe lost. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
joshka 6y ago
There's a better 1 page summary of the bill at https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Fourth%20Amendment%20Is%20Not%20For%20Sale%20Act%20of%202021%20One%20Pager.pdf https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Fourth%20Am...
shockeychap 6y ago
I get why bills are written in the same long-form as contracts. But it creates the problem that, just like most contracts, people don't really understand the contents. (Did you actually read the pile of papers you signed for your mortgage?) Would it be unreasonable to require any proposed legislation include a comprehensive summary written at something like a 10th grade reading level? Something like this could help eliminate the manner in which long-form effectively bars most citizen participation in the legislative process. It would also force a degree of clarity on the implications and meanings within a proposal. We should never, ever have to hear "We need to pass it so we can see what's in it." As an aside, I also think there should be hard limits on the size of a single piece of legislation. If a competent reader can't sit down, read, and understand it in a single sitting, it's too long.
- karmelapple 6y ago
  Agreed. And add in having easily-viewed diffs over the course of the bill’s evolution, so we can see who’s making which changes. But there’s a lot of inertia against changes like this. And hard limits on bills mean there’s less horse-trading to help certain legislators sign onto a bill (which often might be pork). Not a great realization, but it’s part of how bills get passed.
  - infogulch 6y ago
    We need radically more light on the activities of legislators. Sunlight cleanses all. I think this is necessary to get us out of the quagmire that we find ourselves in, but any additional transparency will inevitably lead to witch hunts which -- even if deserved -- will lead to instability. We need to give ourselves and our representatives a path to transition to the light without letting cynical people bomb out the foundations of our society with emotion-fueled rage mobs. Perhaps another post on the front page right now is relevant here: On the bare necessity of psychological safety - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860743
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    And add in having easily-viewed diffs over the course of the bill’s evolution, so we can see who’s making which changes. We already have that, except a) it's not as easily to read as it might be and b) without significant study, it's often not obvious what the import of a change is. I think we need to be thinking about a long term goal fo dispensing with representatives as they currently exist and moving toward a wiki-ocracy, where anyone can write or edit parts of the legal code but there are procedures for conflict resolution, as well as constraints of various kinds.
rubyist5eva 6y ago
Generally I dislike the big D Democrats, but I'm behind any bill that decreases the power of the government.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  I didn’t check them all, but there is at least one Republican on there (Dianes, Montana)
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  Their untenable economic fanstasies aside, the neo-socialists (Bernie, AOC and friends) who are rising in the democratic party are TONS better than the neoliberal old guard (Biden, Feinstein, etc. those kinds of dinosaurs) when it comes to showing restraint before throwing additional state law enforcement power at problems. The republicans have made a similar shift in that the moralizing christian right has a lot less influence among the new ones. I think things will be a lot better in 10-20yr as the dinosaurs from both parties drop dead.
some_random 6y ago
This is utterly insane, ban private companies from being allowed to harvest and sell this data. Why do we think targeting ads to pregnant women is a more legitimate use than hunting terrorists to the point where the former is ignored and the latter is banned?
RobRivera 6y ago
new legal racket on acquiring and providing 'free' data to the government, totally unrelated to other contracts, when?
abeppu 6y ago
Why would we be concerned specifically about the government "buying" this information? I don't know or care how much money has exchanged hands through the NSA/AT&T/Room 641A surveillance -- if AT&T did that all for free, it wouldn't be any better.
asimpletune 6y ago
How about just banning buying location data period?
- meowster 6y ago
  "It's okay, we didn't buy it, we shared it."
imchillyb 6y ago
LOL!!! The loopholes that this bill leaves unclosed make this entire bill just another dog-and-pony-show. This is just for show, not to affect any type of meaningful change. Making the SALE of ALL location data illegal, to any 3rd party, would more than suffice. This proposal is just a song and dance for the generally uneducated and uninformed populace. The government will simply purchase the data from another government... ...YOU KNOW LIKE THEY DO NOW WITH THE 5 EYES PROGRAM... Useless pandering. They suck.
psychlops 6y ago
Why is the fourth amendment not sufficient to stop this? Why do we need a bill to stop companies from selling to the government which is violating constitutional law by consuming the data? No specific warrant, the data cannot be used.
- advisedwang 6y ago
  The fourth amendment stops the government forcing a company to disclose customer records, but it doesn't stop that company voluntarily turning over the records (ie selling it).
yellowyacht 6y ago
I'd love to see a similar bill to ban the US Government from banning encryption. Would that need to be an amendment?
kevmo 6y ago
Bernie Sanders is on the right side of damn near everything.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Surely the NSA already has all this data, whether legal or not? Do people think things have fundamentally changed after Snowden?
LatteLazy 6y ago
I feel like I'm out of the loop on this one. Is there a specific reason the government shouldn't buy location data? I can think of good uses for the data (the census, mapping traffic patterns, pandemic modeling). Purchase histories seem more telling to me if you want to know someone's secrets? Isn't the whole point of organisations like 5-eyes to bypass what little domestic restrictions there are? There are plenty of other entities I'd prefer not to access my data including state and lower level governments, corps, insurers, foreign governments (I'm a brit to be fully transparent). So why this particular combination of conditions?
calkuta 6y ago
How about we skip the middle-man and reduce their budget instead? That's my preferred way of limiting government.
afpx 6y ago
They should also consider banning US companies from selling the same data to other governments.
lmeyerov 6y ago
There's a whole cottage industry of companies selling US citizen data around credit, location, etc. (safegraph, ...), including say military personnel, government officials, political activists, bankers, and other high-trust individuals. Government people fight hard to allow corporate money laundering and stock market nonsense to stay hidden, but it's a free-for-all for citizen data. It's insane to me that it's legal, and my current guess is it'll take ~20 years for the current 60+ year olds in power who don't know how to use computers to age out.
ta988 6y ago
I propose we ban every entity from buying location data without explicit consent.
- gjs278 6y ago
  I second the motion
twirlock 6y ago
Did they mean "selling?"

439 points by jbegley 6y ago

How about we forbid the sale of our location data as a general principle, rather than just forbidding the government from purchasing it? Couldn't they just contract with a non-govt-entity that does have access to the information, and achieve results that way?

superkuh 6y ago
That is partially how they do things now, yes. This bill is a step in the right direction but doesn't actually fix anything. Since the cell phone system literally cannot work without location data (base stations need to know where the handset is) the data will always be there. But there's no reason to store it for 2-5 years as is currently done by US telcos. A "fix" for this situation would be to limit the stored location data to, say, a week. Then there would be no incentives for the companies to sell the data.
- atat7024 6y ago
  Yes there would. They'd just sell it to the same buyer, or an intermediary, as it happens.
- mjburgess 6y ago
  That data is absolutely vital in many criminal investigations to, eg., determine whether alibis are accurate. Many criminals have been caught in lies by taking calls that place them not-where-they-said-they-were. There's a please clear justification for holding that data and making it accessible via a warrant. What here needs reform is the warrant process, and more precisely, the incentive structures around policing. US DAs/Judges/Police/etc. need to be independent and impartial. At the moment excessive US electoral "democracy" creates pathological incentive structures.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    They did just fine before location data. They'll do just fine after location data. Especially with all the other digital breadcrumbs left around (security cameras and whatnot). If you don't think someone was somewhere they say they were there's a million other ways than phone data to check it out. Besides, it's not like "oh look his phone was elsewhere" ever stopped police from investigating someone. They just assume you left it at home or gave it to someone for the purposes of an alibi.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      > They did just fine before location data. I hear this sort of argument a lot, and often use it myself, but... did they? Sure, law enforcement existed and solved cases before they had access to location data, but are there some (more recent) cases that would have been unsolvable without it? Or has police efficacy not increased at all because of access to location data? Do we have data on this? As much as I'm not positive on law enforcement in general, I think it's reasonable to have access to location data. But that access should be gated behind a limited-scope court order, and judges should not be rubber-stamping them. On the other hand, it seems like any capability granted to law enforcement ends up getting abused, so I'm sympathetic to the idea of just banning all location data use.
  - Sleepytime 6y ago
    Most criminals know to use burner phones or at least turn off their phones, I'd be shocked if anything more than a token number of them were caught with this data. Meanwhile it can and does put innocent bystanders (often minorities) at risk of arrest or defamation for simply being in the area. >US DAs/Judges/Police/etc. need to be independent and impartial. This is like wishing hell had an air conditioner.
    - pupdogg 6y ago
      Agreed! Also note that violent Criminals have absolutely 0% incentive to purchase firearms via legal means or actual background checks leading to denial. Their intent to commit harm is by any means possible and they WILL figure out a way.
- jfrunyon 6y ago
  > Then there would be no incentives for the companies to sell the data. That's just not true. You do realize that they sell your live location data, right?
teawrecks 6y ago
Or how about a GDPR for the US.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Absolutely! Please contact your federal Congressional representatives and ask them to draft and assemble cosponsors for such legislation. California has made headway with CCPA, you don’t need many more states before it becomes the default without federal action. There is momentum, and it’d be a shame to waste it.
- GloriousKoji 6y ago
  As much as I love the spirit of the GDPR it hasn't done much other than add in an extra layer of annoying float over bars to webpages harassing me about cookies.
  - jfrunyon 6y ago
    Then you haven't been looking or you aren't in the EU and it therefore doesn't even apply to you...
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    I'm in California so our similar law produced a similar result, but it's only once per website and (importantly) it's extremely clear and gives me a simple choice focused on my preferences, rather than those of the website operator. Now if we could just do something about js popups...
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
It's pretty clear that the US government has become very comfortable using corporate entities to do their dirty work for them. This, along with agreements with foreign governments such as the Five Eyes Alliance, means the government has pretty much limitless power to ignore the spirit of any privacy law while still complying with the letter of the law. Unfortunately many are fine with this because they believe it benefits their ideological group, which is more important than individual rights.
- barbacoa 6y ago
  >Unfortunately many are fine with this because they believe it benefits their ideological group, which is more important than individual rights. Sadly true. A good example from this year: https://theintercept.com/2021/02/22/capitol-riot-fbi-cellphone-records/ https://theintercept.com/2021/02/22/capitol-riot-fbi-cellpho... >...the FBI relied in some cases on emergency orders that do not require court authorization in order to quickly secure actual communications from people... I remember back in the day when this would outrage people.
  - colpabar 6y ago
    What really scares me is that it feels like in today's climate, the press would not even touch a story like the Snowden leaks. Not only that, but any outlet that did would be labeled as a spreader of misinformation, and banned. After all, it's a conspiracy theory, which means it's verboten.
    - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      It’s not like the press really did all that much with Snowden. The few journalists that were involved haven’t exactly jumped in fame or popularity greatly. In fact, looking at Greenwald who was recently ousted out of the outlet he started, pretty much the opposite. The press ran the story in my opinion half heartedly and imo forgave the transgressions because it was Obama in at the time. Most of the kick was directed right or wrong back to Bush. It’s not like Brennan or Clapper or Rice or Yates ever faced even a degree of heat for directly lying to Congress about domestic spying. I don’t at all disagree we live in a different world now, I just don’t have a perspective that this specific example was really that big at the time. Blurbs and tweets and Snowden Celebrity withstanding, the leaks had little to no actionable effect I can recall. I could be forgetting though.
mLuby 6y ago
Outlaw the sharing (and therefore resale) of all personally identifiable information. If companies want PII from their users, they should ask those users directly for permission. The legal test for a violation is straightforward: if a user can be de-anonymized from what the company shares along with public information.
joshka 6y ago
>Couldn't they just contract with a non-govt-entity that does have access to the information, and achieve results that way? On page 2 of the bill, the definition of 'covered customer or subscriber record' includes the following: (II) an intermediary service provider that delivers, stores, or processes communications of such covered person;
an_opabinia 6y ago
This is missing the forest for the trees. There isn't like, a piece of evidence presented here that any of this will matter. Wyden and others introduce bills of little substance all the time, they turn the best polling headline / title into bills. So in one perspective this is just politics as usual. Wyden's idiosyncratic donor focus groups ranked this highest this month and we're only hearing about it because this is Hacker News, and on some other forum there's some other bill we don't care about but also polled well with some other senator's donor focus groups. This isn't saying much, that legislation is reactionary, but it's interesting the specific mechanisms nowadays are super-representative, super-cheap focus groups and polling, enabled by services like Facebook and Instagram that these bills, ironically, target. Do these bills advance the cause of privacy? I don't really need location tracking data to guess that most of the time, you're at home or at work. And if you're eeking out such a subsistence existence that you don't have a permanent home or you're jobless? The bigger injustice is that the government has set an adversarial sight on you in the first place.

williesleg 6y ago

Google and apple can keep it! Same with verizon, I trust them all!

minikites 6y ago

Why are private companies more trustworthy than the government?

superkuh 6y ago
Private companies cannot use physical force against you or deprive you of your volition.
- site-packages1 6y ago
  i.e. not necessarily less trustworthy, but less able to enforce their will upon you
- Natsu 6y ago
  That doesn't exactly make them trustworthy. Also, that hasn't always been true... e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I don't think the "deprive you of your volition" part is true. Private companies can absolutely do this to you as an individual - either as an employee or a consumer. And, they can do it through both direct and indirect means.
- username90 6y ago
  Neither can the government, there are laws against that. If you argue that they can ignore the law since they are politicians, then what use are laws stating that the government can't keep your private information?
- meowster 6y ago
  Apple disagrees with you. https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/09/02/apple-security-personnel-search-house-allegedly-for-missing-iphone-prototype/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/09/02/apple-security-person... https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/09/sfpd-investigating-involvement-in-bizarre-case-of-lost-iphone-prototype/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/09/sfpd-investigating-i...

tediousdemise 6y ago

Counterpoint: perhaps companies could still "donate" location data to the government, maybe even for exclusive perks such as tax write-offs or access to information and resources. This bill sounds nice in principle, but like everything else, could be completely negated by simple loopholes. It could even be smoke and mirrors, so that they can say this issue has already been addressed by legislation. Defective legislation is rampant.

jessaustin 6y ago
IANAL, but those perks would seem to be covered by "in exchange for anything of value".

the-dude 6y ago

Is this a proposal or a new bill?

monkeybutton 6y ago

Whenever I see articles about this topic I'm left with so many questions. Where does one go to buy such location data? Is it expensive? Are there minimum orders or do I have to buy all of it and hope what I'm looking for is contained in it? Are there restrictions on who is allowed to buy it? Who are other consumers of the data besides the government, insurance companies? Private investigators?

meowster 6y ago
I'd really like for someone to get a contract, then sell the information a la carte for $1-$5 a pop. Until that happens, people won't care.
- monkeybutton 6y ago
  After some light research, you can apparently subscribe for as little as $5k per-month [0]. Not sure how you'd link a GAID/IDFA to a person's identity though. [0] https://datarade.ai/data-products/lifesight-mobility-data https://datarade.ai/data-products/lifesight-mobility-data
  - meowster 6y ago
    Interesting, thank you. I did some light research in the past, and it was always "contact us for a quote".

IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago

what is the indication on how this bill vote will go ? I see that the cosponsors cross party lines. But is it enough that it will make it into law ?

lolthishuman 6y ago

So just use a contractor with access to it?

joshka 6y ago
On page 2 of the bill, the definition of 'covered customer or subscriber record' includes the following: (II) an intermediary service provider that delivers, stores, or processes communications of such covered person;
- sgc 6y ago
  Who will interpret what is meant by "service provider"? If it is just a data seller who buys it without receiving it in the course of providing a service to the first company, is it covered? Will it require a ruling to know for sure?
- lolthishuman 6y ago
  Sounds easily bypassed through layers of indirection. Sadly this is just legal noise. It doesn’t solve the core problem.

klvino 6y ago

Understand the intent behind the bill. Wouldn't the bill be closer to effectiveness if it banned corporations from selling to any government and not only the US government? By only banning the "US government" in the "purchase" of the data, it doesn't prevent acquiring the same data from another governmental body (Canada buys the data and shares with US Intelligence community, suddenly & mysteriously trade relations with Canada improve). So many loopholes, the bill becomes 'feel good' legislation instead of effective legislation.

xxpor 6y ago
I'm not sure it'd be constitutional for congress to ban selling something to a state government if the goods aren't themselves illegal
- cfqycwz 6y ago
  Not a lawyer but I think this would be constitutional in the same way that international sanctions are constitutional. The regulation of interstate and foreign commerce is an enumerated power given to congress and usually interpreted pretty broadly.
  - xxpor 6y ago
    That's right, but a company in a state selling to a state gov isn't engaging in interstate commerce. Maybe SCOTUS will use the cockamamie "but the market is nationwide so it still affects it" excuse but normally...
    - willcipriano 6y ago
      Wickard v. Filburn pretty much ended the idea of any real limitations in regards to calling something interstate commerce: "An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm. The US government had established limits on wheat production, based on the acreage owned by a farmer, to stabilize wheat prices and supplies. Filburn grew more than was permitted and so was ordered to pay a penalty. In response, he said that because his wheat was not sold, it could not be regulated as commerce, let alone 'interstate" commerce'..." Roscoe lost. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

joshka 6y ago

There's a better 1 page summary of the bill at https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Fourth%20Amendment%20Is%20Not%20For%20Sale%20Act%20of%202021%20One%20Pager.pdf https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Fourth%20Am...

shockeychap 6y ago

I get why bills are written in the same long-form as contracts. But it creates the problem that, just like most contracts, people don't really understand the contents. (Did you actually read the pile of papers you signed for your mortgage?) Would it be unreasonable to require any proposed legislation include a comprehensive summary written at something like a 10th grade reading level? Something like this could help eliminate the manner in which long-form effectively bars most citizen participation in the legislative process. It would also force a degree of clarity on the implications and meanings within a proposal. We should never, ever have to hear "We need to pass it so we can see what's in it." As an aside, I also think there should be hard limits on the size of a single piece of legislation. If a competent reader can't sit down, read, and understand it in a single sitting, it's too long.

karmelapple 6y ago
Agreed. And add in having easily-viewed diffs over the course of the bill’s evolution, so we can see who’s making which changes. But there’s a lot of inertia against changes like this. And hard limits on bills mean there’s less horse-trading to help certain legislators sign onto a bill (which often might be pork). Not a great realization, but it’s part of how bills get passed.
- infogulch 6y ago
  We need radically more light on the activities of legislators. Sunlight cleanses all. I think this is necessary to get us out of the quagmire that we find ourselves in, but any additional transparency will inevitably lead to witch hunts which -- even if deserved -- will lead to instability. We need to give ourselves and our representatives a path to transition to the light without letting cynical people bomb out the foundations of our society with emotion-fueled rage mobs. Perhaps another post on the front page right now is relevant here: On the bare necessity of psychological safety - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860743
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  And add in having easily-viewed diffs over the course of the bill’s evolution, so we can see who’s making which changes. We already have that, except a) it's not as easily to read as it might be and b) without significant study, it's often not obvious what the import of a change is. I think we need to be thinking about a long term goal fo dispensing with representatives as they currently exist and moving toward a wiki-ocracy, where anyone can write or edit parts of the legal code but there are procedures for conflict resolution, as well as constraints of various kinds.

rubyist5eva 6y ago

Generally I dislike the big D Democrats, but I'm behind any bill that decreases the power of the government.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
I didn’t check them all, but there is at least one Republican on there (Dianes, Montana)
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
Their untenable economic fanstasies aside, the neo-socialists (Bernie, AOC and friends) who are rising in the democratic party are TONS better than the neoliberal old guard (Biden, Feinstein, etc. those kinds of dinosaurs) when it comes to showing restraint before throwing additional state law enforcement power at problems. The republicans have made a similar shift in that the moralizing christian right has a lot less influence among the new ones. I think things will be a lot better in 10-20yr as the dinosaurs from both parties drop dead.

some_random 6y ago

This is utterly insane, ban private companies from being allowed to harvest and sell this data. Why do we think targeting ads to pregnant women is a more legitimate use than hunting terrorists to the point where the former is ignored and the latter is banned?

RobRivera 6y ago

new legal racket on acquiring and providing 'free' data to the government, totally unrelated to other contracts, when?

abeppu 6y ago

Why would we be concerned specifically about the government "buying" this information? I don't know or care how much money has exchanged hands through the NSA/AT&T/Room 641A surveillance -- if AT&T did that all for free, it wouldn't be any better.

asimpletune 6y ago

How about just banning buying location data period?

meowster 6y ago
"It's okay, we didn't buy it, we shared it."

imchillyb 6y ago

LOL!!! The loopholes that this bill leaves unclosed make this entire bill just another dog-and-pony-show. This is just for show, not to affect any type of meaningful change. Making the SALE of ALL location data illegal, to any 3rd party, would more than suffice. This proposal is just a song and dance for the generally uneducated and uninformed populace. The government will simply purchase the data from another government... ...YOU KNOW LIKE THEY DO NOW WITH THE 5 EYES PROGRAM... Useless pandering. They suck.

psychlops 6y ago

Why is the fourth amendment not sufficient to stop this? Why do we need a bill to stop companies from selling to the government which is violating constitutional law by consuming the data? No specific warrant, the data cannot be used.

advisedwang 6y ago
The fourth amendment stops the government forcing a company to disclose customer records, but it doesn't stop that company voluntarily turning over the records (ie selling it).

yellowyacht 6y ago

I'd love to see a similar bill to ban the US Government from banning encryption. Would that need to be an amendment?

kevmo 6y ago

Bernie Sanders is on the right side of damn near everything.

BurningFrog 6y ago

Surely the NSA already has all this data, whether legal or not? Do people think things have fundamentally changed after Snowden?

LatteLazy 6y ago

I feel like I'm out of the loop on this one. Is there a specific reason the government shouldn't buy location data? I can think of good uses for the data (the census, mapping traffic patterns, pandemic modeling). Purchase histories seem more telling to me if you want to know someone's secrets? Isn't the whole point of organisations like 5-eyes to bypass what little domestic restrictions there are? There are plenty of other entities I'd prefer not to access my data including state and lower level governments, corps, insurers, foreign governments (I'm a brit to be fully transparent). So why this particular combination of conditions?

calkuta 6y ago

How about we skip the middle-man and reduce their budget instead? That's my preferred way of limiting government.

afpx 6y ago

They should also consider banning US companies from selling the same data to other governments.

lmeyerov 6y ago

There's a whole cottage industry of companies selling US citizen data around credit, location, etc. (safegraph, ...), including say military personnel, government officials, political activists, bankers, and other high-trust individuals. Government people fight hard to allow corporate money laundering and stock market nonsense to stay hidden, but it's a free-for-all for citizen data. It's insane to me that it's legal, and my current guess is it'll take ~20 years for the current 60+ year olds in power who don't know how to use computers to age out.

ta988 6y ago

I propose we ban every entity from buying location data without explicit consent.

gjs278 6y ago
I second the motion

twirlock 6y ago

Did they mean "selling?"