The "only used in exceptional cases" argument is the same tired line every government uses before mass surveillance becomes the norm. Once a backdoor exists, it's not just "good guys" using it; it's an open invitation for abuse.
In one case, however, there was a capital crime near a restaurant (or similar venue) and police and prosecutor used this information illegally to track down witnesses. They were sued after the fact and lost, but got nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Once information is available, it will be used for purposes other than the intended one, even by the "good guys".
- Elimination – physically remove the hazard
- Substitution – replace the hazard
- Engineering controls – isolate people from the hazard
- Administrative controls – change the way people work
- PPE – protect the worker with equipment
Only with hazardous data, or things like moral hazards rather than physical hazards.
Might want to save it locally though.
The real hazard is the infohazard of knowing how to deal with hazards. Hopefully some genius will eliminate it and increase efficiency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_hazard_controls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_minimization
https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/hazard/hierarchy_...
https://epic.org/data-minimization-is-the-key-to-a-meaningfu...
I won't shovel the rest in here, but this is a good start.
Ironic they went along with this considering how chest-pumping Germans are about their government being all about protecting their citizens' "privacy".
>They were sued after the fact and lost, but got nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Government workers don't care about doing a good job since if they break the rules they won't get fired and the fines are not paid from their pockets but from the taxpayers pockets anyway so there's no incentive to be competent at your job.
Some people are meticulous about their jobs. Some are not. Both types are present in any large organization.
The government mandated contact tracing, but not how it was to be implemented. There was a publicly developed open-source app for contact tracing that was perfectly privacy preserving.
Unfortunately, many restaurants instead used a commercial solution that was none of these things. What it did have was support from a mildly famous German musician and great lobbying. Most people didn't care, they just wanted to go to the restaurant.
It's quite a different attitude than the USA. The USA is almost unique in being individualist to what some might consider an extremist degree, to the point where if the government intends to violate someone's fundamental rights, they may do so only under very limited circumstances and must document everything and prove that those circumstances had been met. In most of the democratic world, individual rights are just one factor that needs to be balanced against public safety, public order, etc. and the government has much wider latitude to violate even constitutionally protected rights on its own say-so.
This is how you get German prosecutors on 60 Minutes, grinning and laughing as they describe the shock people undergo as they are arrested and their computers confiscated and searched over literal mean tweets. For the Germans, it's normal -- necesssary, even, to have a functional society. To Americans it's abhorrent.
Yet, I received "Pending E-ZPass payment" scam for a year.
I have no further comments.
The best I can think was your location data was sold by a company behind one of the apps on your phone.
Some of my phone apps might have betrayed to me, too, but I have no idea what I had installed at that time.
>Yet, I received "Pending E-ZPass payment" scam for a year.
I think you're overestimating how precise scammers' targeting are. They're playing a numbers game, so they're going to spam every who might have used ezpass, not carefully curate their spam list by buying real time location data from data brokers. I received phishing texts for banks that I don't have accounts for, so next time I get a phishing text for a bank that I do use, I'm not going to think my bank got breached.
I travel a lot due to work. Generally the destinations are the same, but a new country is added now and then. When I go there and come back, I also start to get spam in that country's language.
I currently have English, Spanish, Dutch and Italian spam regularly in my mailboxes. They all started after I visited respected countries, and continue since I still visit them semi-regularly.
That E-ZPass spam started right after I returned from US, continued for a year, ceased and didn't return.
Spammers have better targeting tools than we know.
It's far more likely your email addresses are getting leaked by airlines/hotels (or basically anyone you gave your email to during your travel) than random apps selling your location to data brokers, data brokers being competent enough link those locations back to your email, but somehow too incompetent to know that being in France for a month doesn't mean you're interested in buying French car insurance. The latter isn't impossible, but occam's razor says we should favor the more straightforward explanation.
And no, I don't get car insurance scam. I get generally faster ones, like "you have a package" types...
The rabbit hole is a bit deeper to summarize with a #8, Solingen made Occam's razor.
> track down witnesses
Am I too naive that I think that's a worthy use of that information?
We might like one government administration and highly expect them to respect the privacy. But what about the next administration? We've just seen Trump say he will withhold funding for universities with "illegal protests". I'd fully expect his administration to abuse this tracking, in the name of law and order.
Who determines if a wiretap is worthy? Or a search and seizure? Or a simple arrest?
We have an answer for this, it's called Law and an independent judiciary.
That said, in my state the cops recruited and flipped a criminal lawyer who then back doored her high profile clients and gave confidential and privileged information to them them in order to build cases.
You can do this, just like you can do e.g. video surveillance, in a secure and privacy-respecting way. There is just no political will.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/safewa-app-sparks-urg...
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/breach-of-trust-poli...
Queensland Police gained access to the Check In Qld app in June through a search warrant after the theft of a police-issued firearm, which led to an officer being stood down.
Western Australian Police has used its data twice without a warrant, which led to the state then banning police from accessing the data, while Victoria Police has tried but been rebuffed on at least three occasions.
In 2007, his life membership of the Western Australian Police Union was withdrawn after his parliamentary attack on police involved with the Andrew Mallard case, where he named a former undercover policeman who had a role in Mallard's unjust conviction.
He planned to melt down his life membership badge, have it made into a tiepin with the words Veritas Vincit— "Truth Conquers", the motto of the school he attended—and present it to Mallard.
And I refuse to believe that the politicians behind that travesty don't know that.
Also, if you already go to prison for not handing over your decryption keys when asked, the one purpose left for a backdoor can only be criminal abuse.
- 2024 internal email by FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate
(https://gizmodo.com/leaked-fbi-email-warrantless-wiretaps-se...)
A classic case where anti-terrorism laws were used against... Iceland.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/08/revealed-anti-...
Anti terrorist laws used to track and prosecute fly tipping and people parking in disabled parking spots.
These laws were also designed to only be used in extreme cases. History repeats itself.
It removed the habeas corpus for 15 years.