Arguably the location data has several purposes, and needs to be collected but shouldn't have been available for sale. It's bad enough you can't keep law enforcement out of it but even worse when random businesses get the information.
That said, in this day and age, it should be a no brainier that your phone is a tracking device for multiple organizations and we should all keep that in mind
I would argue it’s worse that law enforcement can just buy data they would otherwise need a warrant to access. In the case of broad data (e.g. location data for every cellphone user in a neighborhood or city) law enforcement can’t legally seize that at all but they can buy it from a broker. It’s a major fourth amendment violation.
Sure. My point is that it’s irrelevant. You’re acting like there’s a trade off between privacy and the public good, but because the goal is profitability we get neither privacy nor public good.
Oh I agree. My original comment was adding to the one preceeding mine, not a direct response to the article. Yes, the US needs GDPR, despite it making aspects of my job annoying I am glad it exists.
Why in the world would you need phone data for that???
Nearly all existing public transportation was designed before cell phones. And there’s so many better ways to get that data… In fact, I’m not sure anyone uses individually identifiable tracking to plan public transportation… It’s neither necessary or even convenient for that
You make a valid point, but I have to disagree about the need to collect the data without consent. I think the key here is opt-in. The way cellular devices currently work there is no way to use one without the location tracking. That is not technically required. It’s a design choice on the part of the telecommunications companies. Let’s imagine a telecommunications infrastructure that does not and technically can not track identifying location information. With such an infrastructure, the potential for abuse is immediately gone. Then let people opt-in to location tracking services using apps or other features on their device on an individual basis. I’m not against giving people individual choices. It’s the forced location information gathering that needs to go.
From the article: “Firms say this data is anonymized but the truth is that it can easily be de-anonymized. The data brokerage industry is pretty much totally unregulated, allowing for an assortment of unsavory customers to buy Americans’ data willy nilly.”
Isn’t this the real issue and not the headline? US really needs GDPR.
I wonder if they would still be able to sell location data in aggregate?
I play Pokémon Go (yes that’s still a thing) and Niantic recently made a deal that they don’t sell individual location data which people have taken as they sell bulk location data instead (scrubbing data such as your name etc).
But state level location is not that worrisome. I mean, you can take a partial guess from the area code (though that’s not that accurate because cell numbers usually stay the same when people move these days).
Plus, would they even know that? There’s the question of how you could make sure not to track only people from states with this law without tracking them in the first place. The easy solution is to not track locations with cellular data at all, lest you accidentally run afoul of this law. Plus there probably will be more states passing such laws. You said every state would have to pass it to use process of elimination, but surely it only needs 2?
Actually, if most states passed it the police could not use the process of elimination. Especially if the mix included both Women’s rights states and Woman pressing states.
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