Slashdot Mirror
Privacy in the Woods?
Rorschach1 asks: "I work with a local Search and Rescue team, and for some time I've been thinking about the possibility of installing sensors at a few critical trail junctions in the local back country. The sensors would detect passing hikers and report timestamps to an Internet gateway in near real-time. When a hiker goes missing, this information could be very valuable in determining where search efforts should be directed.
However, I've spent enough time on Slashdot to know that whenever you start monitoring or tracking people and their activities, someone's going to get upset. So I'd like to hear from the tinfoil hat brigade - what are your objections to such a system, and how might your concerns be addressed?"
If possible, create a system with highly visible sensors. If the hiker wants the info to be taken(knowing what it will be used for), they can hit a button and the sensor will register(what are you using for power btw?) If the hiker doesn't want anyone to know where they are, they just don't trigger the sensor.
Plus, make sure to have a good privacy policy, dictating what the info will be used for!
A lot of folks who go into the woods do so because they relish the element of risk involved. Idiot-proofing the wilderness experience will not appeal to most of them.
A system to track people on trails already exists. It is called the Trail Head Log Book. You know, you open the box, sign in and then when you get back you sign out. There are also weight sensitive pads that get buried under the trail that counts the number of people who pass it.
As a person that worked for a company that designed people tracking and intrusion detection/defense systems for military and govenment agencies, I can tell you that there are devices available (not commercially, though) that do this without saving information about the person who passed, only that there was a human that passed. Our main customers were the DOD, Border Patrol, and Special Ops, as well as several "friendly" countries.
And, for all of the tin-foil hatters out there, you might be suprised to know that the forestry service already uses such devices. So does border patrol. We have also sold units that have been deployed at Area 51. These are passive infrared detectors, vibrational sensors (some contained within air-droppable cones that burrow into the ground), and magnetic sensors among others.
I can't go into specifics about design, but I would be happy to answer any questions (non-design related) that anyone has.
I worked at this company up until last December, when I quit. However, I might be doing consulting work for them in the future.
Privacy aside, these are already in use in some cases, and no one even realizes it because they are highly covert. Privacy concerns, IMO, do not come into play with devices deployed on government land, especially when no identifying information is given. Its like walking through a door beeper in a store, except that this one counts direction of travel and the presense of movement. Stuff that has more information tagged on, however, gets shaky in the privacy area, I will admit.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
"We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms."
I have a personal policy that if I see anything manmade in the woods other than a basic signpost, it comes down.
Whatever your personal policy may be, if you do that on land that's not your own, then you're a vandal.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
First, how are you going to accomplish the tracking? If you just put out a sensor you're going to get hits for more that just people, you'll get a blip for every rat, field mouse, deer, raccoon, dog, coyote, et cetera that crosses your sensor.
Second, if you have people wear something like an RFID tag that checks in with a proximity sensor, then anyone who doesn't want to be tracked will simply remove the tag or stay off the trails where the sensors are.
Third, how do you protect people from abusive system users? For example, a voyeuristic ranger checking up on a young couple to spy on them later, or a stalker-type tracking down lone individuals or a thief who checks to see where the person with the cool gear is camping that night.
In order to help in search and rescue, you've got have id tags that map back to a particular person unless you've got almost no people coming to your location. To prevent abuses, you'd probably have to log the information back to some state parks & recreation or fish & wildlife server so that local people can only access the information if someone is reported missing. But then you've got the whole issue of the state collecting centralized data about its citizens.
I don't think it's a great idea other than on a voluntary basis.
Generally they are completely volunteer. I joined my SAR team last summer with no experience and have since been trained in First Aid, CPR, Navigation, Technical Rescue (ropes, high angle, etc), search tactics, and tons of other stuff. SAR teams are generally self educating, but there are state level and national certifications you can get. I am a PSARC certified FTM (equivalent to NASAR SARTEC II) in PA and will shortly find out if I passed the FTL exam (Field Team Leader - similar to NASAR SARTEC III)
Go find a local one and contact them, they are likely looking for volunteers.
Finkployd
such voluntary system alreayd exist, it is called
a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB); as they say, it
removes the 'search' part of S&R. There is a
very good FAQ about PLB on this web site:
http://www.equipped.com/plb_legal.htm
--Sylvain
The former. Sensors like this exist now, but I've never seen one that reported in real time, and to a publicly accessible network, hence my concern over public reaction.
What you are trying to do sounds like a good idea to me, but a little bit impractical. First like most people have already mentioned, how are you going to keep animals out of the system? Second, most national parks are so huge and have so many entry and exit points that you'd only be able to keep track of a very small number of people in the park anyways. Third, people do go out into the woods to get away from everything related to modern society. Probably a far better approach than your system would be to hand out EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) to anyone going hiking in the parks. I'm not sure if these also work in the States (they are GPS based (I think), so they should), but they work fine here in Australia. A friend of mine ended up using one a few weeks ago (a woman from a different party had broken her leg crossing a river). Push the little red button, watch the little red light blink and 1 1/2 hours later a helicopter was circling above them (This was in a very remote area).
Here's what currently works - at the trail head have a notice board that can be used by hikers to noify potential searchers where they are going, when they set of and the latest they will be back.
Walkers, hikers, climbers can opt into this system if they want.
This system has been running for many (many) years in the UK.
If you want to apply some technology to the system install a web cam so you can view the notice boards remotely.
Make sure the area has good cell phone coverage. Require all missing hikers to carry a cell phone. ... And then you find out that your carrier started sucking real bad, and you are screwed. Let me elaborate. A few years back I chose AT&T as my carrier because they were offering the best outdoors coverage, largely due to the fact that their phones worked in both analog and digital modes.
Then one day they decided to just turn off the analog part. Apparently, this is a part of some big transition where they'll be re-using that analog chunk of the spectrum for some new digital stuff. Who needs that old antique analog mode anyway, right? (Sorry, I don't have more info - don't have a link handy, but you could google for that)
The problem is, I've gone out to the wilderness in that particular part of the Mount Rainier National Park many times before, and each time had decent analog coverage. So, I started relying on it. Now, all of a sudden, I look at my phone and see that I am alone in the middle of nowhere with no coverage whatsoever. Obviously, nobody at AT&T bothered to tell me that they are discontinuing the analog service; I had to find it out on the trail! Not that it was a life-threatening situation, or anything - I just made sure not to do anything stupid for the rest of the trip, but if I were to, say, fall & break my leg, could my family sue AT&T for failing to provide the service they promised when I needed it the most?
Jobs? Which jobs?
You look for the tag that never went out of the woods. And the last know "checkin" of that tag. Sure, if someone (family?) comes and says "joey is lost in the woods, find him", you can't say "that record there, shows joeys last position", but you CAN say "here, we had a hiker, who after passing this sensor, went lost. probably our guy".
I've heard of some full-time SAR teams, but they're mostly in places like Yosemite.
More often, they're all (or mostly) volunteer, run by the Sherriff's department or maybe the county fire department.
Being in decent physical shape is probably the biggest requirement. My team requires a six-month academy, with two to five days of training a month, before you start doing callouts. An EMT certification might also be required - depends on the team.
You should be prepared to spend at least two full days a month training, plus evening meetings and such. Personal equipment is generally your own responsibility, so plan on $1,000 to $2,000 of gear out of your own pocket. Again, that's for us - team standards vary.
A ham radio license is nice to have (I've got an extra class myself), especially if your team works with ARES or RACES. SAR comm is generally done over commercial/public safety frequencies when possible, though.
It's a lot of work, and often dedicated volunteers are hard to find. If you're willing to make the commitment, your local team would probably be happy to have you.
How many aditional people will die because of air polution caused by extra cars on the road? For the most part those graduated rules are idiotic, and each once can be traced to a specific high profile news story in the area within the past few years. I broke my restrictions the first day i got my liscense. How you may ask? Giving friends a ride home from school... Isn't one car on the road, even if it is filled with *gasp* teenagers, better than 3 cars on the road, for any reason?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
They rent these to hikers here in NZ, and THEY WORK!
A guy rented one at the last minute, took it in, got into trouble, turned it on and was picked up at first light. Compared to the number of dead hikers and climbers they end up with this year, everyone should have one.
They can be activated locally and remotely (in case you are late and they need to find you).
Jason
This reminds me of George Orwell's 1984, where not even the woods were free from the microphones and cameras of the thought police.
It also reminds me of recent interest in privatizing the National Park system, and the ubiquitous railings and warning signs that would result in an effort to make the parks "safe".
People go to the wilderness precisely to get away from everything and be truly free for a while.
Take whatever devices you need to feel safe in the woods, but don't leave them there and ruin things for the rest of us.
Granted, this was in a national park, but it was one of the less visited NPs in the continental United States. Was there a tower around? Don't know, but you get up to the top of a mountain you significantly increase your chances of catching some air waves. Not gonna help you if you get lost in a valley, but odds are you'd still get as high as you can to find your bearings. Maybe that's high enough.
"Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." -Indiana Jones
I know this is completely off-topic, but I have to disagree that this sort of behaviour is human nature.
I know for sure that such a system would work fine in Japan (where I currently live). People wouldn't fuck with it, and there would be no vandalism. Therefore it's not human nature, but cultural values that cause this sort of behaviour.
Japan has many examples of public systems that would be impossible in, say, Australia (my home country):
Most trains here have advertisements hanging from the roof in the form of large paper sheets. In Australia they wouldn't last 5 minutes before being torn down or set alight.
Public phones have a phone jack to allow you to plug in a modem - in Australia these would all be filled with chewing gum.
Restaurants deliver food in nice bowls with nice trays, which are meant to be left outside your front door for the restaurant to pick up the next day. In Australia they'd be stolen or vandalised more often than not.
When I was a teenager I indulged in a lot of vandalism and semi-delinquent behaviour, so I'm no stranger to those impulses. But I they're not "human nature".
One person to break their leg. One person to stay with them. One person to go for help.
What on earth are you thinking?
Where I go tramping the Department of Conservation keeps and maintains and intentions book at every hut, most campgrounds, and at major trail starts.
the book is chained to the wall of the shelter or whatever, and a pen is chained to the book.
you put your name, where you are going, how many people etc in the book, there is a nice big space for comments etc.
If someone goes missing searchers just check all the books along the proposed route untill the enrties stop. neighboring huts are checkes, and the other people listed in the books before and after the missing person are consulted. A single warden can check 3-4 huts a day in a sparse area.
A remarkably good idea of where the missing person is can be had quite quickly.
I volunteer as a backcountry search and rescue EMT in the Pacific Northwest. 99% of the clowns who get into trouble have done at least three or four astoundingly stupid things in a chain of causality- if they can't be troubled to go with a buddy, carry the ten essentials, or sign a register, what on earth makes you think they'd carry an rfid tag?
Risk management, in general, has been beaten to death in the last 20 years of posts in rec.backcountry. (See Eugene Miya's FAQ's: Distilled Wisdom Panel 16) The upshot is that the most dangerous thing you can do in the backcountry is drive to a trailhead, where the drive itself is 50 to 100 times more likely to injure, maim, or kill you. That said, if someone is into risk management, they're probably already using a beacon. (a decent all weather beacon setup runs US$400-600 for a pair)
As an alternative to intrusive and dangerous over-reliance on technology solutions for what are essentially human behavioral problems, I'd like to see more places that use Parc du Canada's approach- force people to get permits, educate people before they leave, and let them know they're on their own if they get in trouble. They back up their policy by properly funding their staff and maintenance budgets, but that's a completely different topic. From a practical standpoint, people go out in all kinds of weather. RFID systems are not designed to take salt air, driving rain, or -20 F temps. Plenty of people go out in those conditions, and most non-military electronic devices get eaten alive by anything but the most benign weather. What would the rfid system do in snow? How would it hold up to the sun beating down on it 300 days a year? (Answer: not well) I also work on maintaining trails in the area, and it's amazing how things get beaten down in a short period of time in places you wouldn't think are all that extreme.
Onto technological over-reliance, from an economic perspective: How many of these trailheads do you suppose have power? In the Pacific Northwest the number is maybe 1 in 100 when you toss in State and National Parks. Most of these places don't even have a long distance transmission line within 20 miles, much less a substation and local wires. Once you spent the money on the environmental studies and the spotted whistling fruit gnat friendly power line or solar powered lead acid system, what do you think it would cost to maintain the transceiver? More than state, local, and federal taxpayers and fee customers are willing to pay. What little work does get done on public lands is usually donated by lunatics like myself who spend their summer weekends with chainsaws and Pulaskis instead of enjoying themselves- most of these places already have a 10-20 year routine maintenance backlog as it is.
So, to sum things up, it's a bad idea because:
Perhaps, if someone goes out in the woods without any survival equipment, without a map and compass, or without having a clue how to use it, then, perhaps, Darwin should get them. Or perhaps we should save them and have a world populated by the offspring of STUPID PEOPLE
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/