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Comment by TACIXAT | Hacker News Reader

This stuff makes me so mad. It's to the point I don't want to carry a phone anymore. Why is it that people aren't allowed to record my conversations but they can record my real time location?

It's a problem at every level of the stack. I have a phone device that I have very little control over (thanks Apple and Google!) that talks to service providers who know who I am. Those service providers are shady and sell my real time location and I have literally no choices for a cell provider who doesn't do this. Then there is obviously a huge market for buying this collected data.

Where in the stack do we fix this? Do we need a data custody law first so I can track who the problem players are? Do we need devices that we have some control over so we can manage when they beacon out? Can we simply say that we (US citizens) have some right to privacy over our electronic data?

Seriously, these practices are abhorrent.

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The US has no general privacy law, but there's a clue in one of its hilariously specific privacy laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

The way to get a cellphone privacy law is to get the locations of congresspeople (especially Republicans), and use this against them.

The U.S. has some privacy laws, but at the same time, the U.S. (along with Canada) also obligates carriers to gather and store location data. A law saying they can not sell that is not a major step, it just takes an act of congress, and if the whiners and complainers would get off their ass and actually select their congresspeople based on policy, they might get things like this. For the time being a couple percent of the electorate selects your house member because almost nobody else even knows that a race is under way.

Hyperbole "The U.S. has no...", and tribal bashing "especially Republicans", is probably part of why the handful of people who have even heard their chosen congressperson speak, still choose based on tribe.

There's no general constitutional level right to privacy comparable to that in ECHR. So there's a constant risk that privacy laws get overridden by First Amendment considerations.

The specific example of VRRP came about because of a Republican - Bork, who had his privacy invaded.

> There's no general constitutional level right to privacy comparable to that in ECHR.

I suspect that, in part, they are capable of this due to the lack of a vagueness doctrine. A law that broad would likely be unconstitutionally vague and difficult to square with the first amendment in the U.S., but is perfectly acceptable over there because vagueness is not a defense, and there is no equivalent protection of freedom of expression.

> The specific example of VRRP came about because of a Republican - Bork, who had his privacy invaded.

One example does not justify an eternity of digs that let everyone know who exactly how intolerant people can be here.

Added: as a matter of opinion, I value the broad protection of freedom of expression enjoyed in the U.S. far above any additional protection of privacy which could be provided.

Fair point, but where are you getting your statement "For the time being a couple percent of the electorate selects your house member"? As far as I know, voter turnout is at least a magnitude higher.

It's important to realize that what seems like the obvious way an ideal democracy should function is not what we have in the US. We have a partial democracy where all decisions are heavily lobbied by massive corporations to a degree that can't even be compared to most nations. If the 'free market' didn't surround these lobbyists, it would be called racketeering the government.

> Fair point, but where are you getting your statement "For the time being a couple percent of the electorate selects your house member"? As far as I know, voter turnout is at least a magnitude higher.

I'm talking about some uncompetitive districts where only one party is ever considered in the general, and only a teeny tiny fraction of the electorate bother with the primary.

Added: For example, in New York's 14th congressional district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won in the general election because, barring a monumental scandal, the democrat will inevitably win there; and in the primary, she won by an okay margin, but her total number of votes in the primary was just ~17k. As far as I can tell, this means that about 17k people selected the house member for that district of ~690k people (of which 141k voted in the general election).

I think I was being imprecise when I said "a couple percent of the electorate", it's really a couple percent of the overall population in this case, but the point largely stands.

There is more to the local election. Much less do anything to help select which person their party actually runs. Even of those that do, who is a great speaker or looks the best is often a more important consideration than what policy they support/oppose.

The current situation in Germany is actually like this. Some kid doxxed a lot of politicians, musicians and jounalists and they found him within a week and now we suddenly have a discussion about data theft. It's insane.

edit: eg see here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46793116 The kid was annoyed by some politician's statements. I had hoped he was aiming for this effect, but maybe not.

Do you have a link to the story?

I added a link above just after posting. There was a HN discussion too, from before they found the kid:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18823286

If you google 'germany data leak' or similar you will easily find more.

Likely buried now but sorry I meant about the kid and the discussion you mentioned.

I've been really getting into growth and marketing lately as I want my ideas to take off. If I'm building a new company I want to be able to get users quickly.

This stuff is REALLY screwing us over.

Users are insanely skeptical now. This data is insanely valuable for growth but if the industry creates an entire generation of people who REFUSE to be monitored we're going to be in a horrible situation.

If someone is legitimately just interested in the cities you're visiting I don't think this is much of a problem.

For example, say their product is only available in San Francisco. It doesn't make sense to try to recruit users in New York.

This makes it much easier so get initial users as you can just buy ads for users in San Francisco, potentially saving a massive amount of money on your ad campaign.

With Polar (https://getpolarized.io/) I need to have analytics about what users do in the editor. What they click on, etc.

Polar is a research tool for reading and annotating PDFs and caching web content for later reading.

I get regular complains from users to disable all analytics.

I might ship it as an advanced feature for users to opt-out but I don't have any nefarious use case here. My only goal is ti figure out if you're using feature X or not.

Hello,

One thought for you, do you actually plainly spell that out anywhere? I just visited the page and I could not find anything about a privacy policy.

One privacy policy I stumbled upon recently was this one: https://www.roguefitness.com/privacy-policy

They plainly spelled out what data they use, how they gather it, plainly said they do not sell the data and a very easy way to opt-out. That made me feel much better about doing business with them and creating an account with them versus a very legalize and obscure way of spelling it out.

I have a feeling you get people who complain is because the assumption is that the software tracks everything and it gets sold to anyone.

I think there's a distinction to be made with respect to "needing" a user's data in order to be able to provide service at all (for example, a user's age as you cannot permit them to use your application if they're under 13) vs. user data that makes it easier to provide the service, or in your example, advertise your service, to users. If your users are telling you they don't want to give you that data perhaps you should consider listening to them.

The acceptance of monitoring has always been a tacit choice made from ignorance, resulting from deliberate misdirection and subterfuge on the part of marketing organizations.

Your notion that the rejection of monitoring is a conditioned generational characteristic is delusional. In fact, anything less is completely anomalous within the context of all human history.

Good products will find a way to succeed regardless.

I actually don't carry a phone with me. My wife has a flip phone that she uses to contact our kids' schools, and that's it. We also don't have home internet anymore. And when I do use the internet, I make sure to use Safari or Firefox with strict privacy settings enabled. Living without home internet in 2019[1] isn't that hard, it's actually easier and more rewarding and enjoyable than having home internet.

[1]: https://sephware.com/blog/2019-01-04-being-a-software-develo...

It might sound silly, but there is a delicious warm feeling that comes with waking up and having no internet available. The day feels less harried, more focused, and just calmer. The boon of increased productivity in every direction also feels incredible.

The easiest method is fixing the phone OS. There is no need to depend on Google or Apple services for anything. A decent Debian-like free software project could be organized to build a solid phone OS distribution; they could start with the Android OS as a base. There have been a few half hearted attempts at this but none have really taken root. This should definitely be a major goal for anyone interested in recovering our economic, social and political autonomy.

With sufficient energy other portions of the stack could be attacked - we don't need Google or Apple to provide us with map solutions, or email, or whatever.

Solving the problem of cell providers just selling your location just seems impossible, on the other hand.

> The easiest method is fixing the phone OS. There is no need to depend on Google or Apple services for anything.

Location tracking happens at the baseband level, sometimes even without cooperation from your phone. Whatever you have running in the application processor, your carrier is legally obligated to at least try to ascertain your location.

Can't the carrier still reveal what cell tower you're nearest? It seems that no solution for this problem is possible without federal regulation followed by BIG fines for violations.

Maybe a few dozen kids need to be abducted before anyone will care. But frankly, after ignoring Sandy Hook, I no longer see Washington as a force for good of any kind.

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