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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.
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"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."
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
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".