Comment by Wurdan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Wurdan | Hacker News Reader

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If you don't think this tool poses any risk to these people let's try walk through a scenario.

Let's say someone sees a parking warden they find physically attractive. They follow them for a bit and when they write up their next ticket, the stalker pulls up this app to get the officer's ID. The next day they pull up the app to see where the warden is working that day - they drive over there, and it takes them maybe half an hour to find the warden based on the lag between last-ticket-location and real-time-location. They strike up a creepy conversation and the parking warden eventually leaves, disturbed. The next day, the parking warden is working a night shift - they've been told to patrol a dark neighborhood where there are plenty of alleyways that nobody can see into...

See where I'm going with this?

Anything which allows someone to get ongoing location data for a person who they've just come across on the street is inherently a danger to the surveilled person.

That's the example you run toward?

More likely someone gets a ticket that's bullshit, winds up paying, and this happens enough that they have their buddy wait for the person and throw a brick at them or something.

This is a wild hypothetical that tries to blame a tool for the problem of a user. Won’t anyone think of the children?

Let’s modify your post to highlight the absurdity:

Let's say someone sees a parking warden they find physically attractive. They follow them for a bit in their car and when they write up their last ticket, the stalker gets in their car and follows the officer back to the station and then to their home. The next day they pull up to the warden’s house and follow them to see where the warden is working that day - they drive over there. They strike up a creepy conversation and the parking warden eventually leaves, disturbed. The next day, the parking warden is working a night shift - they've been told to patrol a dark neighborhood where there are plenty of alleyways that nobody can see into...

See where I'm going with this?

Anything which allows someone to follow a person in a vehicle who they've just come across on the street is inherently a danger to the surveilled person.

There's a gigantic difference in the ability of the surveilled person to protect themselves in the scenario you sketch versus the one that I sketch. In your scenario the surveilled person has a chance of noticing the fact that somebody is physically following them. And when they have eyes on the stalker, they can call the police to come and address the situation when they predict the stalker might escalate.

In the scenario that I sketch, the stalker runs zero risk while obtaining the information. Hell, they don't even have to log in to this tool, so there's zero record of who accessed location information for which parking warden.

And yes, it is absolutely incumbent upon the creators of tools to take into account how they might be misused. To pretend that all humans are of right mind and incapable of doing harm and only design for the case of ethical use is laughably naive.

What a strange line to draw when in both hypothetical scenarios the stalker actively engages in a creepy conversation with the target before “you see where I’m going with this?” happens.

For anyone else looking for which of these 200 words are actually different, this second post follows the person home instead of using the tracking website method

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