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Comment by mLuby | Hacker News Reader

I want to see where lawmakers are spending their time (especially in their off hours). There's probably plenty of fun stuff to discover in the data.

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Honestly, a publically available real time map of the location of all lawmakers that haven’t pledged to fix this is probably the only way to fix it.

If that’s not enough, some simple data mining to list all their known associates, mistresses (etc), would probably get it fixed.

Sadly, they’d probably just make it illegal to publish data about the ruling class and not the rest of us.

>Sadly, they’d probably just make it illegal to publish data about the ruling class and not the rest of us.

It might already be illegal, it sounds a little like blackmail.

it’s only blackmail when you have a demand.

the party that discloses the information does not need to have demands.

> publically available real time map of the location of all lawmakers that haven’t pledged to fix this

> Honestly, a publically available real time map of the location of all lawmakers that haven’t pledged to fix this is probably the only way to fix it.

Restricting this to certain lawmakers based on political affiliation on positions is not the right way to go. If one party is more affected than another, they will turn it into a purely tribal issue. (Democrats are lawbreakers who are endangering Republican politicians by releasing sensitive location data! This shows that Democrats cannot be trusted! Why wasn't Clinton's location data released too? Fake liberal news, etc.. etc..) This is easy to spin, and will turn their base against reform.

If you do this, you have to include all lawmakers. This is actually more fair because regardless of who is paying lip service to privacy, the legislature collectively has failed to do anything about it. How do you know those who claim to support privacy really do at all behind closed doors?

It's not about party affiliation. It's about whether they care or not to support the overwhelming public interest.

What we want is a government scared of its citizens not the other way around.

most governments are perfectly afraid of their citizens, hence every decision being towards more control. in the face of being more afraid, they will tighten that control, and not loosen it.

Who gives a shit? Fuck this nuanced bullshit. Target them.

This is why the US has some extremely narrowly drafted bits of privacy law, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

Crazy: they banned disclosure of video rental history just because a Supreme Court nominee was embarrassed by having it disclosed? Great moments in having principles!

Oh yea, the Supreme Court is generally just as crazy as the other two branches of government. Go read about a few of their decisions.

Sounds like an interesting project, let's collaborate.

Here's a classic 2002 story about a Portland district attorney changing his tune on the privacy of garbage after a reporter reporting on the contents of the DA's garbage:

http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-1616-rubbish.html-2

Yes. Thats still my main problem with this whole post privacy thing - the big players know allmost everything about us, but we only know redegated informations about them.

I just heard (so no sure if true, but likely) Mark Zuckerberg bought all of the surrounding houses of his home to protect his privacy...

It’s true. happened years ago.

he also bought 700 acres in Hawaiʻi.

He also wanted a private meeting with the European Parliament...

Information asymmetry - it’s always been a powerful tool in business, marketing, politics, etc. While the internet and mobile devices have given the masses much more information, they have given those in positions of power even more.

Talk to your friendly local Repo men, they can track every bit of asset, and all they need is owners name. That includes tracking personal and car embedded cellphones, digging thru social media for close friends and family, scanning ANPR databases etc.

1000%! My repo buddy knows everywhere anyone goes anytime. Very scary stuff. Luckily(sic), he had a crappy childhood & came into maturity as a highly principaled individual(0 drink, 0 drugs). I suspect he is the exception to the norm in that space.

*He was in from out of town & borrowed another friend's workstation to run a trace a couple month's back. That mutual friend was agog at how much micro location data was pulled up. Frankly, I was, too.

Yep, mostly FBI agents waiting to arrest you for felony wiretapping charges

Are you implying it's illegal to do that? It seems like the whole point of the article is that this is entirely legal.

It sounds like congressmen and senators explicitly voted to prevent the FCC from making things like this illegal.

That doesn’t mean they won’t carve out exceptions for themselves though. Congress passed laws to allow them to trade on inside information, for example.

Those were repealed, right? https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/17749...

here are a few updates after that (in order by date):

https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/congress-argues-cant-inv...

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/14/congress-stock-tra...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-truth-about-cong...

Wow thank you! :)

I'm implying that the FBI won't give a fuck if its legal or illegal and the onus is on you to prove that you are not a terrorist, which considering you have been monitoring high level government officials on a real time location basis... Good luck.

I think as a geek your life changes once you learn being right means nothing outside of your field of expertise.

And being a smartass means nothing outside of your social circle.

What other companies purchase phone geo tracking that provide it online. Would polling congressmen's public assessible location be ok if provided online?

>is that this is entirely legal

For corporations and the government to be doing it. Not for activists to do it.

Activists can be jailed for doing even actually obviously legal things...

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