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Since this involves agencies regulating fisheries I suspect that they are trying to get accurate data about aquatic life taken during fishing activities so that

Since this involves agencies regulating fisheries I suspect that they are trying to get accurate data about aquatic life taken during fishing activities so that they can make accurate estimates of a species ability to thrive in an area and perhaps to drive legislation that would protect areas from over-fishing. I don't think they give a shit about knowing which boat was where unless that boat is engaged in illegal activities. Smuggling in the states that are mentioned is still a thing since that is on a direct path from the Caribbean and northern parts of South America where illegal drugs originate. Knowing which boat was where allows them to determine who might be meeting the smugglers. Once you shut down the airspace to traffickers it is a natural extension to try to limit their ability to shift to maritime assets to ship their products into the country through small ports or marinas in backwater locations. I don't see this monitoring as an invasion of anyone's privacy. I see it more as an extension of border enforcement mechanisms to domains which have historically been difficult to control.

F00Fbug 4y ago
Your first point is really the issue. NOAA extrapolates catch information into overall health of the species and uses that to issue permits, set quotas, and adjust fishing seasons. Not only did I help build some of the ship-board systems, I built a ton of data analysis tools on the back-end for NOAA. Red Snapper in the Gulf of Mexico is a good example. NOAA will tell you we're devastating the species (boat captains would not agree!) and they adjust quotas and season start/stop dates based on catch info to help balance the business of fishing and the health of the species. It's a tough job because the captains are often at odds with the scientists. It could be possible to sanitize the data and remove the position information, but they kind of need some general location to do some of the science.
- doodlebugging 4y ago
  Thanks for your work on this. This is important as fisheries globally are over-fished. The scale of the problem is not even known right now. Chinese fishing boats roam the globe taking fish for consumption in China and depleting stocks everywhere they sail including by fishing in marine sanctuaries. Fish as healthy food has become a big deal in the last few decades and demand grows so the fish have to come from somewhere. If you don't protect your fisheries then collapse of global fish stocks will only be one more domino in the collapse of entire ecosystems.
- kokanee 4y ago
  I agree with this, but I really think the rationale for surveillance legislation like this is "all of the above." Some stakeholders are only interested in protecting marine resources, but others are in fact focused on identifying anglers who are poaching. See https://globalfishingwatch.org https://globalfishingwatch.org. I have been on salmon charters in Alaska and Canada, and it is surprisingly easy for even a well-intentioned skipper to drift out of a legal fishing zone while tending to everything else happening on the boat. I'm not excusing those mistakes, but I can definitely understand their reluctance to carry surveillance units onboard. It's a tough problem; all parties have strong arguments, but the interests aren't aligned. I do think there are some actionable areas most folks would agree on, like investing in measures to deincentivize rogue international fishing operations and bottom trawlers/dredgers.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    > it is surprisingly easy for even a well-intentioned skipper to drift out of a legal fishing zone while tending to everything else happening on the boat Skippers do have a lot to deal with, but I don't think it's asking too much of them to have accurate awareness and control of the position of their craft at all times. If staying out of forbidden areas is difficult, then perhaps one could use a geofencing app that would work offline using GPS signals, which are generally easy to pick up on the water in good weather. You would input some boundary on a map, and the app will periodically check position and alarm if you've entered the forbidden area. I bet this is even a feature on marine navigation systems and even some watches.
MikeKusold 4y ago
This potentially opens up boat location tracking to FOIA requests, which would betray what boat captains believe are trade secrets (where they fish).
- doodlebugging 4y ago
  Control access to the information so that it is less likely to escape to their competitors. They are in competition with each other and no one wants the other to know where they are making their best money. The real problem is that when a fishery is in decline due to over-fishing, we have no effective way of detecting that condition until there is a serious problem and local stocks, which may be migratory species anyway that are only available seasonally, are near the point where they can't recover. Each captain sees a small part of the elephant and to him, that elephant is there, it is healthy, and it is available for exploitation. When they go back to harbor they compare notes and it could take a lot of time for any of them to acknowledge that catch levels of some species are down and that they are having to go farther out or to locate new areas that have not been hit as hard. I don't see a problem with a government agency with the responsibility of safeguarding the health of offshore assets like fish stocks and habitat having precise tools to allow them to determine where the fish are being taken. If this agency did not exist then over-fishing would be the norm as each charter boat did the best to maximize the fun for the clients until they had fished themselves out of a job as the fisheries collapse. In the absence of effective regulation, everyone does their own thing with no regard for anything except maximizing their own profitability. This is the way (of the world).
  - hansthehorse 4y ago
    The first thing I do when fishing a new area is book a half day drift boat trip and mark all the spots they fished on my marine gps app. It's stupid easy (if not free) to find where charter fisherman fish.
    - doodlebugging 4y ago
      Nothing is ever really secret if you have the right tools for discovery.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
runnerup 4y ago
> I don't see this monitoring as an invasion of anyone's privacy. I do! I consider a requirement that the government know where I am to be an invasion of privacy. It really is too bad the constitution doesn’t actually include a right to privacy.
- doodlebugging 4y ago
  They are out there in public exploiting a public resource, sometimes to the point where that resource has been depleted nearly to extinction. There is no expectation of privacy and no right to it in this circumstance. There should be no opportunity for them to conceal what they are doing or where they are doing it. This in no way constitutes an unreasonable search under the fourth amendment since they operate entirely in or on public waterways open to all. As far as allowing the government to know where you are at any given time, that ship sailed a long time ago and it isn't necessarily the government that causes the most privacy invasion issues. Many times it is private industry who tails your activities, your purchase habits, your associates, etc. I hope you see the issue with that. The constitution makes several attempts to guarantee privacy but the interpretation of the amendments which might be useful for defining individual privacy rights is always a function of the composition of the Supreme Court at the time the case is heard. We need to be vigilant and supportive of all rights enumerated, not just our favorite or we will lose all of them to the wrong court.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    So this is like requiring hunters to wear GPS tags so the game wardens can locate and interview them more efficiently. Half the country will think this is a good idea.
    - doodlebugging 4y ago
      Most hunters likely already have their GPS location monitored anyway if they are carrying cell phones into the field. It is not too much of a stretch to see an edge case where one or more of them could become interesting enough to game wardens to find themselves under investigation. The vast majority of people though have no reason to worry about their government wanting or needing to know where they are at any hour. It doesn't follow though that they will not be tracked 24 hours a day using tools and devices that they make a conscious decision to purchase, thus enabling this tracking, in real time, and facilitating their discovery should the mean old government ever decide that they are worth spending some of the investigations budget to study.
petre 4y ago
They should cerate a catch report sheet then and issue free permits with the obligation to submit your yearly report sheet, like other European administrations do. Although I fail to see how the permits would be enforced, US Coast Guard? If drugs are an issue, then run inspections upon boarding or furtger regulate the chartering companies.
moremetadata 4y ago
>Knowing which boat was where allows them to determine who might be meeting the smugglers. A signal lamp/ aldis lamp/ Morse lamp during World War I, German signalers used optical Morse transmitters called Blinkgerät, with a range of up to 8 km (5 miles) at night, using red filters for undetected communications. They continue to be used to the present day on naval vessels and for aviation light signals in air traffic control towers. This then brings the states mainland communication monitoring into play, because even though some part, some nod of the communication takes place in secret like two people having a conversation passing in the street, subsequent communication channels can be observed over time, which can then expose the use of signal lamps as the form of communication. I think most people dont realise how easy it is to extract information from people without them knowing.

F00Fbug 4y ago

Your first point is really the issue. NOAA extrapolates catch information into overall health of the species and uses that to issue permits, set quotas, and adjust fishing seasons. Not only did I help build some of the ship-board systems, I built a ton of data analysis tools on the back-end for NOAA. Red Snapper in the Gulf of Mexico is a good example. NOAA will tell you we're devastating the species (boat captains would not agree!) and they adjust quotas and season start/stop dates based on catch info to help balance the business of fishing and the health of the species. It's a tough job because the captains are often at odds with the scientists. It could be possible to sanitize the data and remove the position information, but they kind of need some general location to do some of the science.

doodlebugging 4y ago
Thanks for your work on this. This is important as fisheries globally are over-fished. The scale of the problem is not even known right now. Chinese fishing boats roam the globe taking fish for consumption in China and depleting stocks everywhere they sail including by fishing in marine sanctuaries. Fish as healthy food has become a big deal in the last few decades and demand grows so the fish have to come from somewhere. If you don't protect your fisheries then collapse of global fish stocks will only be one more domino in the collapse of entire ecosystems.
kokanee 4y ago
I agree with this, but I really think the rationale for surveillance legislation like this is "all of the above." Some stakeholders are only interested in protecting marine resources, but others are in fact focused on identifying anglers who are poaching. See https://globalfishingwatch.org https://globalfishingwatch.org. I have been on salmon charters in Alaska and Canada, and it is surprisingly easy for even a well-intentioned skipper to drift out of a legal fishing zone while tending to everything else happening on the boat. I'm not excusing those mistakes, but I can definitely understand their reluctance to carry surveillance units onboard. It's a tough problem; all parties have strong arguments, but the interests aren't aligned. I do think there are some actionable areas most folks would agree on, like investing in measures to deincentivize rogue international fishing operations and bottom trawlers/dredgers.
- javajosh 4y ago
  > it is surprisingly easy for even a well-intentioned skipper to drift out of a legal fishing zone while tending to everything else happening on the boat Skippers do have a lot to deal with, but I don't think it's asking too much of them to have accurate awareness and control of the position of their craft at all times. If staying out of forbidden areas is difficult, then perhaps one could use a geofencing app that would work offline using GPS signals, which are generally easy to pick up on the water in good weather. You would input some boundary on a map, and the app will periodically check position and alarm if you've entered the forbidden area. I bet this is even a feature on marine navigation systems and even some watches.

MikeKusold 4y ago

This potentially opens up boat location tracking to FOIA requests, which would betray what boat captains believe are trade secrets (where they fish).

doodlebugging 4y ago
Control access to the information so that it is less likely to escape to their competitors. They are in competition with each other and no one wants the other to know where they are making their best money. The real problem is that when a fishery is in decline due to over-fishing, we have no effective way of detecting that condition until there is a serious problem and local stocks, which may be migratory species anyway that are only available seasonally, are near the point where they can't recover. Each captain sees a small part of the elephant and to him, that elephant is there, it is healthy, and it is available for exploitation. When they go back to harbor they compare notes and it could take a lot of time for any of them to acknowledge that catch levels of some species are down and that they are having to go farther out or to locate new areas that have not been hit as hard. I don't see a problem with a government agency with the responsibility of safeguarding the health of offshore assets like fish stocks and habitat having precise tools to allow them to determine where the fish are being taken. If this agency did not exist then over-fishing would be the norm as each charter boat did the best to maximize the fun for the clients until they had fished themselves out of a job as the fisheries collapse. In the absence of effective regulation, everyone does their own thing with no regard for anything except maximizing their own profitability. This is the way (of the world).
- hansthehorse 4y ago
  The first thing I do when fishing a new area is book a half day drift boat trip and mark all the spots they fished on my marine gps app. It's stupid easy (if not free) to find where charter fisherman fish.
  - doodlebugging 4y ago
    Nothing is ever really secret if you have the right tools for discovery.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

runnerup 4y ago

> I don't see this monitoring as an invasion of anyone's privacy. I do! I consider a requirement that the government know where I am to be an invasion of privacy. It really is too bad the constitution doesn’t actually include a right to privacy.

doodlebugging 4y ago
They are out there in public exploiting a public resource, sometimes to the point where that resource has been depleted nearly to extinction. There is no expectation of privacy and no right to it in this circumstance. There should be no opportunity for them to conceal what they are doing or where they are doing it. This in no way constitutes an unreasonable search under the fourth amendment since they operate entirely in or on public waterways open to all. As far as allowing the government to know where you are at any given time, that ship sailed a long time ago and it isn't necessarily the government that causes the most privacy invasion issues. Many times it is private industry who tails your activities, your purchase habits, your associates, etc. I hope you see the issue with that. The constitution makes several attempts to guarantee privacy but the interpretation of the amendments which might be useful for defining individual privacy rights is always a function of the composition of the Supreme Court at the time the case is heard. We need to be vigilant and supportive of all rights enumerated, not just our favorite or we will lose all of them to the wrong court.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  So this is like requiring hunters to wear GPS tags so the game wardens can locate and interview them more efficiently. Half the country will think this is a good idea.
  - doodlebugging 4y ago
    Most hunters likely already have their GPS location monitored anyway if they are carrying cell phones into the field. It is not too much of a stretch to see an edge case where one or more of them could become interesting enough to game wardens to find themselves under investigation. The vast majority of people though have no reason to worry about their government wanting or needing to know where they are at any hour. It doesn't follow though that they will not be tracked 24 hours a day using tools and devices that they make a conscious decision to purchase, thus enabling this tracking, in real time, and facilitating their discovery should the mean old government ever decide that they are worth spending some of the investigations budget to study.

petre 4y ago

They should cerate a catch report sheet then and issue free permits with the obligation to submit your yearly report sheet, like other European administrations do. Although I fail to see how the permits would be enforced, US Coast Guard? If drugs are an issue, then run inspections upon boarding or furtger regulate the chartering companies.

moremetadata 4y ago

>Knowing which boat was where allows them to determine who might be meeting the smugglers. A signal lamp/ aldis lamp/ Morse lamp during World War I, German signalers used optical Morse transmitters called Blinkgerät, with a range of up to 8 km (5 miles) at night, using red filters for undetected communications. They continue to be used to the present day on naval vessels and for aviation light signals in air traffic control towers. This then brings the states mainland communication monitoring into play, because even though some part, some nod of the communication takes place in secret like two people having a conversation passing in the street, subsequent communication channels can be observed over time, which can then expose the use of signal lamps as the form of communication. I think most people dont realise how easy it is to extract information from people without them knowing.