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The things you've mentioned are all generally Bad Things and things that we should be fighting to stop. Fighting to obscure your location information and even p
by imgabe 12y ago
The things you've mentioned are all generally Bad Things and things that we should be fighting to stop. Fighting to obscure your location information and even protect your privacy in general doesn't stop any of the things you mentioned if you believe the government is acting in bad faith.
- seanflyon 12y agoIt mitigates the risk. Someone cannot do bad things with your location information if they do not have your location information.
- imgabe 12y agoI think it is naive to think that a bad actor who intends you harm will be stopped or even slowed down by the fact that there isn't a log of every location you've visited.
- seanflyon 12y agoI think that that is a ridiculous statement. Of course giving a bad actor more opportunity to act badly increases the risk.
- imgabe 12y agoA threat to your safety or your freedom needs to be dealt with directly by eliminating it, not hiding from it. If you're envisioning a bad actor with the resources to compile and analyze a comprehensive log of your location, the simple fact that you use service A instead of service B is not going to do a thing to stop them if they're out to get you. You have far bigger problems on your hands.
- seanflyon 12y agoWhat about a potential threat? You are not allowed to "eliminate" those. Maybe just don't give that potential threat more power.
- imgabe 12y ago"Potential threat" is an unbounded set. If you're going to guard against every potential threat you will not be able to spend your time doing anything else. I asked because I was curious about what sorts of unique threats are presented by, for example, a database of location data. So far I haven't seen any that aren't already present via far simpler means.
- seanflyon 12y agoIt does not take an unbounded amount of time to simply not give information to an unbounded set. In fact that takes no time at all. The point is not that the world will end if we give away our location data, only that doing so has a non-zero cost.
- imgabe 12y agoIf you have a cell phone, it is constantly pinging nearby cell towers. If it has wifi, it is pinging nearby wireless networks. That information is out there, waiting to be collected. If you want to go without the benefits of a cell phone to avoid whatever threat is posed by somebody knowing where you were at some point in time, go for it. I think it's a waste of time.
- seanflyon 12y agoI think there has been some confusion here. When I said that "The point is not that the world will end if we give away our location data, only that doing so has a non-zero cost" what I meant was that the point is not that the world will end if we give away our location data, only that doing so has a non-zero cost. Cell phones are like cars, they are very useful but also have their downsides (cell phones reduce privacy, cars kill people). I have a cell phone and a car because I made a decision that the cost was worth the benefit. I did not need to delude myself into thinking there was no cost nor did I need to pretend that the cost was inevitable.
- 12y ago