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Comment by murphyslab | Hacker News Reader

I haven't seen this covered in mainstream TV news, save for a segment earlier this week on PBS News Hour.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-an-obscure-cellpho...

Rather sad that it isn't more widely discussed.

Isn't it obvious why? Everybody uses cops as a punching bag but they are merely buying information that 3rd parties are willing to sell. The 3rd parties have deep pockets. How do you hold the data selling 3rd parties accountable? I'm not sure how. Nobody wants to give up their phones.

It requires a legislative solution and increasing the issue’s visibility seems like a reasonable way to create negative public sentiment and apply pressure to legislatures.

Yes but every article points fingers at cops- the wrong target. The right target are the data brokers. How would you possibly tell cops they cannot use information that others can freely purchase?

I felt like it was using police to highlight the dangers of data brokers, rather than pointing the finger at police. Either way it seems like we agree that the problem here isn’t that the police are using a tool that aggregates 3rd-party data, but rather that the data is allowed to be aggregated and sold to begin with.

Local procurement ordinances. A city council can pass an ordinance that does not allow any part of the city's budget to be spent on data from data brokers or really any technology -- drones, facial recognition, whatever. This academic paper looks at efforts in Oakland, Seattle, and San Diego [1]

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2737006

Sure, but it seems pretty silly to ban the police from using data that any private citizen can access.

Why? Private citizens don't have the ability to put you in an interrogation room against your will, and aren't in the business of being professional investigators.

I get the argument that the best long-term solution would be regulating the data brokers. But if you want to do something right now that will actually restrict the police in your neighborhoods from using this as part of their jobs, this is a way to do that.

Police don't need warrants when given consent. Police can search your house without a warrant if you tell them that they can. Police can buy information from data brokers. Warrants compel compliance

Maybe they should need warrants even with consent. The drug dog spiel has gotten far too old to be tolerable.

If you swim in the "don't talk to police" ocean, you discover versions of the comic dialog (well, it isn't really funny) when the cops have you in the interrogation room "with your consent":

You: Am I under arrest?

Cops: We just want to ask you a few questions so you can help us out. You are not a suspect.

You: So I'm free to go?

Cops: We just want to clear up a few things. You are not under arrest.

You: So I'm free to go?

Cops: Before you go, we want to ask a couple things.

You: So I'm free to go?

etc.

According to the article, Fog Reveal accounts are typically only offered to law enforcement organizations. The company apparently realizes the sensitivity of these data and doesn't just make it available to any random paying customer.

They are still voluntarily selling to police which is consenting. It's not your data, it's their data they collected about you.

Perhaps a good line to draw would be to ban resale of data? It's difficult to try to write a law around but at least we all agree it's a problem. It's a start.

There are 3000 counties in America, how long do you think it takes to get things from city or county level up to state and federal level? These little local gestures aren't that effective overall. The problem is the commodification of your personal data.

> The problem is the commodification of your personal data.

Can't it be both things at once? To say it's not at all the cops fault is ridiculous.

I'm not saying that, but that trying to do bottom-up legislation at the muni/county level is probably a losing strategy.

> how long do you think it takes to get things from city or county level up to state and federal level?

As an observer, it took about 20 years to get MJ prohibition removed from town law and later adopted by State. Different issues have different incentives.

How do you hold the data selling 3rd parties accountable?

GDPR USA edition.

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