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?"
I wouldn't have a single objection if it was a voluntary system. Make it known that you offer the service and have them wear some sort of tag that would be detected by the system (make sure it's light and not physically intrusive). It could even have a unique ID (which could be disabled at the request of the hiker).
I don't think I would have much of an objection to one being in place as long as there is no requirement for a permit to be camping/hiking in the park. If you are able to place a specific hiker in the area to the timestamps then that's too intrusive for me. I get out into the woods to get away from people. I don't want people being able to track me in real time out there. I really don't see a need for it either.
I would have serious reservations unless someone made sure that the statistics are kept private, very, very, very private. Who knows what person would have access to it (not everyone in law enforcement is all that friendly). Say they notice a hiker *alone*? They could go out there and get a good idea of where the person might be headed (or staying). Knowing where the points are for tracking they themselves might be able to bushwhack around the sensors and do things I don't care to mention.
As long as your sensor isn't a video camera of some sort, the anonymity of the technology should be fine for most.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
It isn't as though it would be idintifying the people, it would just know someone/thing passed there. I don't see any privacy issues with something like an IR beam that logs traffic on the trail.
Douglas P. Price
Are you detecting that a hiker passed a specific location, or that a specific hiker passed a specific location? If the former, it's no different from loop detectors in roads that count the number of cars. If the latter, well, it needs to be voluntary. Just like you can decide to take emergency flares and a radio with you hiking, you can decide to sign up for the tracking system or not.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Instead of tracking hikers on trails with sensors (and how do you know it's a hiker anyway, and not a bear/deer/extraterrestrial?), offer hikers the ability to check-out an emergency transponder that they can turn on if they need assistance. Hell, you could even offer it as a service that people might be willing to pay for, and that would offset your equipment costs.
Going for a walk in the woods is one of the few escapes from the intrusions of modern society still available.
Leave the control over information disclosure in the hands of the hiker. Let them take a cell phone, leave an itinerary with a friend, start a fire if they're in trouble. Besides, if you really need to find people you can get the police helicopter with IR sensors to comb the woods with your search and rescue team in an emergency.
I know you mean well, but this is where you ought to let people assume special risks and precious responsibilities - Don't take them away so lightly.
Rather, put your efforts into an education program for students. How to enjoy the woods, hike safely, avoid hypothermia, etc. Sponsor some hikes and let them get a feel for how wonderful it is to be in the wilderness away from civilization.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
What if an animal were to cross a beam? Or if a transmitter fell down, or stopped reporting? You'd still be searching all over the place to try to find the missing person.
I think the better approach would be, as some users have suggested, voluntary RFID tags, or maybe "help" buttons installed in highly visible and easily accessible locations.
Funny, I was about to demolish your house since it was a blight on the land. Y'know. Just in my personal opinion, which, of course, makes it okay to destroy property.
If you're ripping down private garbage that was put on public land, fine. But if you're ripping down shit that my tax dollars paid to put up on public land, and will pay to repair after you decide that your word is suddenly law, I'd really appreciate it if you could stick your head in the toilet and flush it a few times.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
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?
This is less of a tin-foil hat issue and more of your idea being redundant and a waste of money. First off, hikers are already tracked. Before you go on any long distance hike, you should typically sign in at a local ranger station. These are usually where the best drop-off points and parking lots are. Plus, it's just good to be face to face with a ranger before hitting the woods. At least then, they will have a face in memory, just in case you turn up missing.
Anyway, tax dollars are already being spent on tracking hikers through a paper log, there is no benefit to doing it digitally, and considering costs of managing the electronic system, it's pointless and doesn't deserve much attention.
No offense, just an honest thought on the issue. I grow weary of people searching for technical solutions to mundane things that can be done better through arcane methods.
In other words -- "Keep it simple, stupid."
A few years ago I went hiking in Vermont and came across a campsite where someone had left a notebook in a somewhat weather-resistant box. There was a note attached encouraging people coming through the area to leave their names and the date/time and any comments they felt like leaving. (Mostly folks saying who they were and where they were from, but a few were inspired to write some poetry.)
Putting similar logbooks at your "critical trail junctions" would probably fit your needs while remaining completely voluntary. Plus you wouldn't have to worry about a power supply.
And yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead and make your own joke about how amazing it is to find someone on /. who goes hiking without coercion. :-p
There's obvious answers to this "Ask Slashdot" like "keep it voluntary," but perhaps giving people technological security blankets for outdoorsmanship is actually a disservice? I remember reading an article a while back how cell phones have become, paradoxically, both a lifesaver for lost hikers, and a bane for search and rescue teams. The problem is that novice hikers/climbers push themselves farther than their abilities because they feel like they can just fall back on their cell phones if they get stuck--and they do. People overextend themselves either physically or in terms of terrain, and then waste search & rescue resources by calling in for an extraction. One example in this article was a hiking party that just got "too tired" and didn't feel like recouping for the return trip. The first step in not getting stuck in the wilderness is adequate training and knowing your limits, not simply constructing a better (and more abusable) safety net.
But if no one happens to need it, does that invalidate its usefulness? People don't like making long-term investments... the same apparently goes with forward thinking.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm scaring away the elephants."
"But there are no elephants here!"
"See? It's working!"
what else can I say.
I guess if the person you are with also gets seriously injured, the man upstairs is sending you a message.
For a lot of people, the woods is where you can be Not monitored, where you Are at risk of getting lost or getting mauled by a bear. That's the point. Putting these in makes it the "woods-with extra-monitoring".
Sure I might get killed but then, I knew that when I was going in there...
If it's
1) voluntary
2) works
then fine. I'd wonder how you'd power and maintain electronics in areas I know where it can be 110 in the sun or -50F in winter.
It might be something as simple as giving hikers (for a $10 deposit) an iButton that they touch to a box. It records the number and time and that's all. No invasion. Now, if the bottom camp knows that $THIS 64bit number is associated with that party, then they know that they passed and tagged this box. And it's all voluntary.
My experience is that you'd have better luck(?) or results(?) by simply making sure hikers have a MAP and a COMPASS.
A cellphone and a GPS is nice, but too many search and rescues are for the stupid. "My, um, GPSs batteries ran out" or better:
idiot: "I'm precisely HERE."
forest servce: "And do you know where the trail is from THERE?"
idiot: "Um, I (don't have|can't read) a map."
On the plus side, at least some states are charging idiots. If you don't have basics, and need to get your ass rescued, you're liable for 10s of thousands of dollars of rescue. (ever fly a helicopter at night in the rain/snow to find someone in shorts, without a map who's calling on the cell phone? It happens.)
In short, technology will not solve the problem where the basics are missing. I say: Let them evolve.
i know this was a humorous post but i still feel the need to remind people of the differnce between passive and active rfid. it is true that passive (really small, the size of a large grain of rice) only work within a few cms. they contain a capacitor charged by rf and then discharged to give off its id. these are what we tag pets with. active rfid have a small battery and are about the size of.... well.... a watch battery + a grain of rice. these work for about 2-3 meters and would be a great application for this task. this is how we see how often the cattle come in to eat.
so long as people are not forced to use them, and so long as in using them you are not required to give out your identity, it would be a great idea. if a person could check one out for a $20 deposit and get the cash back when they return it to the rental place, this could save many lives and even many man-hours of searching.
The method you used would be unreliable and would probably do nothing to reduce the search time of the S&R mission. Why?
Unless you only allow one hiking team in the park at a time, you will have multiple logs/hits of movement from multiple trail monitors, assuming the monitors manage to effectively send a signal each and every time a human (and only a human) passes the monitor.
Once you have all the data logged, how do you know where a hiker party went? Was that them on trail "A" or were they on trail "F"? Are the hikers going to be required to file a hiking plan from which they may not deviate?
So we have: unreliable sensor data and unknown parties with unknown destinations. I don't see where a system such as you proposed would provide any data that an S&R team could use to locate missing people faster.
And there's still the whole "you don't know they're missing/in trouble until they don't show up for a few hours/days and someone else calls you.
A far better method would be to use emergency locator transmitters (ELTs) carried by each party or person in the park, and do it on a voluntary basis. When someone gets need help they would activate the ELT which would be "heard" at a central station and S&R teams would be dispatched to home in on the signal. With the right type of box the holder could even press one of several buttons to tell authorities what type of help they need: lost, medical emergency, fire.
This method has the following advantages:
1. There is little to no delay between a person needing assistance and that assistance being dispatched.
2. The search portion of the S&R is virtually eliminated, with beacons you can home in very quickly
3. No-one has to submit to tracking, but they still can have the security it can provide
4. Costs can be recouped by charging a small fee for the transmitters, or for the loss of them
5. The system is probably less complex than the anonymous tracking and reporting/loging
6. No chance of false alerts from large animals moving through the forest
7. Higher chance of successful rescue when you don't have to wait for the person to go missing before trying to find them
Disadvantages:
1. not everyone will want to take an ELT, so S&R will still need to do it the "old fashioned" way at times
2. Potentially higher initial cost depending on how the ELT signal is tracked an the number of units deployed
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
"Save one life" arguments are specious at best, because they rarely examine the reverse. What if someone were to somehow find out, using this kind of tool, which trails were used the least, and then decide that a lone hiker in the region might be far away from help? Would the avoidance of deploying such a system be validated in that case, because then one life would be saved?
It's a matter of examining both sides, instead of just saying something that feels good. This is one of the reasons we get so many overburdening, overlapping laws, because it feels good to pass them rather than to really take some time to examine what the real cause of something is. Perhaps, on examination, such a system would prove to be better because on balance it would save lives. But to simply decide that it would, and that the saving of a single life would justify deployment of an entire system, is ducking the question.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
When I go deep into the mountains, a large part of the joy I experience comes from the knowledge that my life is in my own hands, and that my judgment and decisions will get me out of (or into) any life and death situation that may arise. Every time I go out, I relish the small idea in the back of my mind, the idea that this might be the time I never come back.
There is a certain exhiliration associated with being completely disconnected from the real world, from our social and technological support structures, fending for yourself.
I do not support this idea because:
- It encourages people who are not physically and mentally ready for wilderness travel to enter the wilderness
- It provides a false sense of security, because the devices may stop functioning at any time, or the devices may not cover a particular area
- It will cause people to take risks they would not take under standard conditions, for example they may ford a stream they would otherwise avoid because they feel they have "backup."
- It will invite technological development to the wilderness, an area specifically set aside for the exclusion of those technologies.
Simply put, the wilderness is, and should remain, a wild, volatile, and dangerous place. While I am all for advances in personal safety in remote regions, I also believe that the tools for personal safety should remain personal, in your own hands. Carry a radio or other beacon to signal with if you get into trouble. Learn the skills of relying on yourself that have been taught and relied upon for hundreds of years. This is the spirit of the wilderness.Exactly. Where I lived they passed a new law for new drivers. For a while we've had graduated licencing. For a year and a half you are a "new driver" and have a zero alcohol tolerance level, but other than that all was good. Now they have upped it to longer (2 or 3 years) with the additional restriction that you can only have ONE passenger in the vehicle. The reasoning: There was an accident one year that involved a bunch of teens being loud in a car. Therefore, a law preventing passengers "will save approximatly 4 lives a year. If it saves even one life, it is worth it."
If you want laws that save lots of lives, everybody should wear a GPS belt 24/7, and there should be cameras on every street corner, and in every room of every store, office, and home, and all of their recordings will be tied together with this GPS database. If a camera sees somebody that isn't on the GPS system, the police can be dispatched immediatly. If even one serial killer is caught because of the video cameras and the GPS tracking, it will be worth it, right? No more kidnappings, right?
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Errr, if it's anonymous, doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? The idea isn't to track usage, the idea is to find people when they're lost.
If Joe goes missing, what tag do I look for if I don't know what tag Joe has? Do I wait for everyone else to turn theirs in maybe? I'm not sure if people would be expected to do that..
Doesn't really seem to make sense.
In my mind, as long as it's optional -- TRULY optional -- then there's no problem tracking people. The other thing to be done is to not keep records of the data for extended periods of time. Not sure exactly what that definition would be, but presumably some duration longer than when people get reported missing.
That's much more than a tech problem. It's a societal problem.
So some guy grabs one of these beacons and proceeds to get lost in the woods in a storm. He dies of hypothermia before the rescue crews can find him. Now, somehow, it's their fault? And the guy's family rides the legal system to their pot of gold.
That's what's so f*cked up with the US. The guy posting wants to use tech to help find lost people, and in doing so opens him self up to lawsuits. It's a wonder anyone invents anything.