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Comment by PeterCorless | Hacker News Reader

I am less concerned about the NYPD and other de jure police and sheriff departments having this, and more concerned when they get into the hands of civilians that are creepy men stalking ex-wives and underage women.

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Sorry to be the one who brings you up to speed, but this is just adding one more option for both the gov and civilians to track people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_Reveal

As for randos tracking women, or anyone, this is already happening

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1080944193/apple-airtags-thef...

https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/modified-airtags-us...

and trackers are a dime a dozen it seems, complete with cellular data plans

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=gps+tracker+for+vehicles

People aren't gonna buy weird, single-purpose, short-range tracker-launchers when they can just stick the tracker on the car when nobody's looking.

Considering the history of effective oversight and regulation of local police, there’s no difference between the two groups you described

> > That projectile travels at a claimed 37 miles per hour, and has a straight-forward range of 35 feet — though the company claims that, with an arc, it can theoretically reach 60 feet.

This launcher doesn't seem very capable of hitting a moving vehicle, in spite of what their marketing might imply. It would be much easier and more covert to just use an Airtag, which stalkers already do.

You can actually just buy GPS+Cellular trackers off Amazon already. And they are far far more discrete than this literal soup can sized tracker that the NYPD would be using.

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