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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?"
Implant RFID tags in everyone. That way anyone can know where you are at any time! How convenient!
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
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
if i see shit like that out hunting, I will happily serve it a hot one.
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
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!
2 days ago this redneck I know flipped his quad over in a creek and tore his ear off. He called a friend's mom and cussed her out when she didn't believe he was hurt. It took a little while to find out where he was. If only he had had sensors in the trees to track his flowing mullet...
-Rylfaeth
As long as it doesn't record my bank details and party affiliation, I don't see what harm it would do. It would do more good than harm IMHO.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
Make sure the area has good cell phone coverage. Require all missing hikers to carry a cell phone.
Coding Blog
attn echelon and other busybodies: that was a joke.
You'll be tracking more deer than humans I imagine
With adequate surveillence, we will finally have a definitive answer to the question of what a bear does in the woods.
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.
I'd rather see that the forest remains the sole place where one can escape all that resembles modern technology, society etc. It's really one of the few places left where one can go to be completely alone and unreachable. Don't touch my forest.
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.
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.
And so in a puff of smoke Your Rights Outdoors appeared.
12H>look yro.
You see a small box on the floor.
12H>take yro
The YRO zaps you and you immediately let go of it.
eh... better cut down on my MUD dosage.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Rather than using a sensor, why not use a great big red button. If a hiker chooses to use the system, they hit the button on their way by, logging that checkpoint with a timestamp. If they don't want to use it, that's their risk.
Or maybe I just like big red buttons.
Whether it is RFID tags, or just entering a name into a (weather resistant) terminal, make it optional. Some trails in some places have books or cards you can fill out when you pass it; I assume that's in case you go missing, they have somewhere to start. It wouldn't bother me if I'm tracked somewhat (might actually make me feel safer), but others might care, so leave the choice to the individual.
So I'd like to hear from the tinfoil hat brigade
Why do you attempt to make fun of people who have serious concerns about their privacy?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Those with tin hats would rather die in a snow storm them anyone know where they are.
Give me a break. Its a life saving tool. It would not know who the hiker was so I say screw it. If they don't like it let them go get lost somewhere else..
Since in this case they do have a choice.. Your not forcing them to walk down your monitored trail, they are choosing to do it on there own then forget it.
I would be midly surprised if you had one person go home because they where afraid you might be able to track them when the next snow storm hits and there to stupid to come back.
Personal Website
As a card carrying member of the local chapter of the Atlanta Georgia Tin Foil Hats of America (AGTFHA), I have absolutely no problem with your proposal. So long as it's voluntary. In fact I have even a low-tech solution. Put up weather protected boxes on poles. Let them (who don't have a GPS) write their name, date and time on a sign in sheet. You don't have to spend a bunch of tax payers money (we need it all for Bushies holy war), they (your backpackers) don't have to have high-tech equipment. Simple solution. Participate if you want. Sign in at strategic points and if you get lost we'll have an idea of where to start looking.
This is assuming your campers do what I've had to do every time I've gone to the back country. Is to sign in, give member counts, get fire permits, etc... Inform them to sign in at each box and explain why. They do or they don't.
Somehow this isn't a tin hat problem for me and I'll even show you my card.
-[d]-
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.
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."
If you save one life with this system, you could flush all those complaints down the toilet.
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 ;-)
They've had those rubber wires on streets for counting cars for over fifty years now, this same kind of thing would be nice for a trail, but I think a wireless tag would work best, so someone doesn't have to step on something and flora/fauna don't interfere.
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.
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."
I don't think you'd have any complaints as long as no logs are kept, the logs should be left alone. You'll only get grief from the environmentalists if you start logging in the woods.
(Sorry, but it was just so obvious! The void needed to be filled with the obvious pun.)
=\/\/= If it's too loud, turn it down.
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.
Why not use bread?
Give each person a loaf before they set out on their hike. Instruct them to sprinkle the bread behind them as they walk. If they have the misfortune to get lost, the trail of bread will show them the way home.
Hyperlink withdraw is my problem.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
The way to lower your cost is by agreeing to take some sort of locator device with you so the "Search" part would not take nearly as long.
There could even be Search and Rescue insurance policies, like those some people get when they rent a car. The price of the policy could be lowered if you agreed to take the locator device with you.
I struggled for days and days and all I got was this lousy sig.
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."
EPIRB.
Let me carry one or not, as I choose. If I wish to go out in the woods alone and get lost, that's my business.
If I wished to be tracked I'll carry a beacon, simple as that.
Having someone to come after me if I get in trouble is one thing. Having my mommy watch me all the time to make sure I don't get into trouble is another.
KFG
Just to be a devil's advocate and put a voice of realism into a proposal such as this.
Any system that did not require hikers to wear a tag would be suseptible to a rediculous number of false positives from weather and wildlife (the IR sensor going off in a hail or dust storm, or a squirrel walking by).
As well, even a system that required hikers to wear tags would require huge amounts of maintenance.... cleaning things, aligning them in case the ground moved or the sensors were kicked or misaligned due to the weather or wildlife...
A better solution, IMHO would be to put solar powered, battery assisted radio type call boxes at intersections. A simple button push and hikers could be in touch with a ranger or with help of some sort.
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!"
Somewhat offtopic, but I'd like to ask about search and rescue. Specifically, are S&R teams typically fully staffed, or are they likely to be looking for additional volunteers? (Is S&R purely volunteer, or do S&R guys get paid anything?)
And if they are looking for volunteers, what are the qualifications? Do you need an amateur radio license? First aid certifications? How much time does it take to be a member of an S&R team -- I presume there are training sessions, meetings, and of course the occasional actual S&R assignment.
I've sometimes thought that I should join an S&R team, because my life is set up so that if I had to suddenly take a day off, I could do so. But I have no idea if an S&R team would even want me.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Deer, elk, moose, etc. will frequent those trails more than humans will. (They get out of the way when they hear us coming). You'll get a bunch of traffic on your sensors at dusk and dawn. I don't think you'll have very good data - too much noise.
-=-=-=-=- osjedi uses Debian GNU/Linux. -=-=-=-=-
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.
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
The "safer society" club of America is getting in my way of having a good time.
I do not want you to look out for me, watch over me, make sure I don't smoke in a bar. I do not need you to tell me my kids should wear helmets on bikes, nor do I require your input on just how much protective gear I should wear when I use my weed whacker on the lawn. I certainly do not reuquire you and your supporters forcing my car to have things like a GPS (in case I get lost, yes, I know) or insisting that my cell phone can be found in the middle of the Mojave (for that one in 100 million of us who stumbles headlong into the barren desert, sure).
We, the free thinking and self-aware people of north America are really sick and fucking tired of you looking out for us. We are not your children nor your keep. Please kindly fuck off and take your mother-hen make the world a safer place excuse for butting into my lifestyle back into your own living room where it squarly belongs.
A society without risks is a society who cannot place a tangible value on the rewards afforded to some risk takers.
-- RLJ
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've fallen and I can't get up.....a bear is eating me and I still can't get up.
Fight Spammers!
It's really one of the few places left where one can go to be completely alone and unreachable. I find the bathroom to be my personal sanctuary.
This is exactly the idea. There's quite a bit of statistical data out there already on how lost people behave (except for mountain bikers - God knows what they're going to do when they get lost) and based on factors like point-last-seen and terrain conditions you can divide your search area and assign probabilities. This is simply a tool to provide one more data point in generating this model.
Why do you attempt to make fun of people who have serious concerns about their privacy?
Come on? It's called sarcasm! If he gave a rats ass about privacy - and therefore people who have serious concerns about their privacy - he wouldn't have submitted this would he? So he's entitled, IMO. :-)
For the record, I'm concerned about my privacy, but I still found the "tinfoil hat brigade" pretty funny.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
It's not about privacy. It's about preserving nature. The last thing I want to see when I'm alone in the woods is another piece of electronic junk. Natural areas are there for a reason.
As far as risk goes... if you're worried about getting lost or hurt, don't go in the woods. Go on a "hike" in a local park with paved "paths". If I fall down and get hurt, that's my problem. There's *GOT* to be somewhere left where people can be in pure nature. There's gotta be.
Ooh, and the problem with the word "all" pops up again. No, you couldn't flush all the complaints down the toilet. Arguments can be made for all kinds of tracking devices that would save lives, but people will complain that they are being tracked. The point being that there are usually other less obtrusive ways of doing things.
As a backcountry trip leader I see the validity of having this kind of system. However I see that unless there is some kind of personal identification system it would be pretty hard to say where the hiker is. A simple motion sensor would shouw that something went by the sensor at a certain time, but not who or what.
People need to be encouraged to travel with the right equipment, radio beacon included. Don't want to take a radio beacon? Expect to be charged a small fortune when your butt has to be pulled out.
~~Guildencrantz
Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
you can't just go around installing computer hardware on trails. While it may be "public" land, it really is no different from someone's back yard: some specific institution (part of the government in this case) ultimately has responsibility for managing it, no different from a home owner or a private land owner. That institution will also have lawyers and administrators whose purpose in life is to figure these things out.
Installing such sensors sounds harmless enough, but even there may be things to watch out for: wildlife impact, liability, pollution, litter laws, fire hazard, etc.
I mean, they are powered devices, right? They can short out? They do contain some heavy metals? They need to be maintained and they need to be removed when they no longer work, etc.
So I'd like to hear from the tinfoil hat brigade
Why do you attempt to make fun of people who have serious concerns about their privacy?
Uhm, if you expect to be taken seriously while wearing a tinfoil hat I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you...
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
My little sister works for the Parks Service at Yellowstone, and she's told me a number of troubling stories about the types of people that SAR has to deal with. Cell phone coverage in the park is limited, but there are still people every year who take their new GPS unit and cell phone and wander off trail and call up with, "I'm at latitude dd mm ss and longitude dd mm ss and and I need you to come and get me. But I'm not lost." In other words, the people that make up the bulk of those in need of SAR are, for the most part, dim. Which means that any solution that requires thought on the part of the participants will not work.
My take? If EULAs can be deemed binding by breaking a plastic seal, it shouldn't be a big stretch to make use of public lands an implicit acceptance of trivial invasions of privacy. I didn't sign any waiver to allow my ATM to take my picture; is this really so different? There are already many public land use policies designed (with varying degrees of success) to keep stupid people safe from themselves. This is one that could actually be useful...
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
With that reasoning, you could justify putting everyone on a regimen of Ritalin.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
However, one person made a good point that this does run counter to why some of us go to the natural areas. I had two places I went to when I grew up. Both of those places represented "God made" areas barely touched by people. Thus, the escape for me was to be somewhere where God was and civilation had virtually no impact.
One of those places was changed to permit public access, which ruined it, because they had to destroy 90% of why we went there in order to make it "safe."
The other place put cameras in the trees, again in the name of safety. This, again, ruined it. I went there to be away from civilization, but cameras just bring civilization to you, just knowing that someone behind some TV can watch.
I had nothing to hide; wasn't a criminal or a fugitive. Heck, these were place I went to since age 7 to enjoy some time in a God created recreation area with rivers, trees, mountains and wildlife that people didn't ruin yet. I simply didn't want civilation to be at a place where I went to enjoy time away from civilation.
Yours is less intrusive, but clearly you are bringing in the presence of technology in the name of safety to a place where people go to get away from technology and other totems of civilization.
Thus, I'd have to consider other options that might be possible, and even more effective at your goal. One option might be to offer beacon devices that are off unless someone turns them on. The person can choose to:
This way, you have the ability to locate a person to an exact location. Yet, the system is truly voluntary, and people even have the option of only turning the beacon on if they actually need it, meaning that for those people, they have increased safety over no beacon, without having to sacrifice any privacy unless they actually have an emergency.
With radio technology dirty cheap, I imagine that such a beacon device can be quite cheap.
Open Standards Portal
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
Forest is the place where all the logs are kept, in case you didn't know :-)
"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.
This could be a problem not from a privacy standpoint so much as from a dependency standpoint. One problem with rescues lately has been the use of cell phones as a sort of insurance for backcountry travelers. For every person who uses one to legitimately save themselves there seem to be 2 or 3 others who wander out unprepared or naively and then use the cell phone to call for help to bail them out (sometimes risking their life as well as the rescuers). These monitoring stations could have the same effect with travelers thinking "Well, they know where I am, I don't need extra water, clothes, map, etc...". Believe me, I've seen plenty of people out in bad conditions wearing ridiculously poor clothes and gear.
The best technology is the one between your ears. Too bad the quality of that piece of gear seems to vary wildly.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
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.No privacy issues if the hiker initiates the device, although it looks like you should stick with the newer 406 MHz devices. The newer devices include a GPS signal, making recovery easier.
Might have these available for use at Ranger stations, although they are on the pricy side. I'd suggest some form of deposit.
A Human Right
I wish. Keep in mind that trees block IR as well as visible light, and there are plenty of other heat sources in the woods (e.g., deer.) And someone bundled up against the cold doesn't emit a lot of heat to be seen.
Still, I'll happily take a FLIR-equipped aircraft if one is available. But it's hardly a silver bullet for SAR.
Show me a voluntary system paid for by tax dollars. The more elaborate the system, the greater the cost and the more likely it would be forced. After all, unless the rescue team is a volunteer organization, you are already paying for the service.
Every dinky camera system erected so far has been used in exactly the manner the foil hat people said it would be. Once the tool is paid for it will be abused by the state. The only way to prevent the abuse is to realize that the tool does not satisfy the stated goals and to not build it in the first place.
This kind of thing reeks of statism. Taken to it's extreme, you won't be allowed to walk in the woods without permission and careful monitoring. Your enjoyment of the woods takes a back seat to society's costs of your potential injuries. You don't own the woods because the state owns your hide by providing you with all of these nifty services. I already see signs about not being able so spend the night in areas and other mindless restrictions that assume the park belongs to the park service rather than the park service belongs to me.
It's for your own good, they say. Sure it is. Like cameras that give you speeding tickets, keep people from driving in Central London and can be used to track any political opponent are for my own good - too bad they have been proven useless for their stated purpose of crime prevention.
The devil is in the details. A system that would really be useful would also have to be very invasive. Even then the value will be negligible. The world is a large place and people are small in it.
The park rescue officer will complain that narrowing the search lowers his own risk of injury. The other way to lower that risk of injury is to not search at all. How many young men have died on wild goose chases? Does it all add up when you figure out how many people were actually saved?
Wired woods are not for me.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
OTOH, I am not above helping people and donating my time to searching for hapless souls who didn't know better. Dead (wo)men don't tell tales; they also don't learn from their mistakes. Everyone should be free to enjoy the great outdoors, but it should also be known that it's not always a picnic, and part of the attraction of such an activity is getting away from it all - "it all" being civilization and all it's trappings, for better or for worse.
Nathan's blog
I've looked at USFS evaluations of sensors, and for a sensor monitoring a fairly narrow trail, false hits aren't too big a deal. Bear aren't a major concern, and deer could probably be distinguished from at least adult humans.
Chances are you're only going to be looking over the past 24 hours or so of events, and I don't think wildlife is going to be a significant factor.
As for the amount of woods, I'm really only concerned with a few trail segments. For example, there's a trail that forks at one point and has a somewhat ambiguous sign (the forest service refuses to change it), and fairly often people take the wrong trail and find themselves several miles out when they were expecting to complete the loop in a mile or two.
What happens when I go out hiking and pass sensors 1 - 4 (of 10, for example), turn around, and head back? Is the system going to be implemented in such a way that it will recognize 'turn arounds' - or will it just assume that there are two hikers lost between points 4 and 5?
He's asking for the extreme view point. The comment actually excludes the average Slashdot reader. He primarily wants to hear from the paranoid extreme because the average person won't be the ones making the the fuss if he does it. Better to know clearly the objections of the extreme minority. He's asking for the downsides. Do you have any idea how many millions of dollars are wasted each year looking for hikers that wandered off? If you're really worried wear a bear costume when you walk in the woods. By the way you look quite dashing in your tinfoil hat. Not the least bit silly.
The simples answer is: don't engineer it as a Big Brother device.
;)
What you describe is a big brother device. It automatically detects all passing hikers so that when the damn fools get themselves lost they can be found again.
So build it a different way. The same technoogy you described could be put together like this:
You install "checkpoints" along the trail.
Hikers optionally rent an RFID wriststrap for a buck or so.
The checkpoint is also a map station, etc.
When they hit the checkpoint, they swipe their wriststrap in front of the checkpoint and it emits a beep to let them know it recorded their passage.
At the end of the day, your system sends an email to the hikers to give them a record of when they reached each checkpoint. He/she can race against himself in order to best his previous time.
And as a happenstance side-benefit, if the damn fools get themselves lost, you know which checkpoint they reached last.
Some folks won't want a record of their passage and won't rent a wrist strap. If they get lost, you'll have more trouble finding them and they may suffer avoidable injury or even death. But you know what? That's OK too.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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
From a SAR point of view I could see how a system like this could help save people.
...look at what has happened to yosemite.
However the point of going off into nowhere is that there is some risk and you want to disconnect yourself from techonology. As a rock climber who goes in the backcountry, I like going places where you cant have an immedate rescue. Places were there arent other people.
The other extreme is that you start to make everything easily availible to everyone. You could store supplies and water in the backcountry as well. But eventually you'll turn the place into a outdoor disneyland instead of wilderness.
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).
People get dehydrated out there as well. I think we need bottled water available for sale every 300 feet. Someone might also ruin his or her shoes -- there ought to be niketowns out in the woods. And sometimes people camp and they forget their silverware. There should be an establishment that sells silverware. And what if those mountains and waterfalls start to seem a little dull? There needs to be a Blockbuster video accessible with all the latest releases.
Gee, the forests seem so inconvenient and intimidating. I think you've stumbled onto something.
Most of the time when I hear of someone going missing in the woods, it's a small child or a couple of teens. This crowd is not expected to go off trail, hence is least likely to slap on a tracker. Perhaps a good compromise is a low res cam. Can't tell who it is, but you can tell it's a human.
To err is human. To arr is pirate.
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?
Some people seem to forget that there are MANY ski resorts/areas in decidedly remote locations which REQUIRE you to wear RF Tracking transmitters. In case of Avalanche and the like. Don't like it? Don't ski here. Or else don't complain when you are buried under 50 metric tons of snow, ice, and rock. On the other hand complain all you want. Nobody will hear you anyhow. Ever again.
:-)
But seriously, I think the original idea of this thread is a valid one, and were there a way to effectively anonymize the device so as to asuage the fears of the tragically paranoid, it would see little opposition. As long as the system sees that there is *somebody* clinging to a rocky crag because he was too stupid to stay on the trail and ignored the signs alerting him to loose rocks and steep cliffs, and not that it was Joe Schmuckatelli, who was too stupid to heed the aforementioned signs, it should be fine. However once he gets back to the base camp and the CNN crews flood said idiot, any anonymization of the system will be circumvented anyhow.
I guess there's no simple answer...
Regards,
- Que profuturus est maeror causa sententia Caelestis
If youre not taking snapshots/video, its no different than the sensors in the street that log speed and time for passing cars. Anonymous data that says 'someone went by here at 02:30a' should be fine IMHO. It would still be useful because you would know that some hiker left home around 16:40, would have arrived at checkpoint one around 17:00, theres a matching entry about 17:05 and another around 16:58 with no other matches for an hour. Two someones reached checkpoint two half about hour later, and only one someone reached checkpoint three. Thus you know that your missing hiker disappeared somewhre between checkpoint two and three. Thats a simplistic case, but it could be helpful even in more complicated ones.
Also, if you posted signs that the checkpoints were under surveilance, it meets the law on that count if you wanted to take spanpshots of the passing hiker, even if from behind just to get a clothing description match.
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."
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.
While I can see why people are suggesting that it should be voluntary, but ultimately the people that will need it the most are people who won't think to use it.
The people who need rescuing typically are people who were ill prepared and didn't heed the signs that the weather was bad or conditions unstable. It's the people who go out without the right gear or clothes, without checking in at the ranger's hut, without a clue.
I don't have a solution, as a society we aren't prepared to say that's evolution in action - if they were meant to survive they'd have taken a compass, so the people who least deserve the assistence are the ones who will require it the most.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Someone said something about RFID's but didn't expand on it, so:
I have an idea: have several wearable RFID tags and a logbook at the entrance of the trail. If someone wants to use the tags, they can take one for each person, and put their names in the logbook (and any other information they feel like giving out).
Then the sensors along the trail can uniquely identify the passing RFID tags, allowing a person who becomes lost to have their location identified.
The best part is, you don't have to take the tags if you don't want to, and the sensors won't know where you are unless you have them. How about it?
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
Use RFID or something similar. Put a basket of tags at the common entrances to the woods, with a sign "if you carry one of these it might help us find you if you get lost". People who take one can deposit it at the exit. Nobody will complain and it will be very hard to abuse the system.
Or start tracking everyone without their permission and face complaints, lawsuits and abuse of your system for purposes other than the one intended. Bank robber flees in the woods, sheriff confiscates your tracking data either you like it or not, wrong man gets arrested and blames you for it, that kind of thing. Looks like a wasps' nest to me.
As a former Boy Scout/casual pyromaniac, I can attest to the fact that many passersby will do everything they can to mess with the system. Dancing on it to register a couple thousand people passing through. Sending the database operators messages in morse code. And, in some cases, blatant vandalism. I know that a part of me would certainly want to take it apart to see how it worked.
This kind of makes me sad, but it's a fact of human nature. We like to fuck with stuff, especially when no authority figures are in view. Hiking through the forest, miles from civilization, is fertile ground for mischief.
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.
Post signs saying that hikers must register at the trail head (provide pencils and forms). Hikers that are too lazy to register don't deserve to be found.
Also, how about wiring up some decoy trees, so vandals that absolutely have to leave behind their initials get a nice memorable shock through their knife blade.
You could also dust litter for fingerprints and send the owners fines through the mail.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
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.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Let's see, I'm not a card-carrying member of the tinfoil hat brigade, but I do think privacy is underrated. Let's see just how your system can do wrong, and maybe you can get it right(ok so I'm an IDEALIST member of the tinfoil hat brigade)
Annoying safety features that conflict with privacy:
1) thinking your privacy is being respected, when it's not:
Make sure you label clearly EVERYWHERE anyone's position is being monitored, that includes the most remote areas that can be monitored, put your guardhouses/first responders barracks close to the points that AREN'T monitored, as the teenagers who are looking for a thrill will look for the out of the way spots first
2) Having someone trusted with my privacy that abuses it:
Make sure all your employees know that using the data on your hikers for any reason but those that fit on the signs your applied to conform to 1) will result in rightful termination of their employment, and expose them to criminal prosecution
Your hikers will 1) be warned they are being watched
2) not fear stalkers/other criminals hiding among your staff/otherwise abusing the privacy data that belongs to your hikers...
If you can get a 100% rate of respect for those rules, you should be ok.
You have to be the worse sort of dreamer to think you can get even 90% on the second one, but I stress, 100% is the only thing that will not harm your park in the worse way. Any breach of two will mean: "They don't watch to prevent people from dying at park XYZ, they watch to supply children to child prostitution ring ABC, avoid it like the plague."
Yes, it sounds hysterical, in this case, hysteria is your friend. If hystericals can't find fault with you, you're safe, otherwise, plan better.
The tinfoil hats are there because "someone in power" has the power to abuse, and too little reason not to... If you can give him a big enough reason, maybe I'll remove my own tinfoil hat.
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
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 agree with you, but I suspect that remote piloted aircraft technology and sophisticated image processing may likely make a dent in that problem someday.
Hopefully soon. The military has some pretty awesome kit, and eventually it'll filter down.
Cheers
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Darwin had it right, natural selection works!!!
I wonder what percentage of people who go into the wilderness are unprepared?, I lived in Alaska for 8 years, and Colorado for another 15. There is a real simple rule to follow in the backcountry: "Don't get into a place you can't get out of". Couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've loaned (my spare pair of course!) gloves, raingear, jackets, food, water, stove fuel, hats, etc, to underprepared hikers/backpackers. It's simple, take what you need, add some spares, prepare for the worst, and expect to do a good deed by helping some underprepared moron out.
Just my opinion of course.
Here's one scenario that would preserve privacy, let people know where they're at, let them scream for help, and never let them be tracked in the park by name, address, and other personal identifying information.
Rig a GPS locator in a small belt/shirt/pocket worn box with a walkie talkie and/or cell phone built in. In big LCD numbers, your GPS location coordinates are listed on the exterior of this little box. This is great if you're a GPS guru, and great if you're a clueless schmuck. When people show up at the park, you hand them out. They are set to only work within the boundaries of the park (rig the GPS to not display coordinates outside of the range of the park, thus discouraging theft).
Also configure the GPS devices so no one can ever retroactively track them i.e. don't put a device in them that could be monitored by a future entity who wants to invade people's park exploration privacy.
Finally, they've got a phone built in to the device. If they're smart enough to breathe, they can call on the phone. When you ask, "Where are you?" They can read/push a button to transmit their coordinates on the LCD display to you, and voila, you can locate those people who are obviously lost, and you leave others in peace and free to roam the park.
I'm not an engineer, but this should be workable, and you don't have any problems rigging up electronics in the forest (aside from a possible few cell phone towers if you want to give them a GPS-cell phone combination device).
The technology exists already to do this. It could probably be assembled from off-the-shelf parts, and you basically have a model for which the user MUST ASK for help, and therefore you don't intrude on their privacy.
Now, if you wanted to get aggregate statistical data on which people went to which areas of the park, you could do that, too, and you wouldn't violate anyone's privacy. What I've just outlined is merely a box that lists GPS coordinates and lets you call a ranger station. No names and/or identities are associated with anything.
I guess some people, many people, apparently think yes.
In evaluating such systems, you also have to figure in the bad consequences of the system. Like what about cops abusing the system such as by rigging the system to frame somebody?
It's happening already, in a way, with the red light cameras. Alot of people who don't do the violations are likely paying when they don't have to. I did, figuring if you spent the time in court you'd have to divulge who did drive and they'd go after that person, which in my case would've meant that I paid anyway. Fortunately, that's not the case, but you do have to go to court and contest it - maybe not worth it for some people even with the points if there are any.
With your teenager driving law, what about if a teenager has to walk because he can't ride with a friend due to the passenger law and he ends up getting hit? Something like that's bound to happen sooner or later. (I'm from D.C. and it still sticks in my mind about that guy who visited for some reason and was hit on the street - he lost an arm because of it.)
So, on the one side, you have 4 deaths due to loud music. Assuming these are the only deaths due to more than one passenger being in the car (might not be the case), you'd have to amortise the 4 deaths over the total time cars have been driven by teens in your city - likely a very low rate of death per year (let's say 60 years of driving, 4 deaths = 0.067 deaths per year due to overcrowding).
On the other side goes any injuries resulting from kids having to walk (hopefully very low, but as the recent accident in D.C. shows, it happens), plus all the lost time, missed appointments (kids will be late, especially if they have to walk), and simple loss of the ability for kids to do things if they don't have rides.
Not saying your teenager laws are wrong, but the city's characterization that it saves 4 lives per year with no mentioned downside doesn't tell the whole truth.
Not the same thing, but reminds me of what happened locally due to 911. Lots of metro riders walk into the Pentagon City mall through the parking garage entrance. After 911, they had security there to prevent this for a week or so (why I don't know - driving in was ok, walking not. What, they thought walkers could conceal bombs?). The thing was, with the construction at the time, the only way to walk around was to walk a few hundered feet facing ongoing rush hour traffic with no shoulder space. I almost wished an accident happened so that the mall would get sued - would've served them right.
I didn't read other posts as i am in a hurry, but i hope this is not a duplicate of anyone's idea.
Offer every hiker of the are somekind of tracking device that will be used to track your location if you are lost AND to track the time it took you to hike from tracking point to tracking point so they can use it as somekind of performance analysis.
So they would voluntarily opt to your tracking which benefits those who get's lost on the way, and those who don't get lost.
You should be looking for more ways to lose people.
---
SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
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
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.
In the Adirondaks they have trail registers; just a covered eazel type thing with a log book. They tend to be at trailheads and major forks. Sign in if you want: name, # of people in the party, # of days you plan to be in the backcountry, intended route, address. Sign out when you leave.
No need for cameras/sensors/whatever. One nice thing about the backcountry is being away from it all. Among serious hikers, there is even controversy about taking a mobile phone into the woods. "If I break my leg, I can call for help". "Only unprepared morons ever need to be rescued and this lowers the threshold of asking of a heliocopter evac", etc.
Personally I do not want civilization to intrude when I am seeking solitude.
The problem with a system like this, funded by taxpayers, where the rescue chopper is also funded by taxpayers, is that sooner or later some over-zealous legislator will get the idea that since this system reduces the cost and risk of rescues, it should be compulsory. Then they realize that it's actually quite expensive, and wilderness users should pay for it. Bang goes the wilderness experience. You might as well go to Disneyworld.
There is a growing trend towards cluelessness amongst outdoor users. Self reliance is a thing of the past. Hurt your ankle? Call a rescue! The fact that your hurt ankle is costing others money (unless you have rescue insurance), and putting others at risk, and impinging on other wilderness users doesn't seem to matter. Self rescue is an option. I was involved in a self-rescue, where the girl who was with us hopped for 10 miles over very rough terrain after smashing her heel. It was hell, but it is possible (and it's a good story).
You can buy so much cool gear for hiking/camping/climbing, people seem to think that you can buy safety, when the only thing that really helps there is knowledge.
Hi all,
as far as I can tell, most of the ppl that want this to be voluntary are suggesting that the hiker carry a tag that they collect from a centralised point (e.g. gate lodges?)
I have a problem with that - that means these collection points have to exist. Hiking areas seem to be very large, and I doubt they all have completely controlled points of entry. the hiker may wish to start at a point off the beaten track, and many are not going to go out of their way to pick up another thing to carry.
So I'm with the ppl who are suggesting having a well-marked radio point e.g. footpad or push-button that the hiker can activate optionally.
Another thing to ponder though: vandalism....
- Lnr
It may be possible to use an accelerometer to detect the hikers footsteps. It may be configured to disregarde amplitudes that resemble smaller animals. There also might be a frequency band that could distinguish between humanoid and other but I'm thinking amplitude is the simplest approach if you didn't want to get too crazy. I'm working with an accelerometer right now on an electrical engineering project and I'm impressed as to the sensitivity of these things. Just blowing on it makes the voltage spike...
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/
Not necessarily.
From the sounds of it (having followed the clarifications from the original poster) it's not to try and track down "Those who know what they're doing and know the risks", nor is it "Those who seriously want to get away from it all". From what I can gather, they're the ones who either don't get into trouble, or who leave the details to allow themselves to be found in case of emergency.
The people this is supposed to help is those who go out, and don't have the knowledge/skill/brains/whatever to bring enough supplies or leave a trail plan.
Now ideally, I'd say "Privacy first", don't do anything like this, and anyone who gets themselves lost/killed/whatever through abject stupidity needed removing from the gene-pool anyway.
I guess the problem is that it's a no-win situation for those in S&R - and those interested in privacy.
The majority of people who (like yourself) don't want tracking are clueful enough to not need saving. Also, the majority of those who would "opt in" to carrying some sort of EPIRB are probably careful enough to not need rescuing as often. Unfortunately, many of those who need saving are probably clueless enough to actually need tracking.
It really is a no-win situation, 'cos there is no solution that is 100% right for everyone. (There's always someone inconvenienced by any decision) Problem is, then the authorities are the ones held responsible for something going on.
For every "What right do you have to invade my privacy?" there is one "Why, with all modern technology, couldn't you find my relative when they got lost?" And the real kicker is that both arguments are valid points - unfortunately they're mutually exclusive.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
I don't want to seem overly harsh here, but I don't care if it *does* save a few would-be darwin-award winners each year, I don't want to see sensors in trees when I'm in the backcountry. I take a GPS sometimes, but other than that, electronics in the woods is just wrong.
I understand that accidents completely beyond folks' control *do* happen, but most search-and-rescue missions are the direct result of inneptitude, inexperience, incompetence, ignorance, failure to properly plan and prepare, or other reasons related entirely to deficiencies of the missing. Don't distract from my outdoor experience to help out those that won't help themselves.