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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?"
I have a personal policy that if I see anything manmade in the woods other than a basic signpost, it comes down. Trash, sensors (never seen those), signs ("bike race this direction!"), etc. If I ran across anything like this in the woods that was public property, I'd rip them out in a heartbeat and throw them away, no questions asked. The woods are becoming a precious, quiet, away-from-the-things-of-man commodity. This shit doesn't need to be in the woods. If a hiker gets lost, that's their problem.
The main worry of privacy advocates is anonymity, plain and simple. You can set up sensors all you want, they don't have any way of identifying me as me. If I don't want you knowing I'm somewhere, a sensor is just going to tell you that a man sized creature passed by this location at this time. Great, could have been a grizzly for all you know. That's plenty private. Now if you were to put a camera in that sensor pod, and have it snap a photo of the passing object, not only would it help you identify me, it could also be used as evidence of my being at a certain place at a certain time. The law of privacy is kind of like the law of uncertainty. I'd like to be an electron to the government and everyone else out there. Until you bump into me, you'll never know exactly where I am.
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
Privacy objections to RFID tags involve subliminal usage (shop tags etc.), or inclusion in items that must be carried such as drivers licencse.
BTW, there are allready tracking solutions in use that use GPS in conjuction with satellite comms. Users only need switch on devices when they want. When they do the device periodically sends an SMS like message giving the current coords read from the GPS. Likewise such devices can be used to send an SOS that includes the exact coords.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has been setting cameras triggered by infrared motion detectors for years. They are used to photograph animals that use certain water holes and other areas where there is interest in animal movements. They are unmarked and generally well hidden. Many outdoors folks are photographed by them every year, and altough I'm not sure what is done with the data it would be interesting to contact the ODFW and see what legal steps they take to cover themselves.
Would it be able to detect a hiker falling off a 54-foot waterfall, like I just did?
keep it anonymous and public.
:)
hand out some sort of tag to the hikers when they arrive. if the hiker wants it, they can carry it along. when they come within reach of a sensor, the tag gets a session id of sorts.
this way, you can track individual persons about the woods, but have no actual knowlegde of who they are, other then "some person".
when the hikers leave the area, they hand in the tag, which is reset and then given to someone else.
public disclosure in a system, which cannot expose individuals is a good thing
I understand what you mean about preserving the woods, and I agree in principle. But we still put in signs, we still mark trails and make sure that they're clear. If there are unobtrusive sensors on path intersections, particularly if they're tastefully done (embedded in wood, e.g.), then are you really going to care? If it makes the difference between life and death (which this could in winter, say), I think it's worthwhile.
I for one, wouldn't have any problem with anonymous counting, although I imagine you would need a good program to interpret the counts and work out when you have a net flow into an area (meaning someone didn't leave!) I would also support an actual identifying tag, that would identify me specifically to the sensors. However, this information would have to be kept very secure, only able to be accessed if someone goes missing (how you would do this, I'm not sure. A number of supervisors needing to enter passwords?) I don't like the thought of a mugger/rapist/etc tracking me through the forest...
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
Just put a footpad in the area and let hikers know what its for. Thats much simpler than requiring them to wear something. When hiking past all they need to do is step on it in passing...or not.
So it turns that they already have a system like this... you are supposed to fill out a tag that you wire to your pack, and a carbon copy goes into the box that is sitting out.
Seems to work well enough, I question the need for a high-tech solution. If people want to be dumb, let 'em. Otherwise there is non-intrusive, low-tech, easy to use system already working.
The problem with the proposal is there is no user ibput so you don't know when to start worrying.
I've been on searches where the lost person has a cell phone. More than once the person has reported being lost to someone else and then stayed on the line for a while draining the battery completely - but not giving us any information that would really help us to find him.
Actually, every time I go out in the woods, I go out far enough where cell phones don't work. I can't imagine getting lost in the woods where your phone still works. That means you're within a few miles of the nearest tower, which must be near a road. They only put up cell towers where they'll be used, and people sure as hell don't go far from their cars. Humans are very lazy animals.
Don't believe me? When's the last time you were more than a few hundred feet away from your car? When's the last time you walked 10 miles?
People get lost too easily. Hell, they'd get lost on a straight road between point A and point B.. Survival of the fittest, I say. If you don't come back alive, then maybe you shouldn't. It's not a tragic loss, it's population control.
(ya, ya, cold and heartless.)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
look for the one you can't account for?
if you have 30 blips on the map, then that's only 30 places to check.
it's a little bit more work, but much less than a full-on search and rescue.
if you really wanted to get advanced, have the tracker contain 2 buttons- "help!" and "I'm ok"
if someone is lost, beep the tracker- if someone responds back with I'm ok, don't investigate it. if they don't respond back or send "help" investigate it.
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with "speed pass" or even just a bar code they can swipe in front of readers and give them to hikers who want them. The hiker can then choose who to give the identifying number to.
When the card gets read the system just gets a number and location. If the hiker gets lost, the people who have the lost hiker's number can identify which one they're looking for.
If people steal the cards, who cares. It's just a bar code with a long sequence of numbers and letters. The manufacturing costs should be negligable and just lumped in with cost of operations.
You could also charge hikers for the card which they can keep indefinitly. They never have to give personal information to get the card because it doesn't matter. They just need to make sure an emergency contact knows the number. And that the emergency contact isn't someone who's going to be lost with them.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Your phone may have had "serivce" but did you try to make a call? Often on top of ridges the towers reach the phone but the phone can't reach back to the towers, and calls don't go through. People feel safe because their little signal bar is up all the way, and then they get in trouble and don't uderstand when the call to 911 just doesn't work.
Nick - Butte County, CA Search & Rescue
So, what happens when a herd of deer pass a certain motion sensor, and a group of hikers... don't, because they ran into the grizzly bear that the deer were running from?
~UP
Eat the Path.