Isn't that effectively the same thing, though? The airtags are useful because they cause other people's devices to transmit their location.

Ahh, thank you for the correction.

This is the crux of the issue. I have spent a lot of my adult life in places that would horrify the average westerner. The root of the problem in recognizing what could go wrong with this stuff, is never having been exposed to a jurisdiction of political power which is run by murderous psychopaths outside a rule of law that benefits anyone but the psychopaths. Of course "authorities" will always continue to push boundaries and seek to embiggen the largesse of their power, but we in the developed world are so lucky! Most of us here on HN have won some sort of cosmic lottery with odds more infinitesimal than any other lottery that could ever exist. But an unfortunate side effect of never having been exposed to the various hazards of human civilization that almost every other human before us has endured, is not having built up any "ideological antibodies" against these sorts of things.

I've seen comments on Youtube that seemed shocked that Youtube could trace comments to an IP address! We are deep in it now, approaching a point where the barrier to entry to understand how the technology functions is too much even for capable specialists to fully comprehend the rampant abuse happening at this very moment. How often do we as technical people find out about some new god damned thing some god damned tech company is doing to steal our data or otherwise exploit us as "customers"? And even people who are technically capable of grasping the depth of the power of this technology are still busy hammering away on their keyboards to make it more powerful, having never had to worry about violent psychopaths with political power. We are creating a truly terrifying nightmare of brutal suffering for our grandchildren or their children.

Some people would argue it already is in the wrong hands. Without any conspiracy theory required, it is controlled by a tiny, wealthy elite with power and connections to manipulate our political discourse and ensure their new power is not scrutinised.