That is not a fair comparison. You opted into the information becoming available to nearby people, you did not opt into having it aggregated and provided to the entire world. IMO this is one of the fundamental difficulties the era of digital data collection has brought to our society, things that were once not feasible (and therefore not a concern) are now trivial.
Opt in? I didn't agree to a specific term sheet when I started broadcasting my SSID. Public is public, it's not public with stipulations. At least not yet. I agree tho, we need to have some legislative solutions or something to protect our privacy. Alternatives exist, like not broadcasting your SSID.
Unless I am woefully misinformed, this is in fact not possible. I could set a flag somewhere that would instruct clients not to present the SSID as an option, but I can not hide its existence; not even just the name. The only thing hiding the SSID does is inconvenience me.
I think we should raise the issue repeatedly until we reach an informed consensus (apathy doesn't count as consensus IMO) as to how we handle information in the digital age. So much of our legal system is founded on principles that made sense not that long ago but are upended by the recent emergence of trivial mass data collection possible with current technology. We need to have a conversation about what is a sensible policy, and not just on tech forums.
To be sure, I agree with your general standpoint here. I just couldn't resist when the argument is based on the somewhat random convenience of broadcasting an (often user selected) id of your network, while simultaneously holding that nobody is allowed to keep track of that id.
To be clear, I don't, at all, think this is a workable path forward. I also wanted to point out how brief a period of time this is. Imagine learning about some issue arising from movable type in the 15th century, being solved over a period of a few decades, helping the rise of some corporation/feudality long past.
When it comes to policy, how about making APs not broadcasting a public id, while making it illegal to track any traffic on any identifiers for the spectrum? Would that be called for? Or does the convenience of setting up a new AP make up for the fact that a corporation may make a few more bucks out of an improved positioning service?
I don't know, but I still find it funny that you would defend a particular decade in the early noughts, holding these few years as an ideal.
> still find it funny that you would defend a particular decade in the early noughts
If I came across that way, it was unintentional.
I appreciate the counterpoints to my comments, especially the thoughtful ones like yours. I think I don't really come to HN to convince anybody else of my opinion, but rather to convince myself that I have given my position a decent amount of consideration. The more I have to defend my thoughts, the clearer they become. To me, at least ;-)
For policy, I think we should make data PI data collection transparent to the targeted person. Just like I have the legal right to see collected information in my credit file, I think that legislation should be expanded so that it applies to other forms of data collected about citizens by private companies. Everything from Best Buy's contract with a private company that keeps a 'refund score' (I don't recall what it is actually called specifically) on each customer which it then uses to determine whether or not to reject their product return, to this kind of 'public' data collection Google is engaging in. In some ways the horse has already left the barn, and there is already a serious amount of data which has been collected, but I hope that before it gets used for nefarious reasons we can figure out how to muzzle it. We need a clear definition of what constitutes my data, and public data, which is adapted for modern technology.
When you start broadcasting an SSID, there's no reasonable expectation that some parties will be able to see it, but other parties won't. If you won't to keep a secret, don't share it.
When you start showing your face in public, there's no reasonable expectation that some parties will be able to see it, but other parties won't. If you want to keep a secret, don't share it.
When you start leaving fingerprints in public, there's no reasonable expectation that some parties will be able to pick them up, but other parties won't. If you want to keep a secret, don't leave fingerprints anywhere.
When you start dropping hair strands or dead skin cells in public, there's no reasonable expectation that some parties will be able to sample it for DNA collection, but other parties won't. If you want to keep a secret, don't drop hair or skin cells.
Thank you for this. There is a huge difference between some stranger being able to see your face as you walk down the street, and having the same stranger record your face, upload it to the cloud and then make it searchable by anyone in the world, tied to other pieces of data track your movements, spending, speech, etc.
The lack of privacy comes from how the data is concentrated, combined, and then shared with people and systems beyond your approval. This is not a binary "secret"/"public" classification where privacy only applies to things in the secret bucket, and no privacy protections apply to something you are not actively trying to keep secret.
I guess you're going for reductio ad absurdum. (did I spell that right?) But I actually think it's reasonable that I might be recorded if I go out in public. Maybe I'm the crazy one, but I just don't see how it could work otherwise.
So you'll have no objection to me publishing your exact location to the entire world at all times that I can see you from a public space? After all, you're opting in by being visible.
