Mobile phone interference with plane instruments: Myth or reality?
Cool. You've found one stupid link that talks about "galvanometer instruments", and a pop-culture TV show, that can't show that the specific devices they tested interfered with the specific aircraft systems they tested against, and leap to the conclusion that this proves that PED cannot interfere.
The issue is not that EVERY device WILL interfere. Proof that EVERY device does not interfere with EVERY system is irrelevant.
If they were that sensitive, they wouldn't work in the first place with all the electronic noise their systems emit.
You don't believe that a system can be sensitive to certain RF signal interference just because it might emit some on some other frequency? Hmmm. I have a GPS system that emits a birdie smack on top of a specific active local amateur frequency. The amateur radio is blocked despite it being able to "emit electronic noise" quite well, by an electronic system that works quite well despite emitting a significant noise signal.
Simple analysis of complicated systems is often incorrect and misleading.
They are shielded, and don't care about that frequency, which is why wifi is allowed on the planes.
WiFi is allowed on planes after testing to determine that it is not going to cause interference, with the provision that the flight crew can turn it off, and demand that you turn off your clients, at any time they suspect interference.
A bomb threat leads to the authorities making sure there isn't a bomb there, which shouldn't lead to any deaths
And yelling "fire" in a crowded theater should result in an orderly evacuation in a calm and reasonable manner through the nearest sufficient and adequately marked emergency exits, and will not result in an emergency response by fire services that would endanger any of them or put them in an unavailable status for any other actual fire.
Here on Earth, we understand things don't always work out so simply. We understand the effects of panic and costs of deploying emergency services when they are not needed.
We also understand that the desired effect of terrorism is terror, and getting a tin can filled with trapped passengers to panic is a great way to achieve that, even if there is no actual explosion. And when you do it enough so that the system becomes desensitized to the threat, that becomes the best time to actually carry it out. "Athens Control, Turkish 84, we've got just another one of those joke bomb threats, we're going to continue as if nothing was abnorm *&^%$%^* NO CARRIER"
Are you going to criminalize the parent who thinks "bomb on board" is a funny name for their wireless access point because their baby seems to explode a lot?
Yes. You aren't supposed to be running a WiFi hotspot on board an aircraft (at least not in US airspace) at all, according to federal law. Second, it is a deliberate act to turn on the hotspot function of a phone, since it is not normally on. At least, it is on any phone or device I've had that has hotspot functionality. It's a waste of battery and a security issue otherwise. "I accidentally turned on the beacon, which I just now remember is grail shaped" is a poor excuse.
If there was a bomb on board, I bet you trying to ground the flight would set it off a lot sooner than not.
If the bomb was triggered by descent to landing, then it would go off on approach to the intended destination, too. Unless you think they're going to find and disarm the thing while aloft, you lose nothing by getting on the ground sooner.
On the other hand, if it is timed, then the sooner you land the better.
So, one kind of bomb makes no difference when you land, the other means people don't die. Do you land early or not?
People who actually follow through on these sorts of things rarely warn others of it.
People who do these kinds of things are trying to create fear and terror. Slipping a device into someone's carry-on with an open WiFi SID of "bomb on board" would do just that. A small tin can of people, a couple of whom have discovered this as a warning when they turn on their WiFi to connect to the in-flight entertainment system, who spread this to others, would result in a win even if there were no bomb.
Was this over-reaction? The airline had no other choice. If they keep flying and it goes off, they get sued and lose. If they land and there is nothing there, they may get sued by morons but they'll win.
If you are ever testing (or writing) a login thing, make sure you test the case with no password.
The claim that nobody thinks to try root with no password is just bullshit. I get daily logs of failed SSH logins on several net-facing devices I have and they always have root/(none) listed multiple times.
I didn't say I get no spam today. The claim is that my ISP cannot do what it is doing, so obviously it is violating net neutrality as some people imagine it to mean. Thus, if we ever get NN in that definition, then my mailbox will be flooded with unreadable chicken scratch.
There are exceptions for standard network management activities.
Whenever NN is mentioned, there are never "exceptions." It's "never" and "always". The comment I replied to was one of the "nevers". That's why I replied.
Under net neutrality rules, the ISPs would have to justify this behavior if it were ever challenged---and face fines if their justification is bullshit.
The ISP should not be under threat of fines for doing something that is so obviously common sense.
The rules published under Wheeler were actually quite good.
Other than being from an agency that doesn't have the authority, you betcha. Let's put the rules where they belong, not where it is convenient, and let's stop ignoring the jurisdictional issues just because we like the rules.
Wrong. Net neutrality says that internet providers may not censor or discriminate.
I rather like it that my ISP blocks traffic from some Chinese-based IP addresses. I was getting hundreds of spam emails from one specific domain per day -- now I get none.
With net neutrality, the FCC could guarantee an open internet regardless of how much competition is permitted at the state/municipal level. It protects the internet as a whole.
Any rule that protects the internet INTO getting hundreds of useless spam messages per day is a bad rule.
That's the most important thing the federal government can do.
The problem is that there are always unintended consequences from federal regulation, simply because federal regulation cannot be written to cover all possible situations or provide the right answer in all cases.
By demand, I mean that the telco tells the cops "you can rifle through my database over my dead body if you don't have a search warrant",
I know what "demand" means, thank you. This case is not about the ability of the telco to demand a warrant, it is about whether they MUST demand one. Are the cops required to get a warrant before they can get the data, or is a simple request enough?
Wow. Slashdot seriously canÃ(TM)t handle posting from a phone?! It totally mangled my apostrophes.
It's not slashdot's fault that your "smart" phone cannot produce a simple ASCII apostrophe and thinks it needs to produce Unicode for that simple, standard, common glyph.
Actually, while you personally might not have the right to demand a search warrant, the telco however should.
The court cast in question has nothing to do with whether the telco can demand a search warrant. The question is whether the telco MUST demand a search warrant. The claim is that the information is unusable for the criminal prosecution because the police did not get a warrant, they just asked and were given the data.
And a side note, most phone calls sent to and from towers are encrypted precisely to prevent snooping by wardriving eavesdroppers, so they are also not public in the first place.
The issue is not the content of the encrypted call. It's the location data, which is not sent to and from cell towers to start with.
Well, that convinced me of the validity of your argument.
Let's just skip to GESTAPO hauling people away because "time matters".
Godwin suits you. How you leap from being able to get the location of a dementia walk-away to "hauling people away" because they might commit treason is amazing.
Typically it takes a couple of hours at most.
In a couple of hours a dementia patient can freeze to death at worst, walk out of cell range and be really lost, drown, or any number of things. They're pretty amazing for being old and demented. We had one guy where we had just started setting up for the search close to his house, and he was located when he walked into the University library ten miles away "looking disoriented".
I'm glad that you don't have anyone who might fit into the "need to find him fast" category, but to force searches to waste time getting location data because you're worried that they're going to haul you away for treason based on your cell location data is just pathetic. If you're that worried, then you better worry more. If you are suspected of treason there won't be any problem getting a warrant. You had better just turn you cell phone off when you are committing treason to be safe from the surveilance state.
This has nothing to do with speech and everything to do with identifying and milking high-bandwidth users of their network.
Why shouldn't the high-bandwidth users pay more for their use? If 1% of the people are using 50% of the available bandwidth, why shouldn't they be charged a lot more than the 99% who split the other half? Yes, I deliberately put this in terms of the "1%-ers".
There are already tiers of access, so how is charging high-bandwidth users more changing anything? It isn't against net neutrality to charge more for more service.
No reasonable person would think that in order to use a modern phone they would have to give up All expectations of privacy.
Straw man. Nobody said anything about all expectations of privacy. The issue is privacy in data that you did not create and do not own, but a reasonable person knows is being collected and can prevent with one simple act.
I've pointed out that even in your (pretty crazy) scenario
There is nothing crazy about a dementia walk-away scenario. It happens a lot more than perhaps you realize, and will only happen more often as a larger percentage of the population reaches the age where dementia is common.
It can quite literally be done in 15 minutes if officers so desire.
If you can find a judge that fast. It is much easier to send in the form signed by the appropriate party (which is often just the dispatcher who is already handling the traffic) and get the data, and that still takes more than 15 minutes. Adding an extra step cannot make the process faster.
Requiring the police to get a warrant may slow this process down by several minutes.
It might prevent this from happening at all, but I think that's what you were actually trying to convey. Your scenario might be "fishing", but a more relevant scenario would be narrowing the field down to half a dozen suspects and then asking if any of them was in the vicinity during both events -- which would be more likely to be approved for a warrant, were one to be necessary.
It would be like needing to get a warrant before questioning the valet at the club about seeing any of the suspects being there both times. He's got data "about someone". Should a warrant be required before the police can get any data "about someone"?
Do you think the police need a warrant to peruse through your credit card statements at will or perhaps take a look at your bank accounts whenever they feel the need to ?
You created that information. You did not create the location information that the cell phone company measured.
The bottom line is this: If you want identifying or detailed information of any kind on an individual, then a warrant shoud be required.
I see you rob a bank. Should the police have to get a warrant before I tell them what you were wearing, what the license plate number of the car you were driving was, or perhaps even your name and address if I recognized you? That's "detailed information" on an individual.
The bank has cameras. Should the police be required to get a warrant to get copies of the video from the bank you robbed, or can the bank hand it over without concern for your fourth amendment rights?
A customer pulled out their cell phone without you noticing it and they started recording video of you. Can they give this to the cops without them needing a warrant?
In your glee at making off with a few thousand bucks, you call a friend, who calls the cops on you. Do they need a warrant for that, too? Would you seriously claim that the police need to get a warrant to listen to the 911 tape of your friend reporting some very specific information about you and your location and what you had told him you did?
Regardless of where the information is stored, it still pertains to an individual.
The difference is who created the data, not where it is stored.
And people who radiate heat should know that it could be used to track them even through curtains and walls?
Hmm. Already discussed and ruled on. Did you choose to radiate heat or is it an inevitable result of being alive? Next.
There's something known as "a reasonable expectation of privacy".
Yes, there is. "Transmitting my voice by unencrypted radio signals and receiving unencrypted radio signals in return" should yield no expectation of privacy to a reasonable person. The reason why legislation was enacted to "protect" such ignorant people was two-fold: first was to protect the profits of the cell phone companies* because second it was being proven beyond a shadow of doubt that the system had no privacy. That latter issue was why nobody should have had an expectation of privacy. We lied to ignorant people by telling them that they had privacy when transmitting their signals in the clear and created stupid laws to make them feel better. And a lot of us laughed our asses off while we listened to morons talking about extremely personal matters over a medium where they had no true privacy.
* cell phone companies who, I might add, had taken NO steps to protect their users by using even the most minimal of encryption or scrambling, despite the technology to do so being quite trivial. It would have cost too much to do that! Frequency inversion is ridiculously simple, and they didn't even do that. That's how much the cell phone companies cared about your privacy.
Now it is mapping into cell phone location data, which is created by the cell phone company in order for the system to work. Reasonable people should realize that a system that relies on knowing where your phone is so it can function will know where you are when you are with your phone. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding your location when you carry a device that tracks your location for a corporate purpose. It's not even your data, it's the cell phone company's data. You didn't create it, they did. You don't use it, they do.
Unlike the thermal imaging issue you refer to earlier, all you have to do to stop them from tracking you is turn your phone off. It doesn't even take special equipment to track you, it's a built-in mandatory function of the system you choose to use.
When lawmakers in the 19th century talked about "a walk in the woods" having an expectation of privacy, I'm fairly certain that they didn't mean that you should be free to track their location.
Anyone who thought they had a right to privacy when walking in a public woods where anyone might see them, and might follow them, is a loon. Period. Tracking was a valuable skill in the 1800s, even today, and people then knew it was possible. Anyone who walks through the public woulds leaving tracks is a loon for thinking they have some reasonable expectation that they either will not be seen or not be tracked. You have a right to make tracks in the woods, I have the right to follow them. You have a right to be in the woods, I have the right to see you. There is no reasonable law that would ever say that I have to close my eyes so I cannot see what you are doing just because you think you have a right to privacy when walking in public.
Unless you deliberately broadcast where you are, you should have the expectation that no-one is triangulating traffic the average user may not even knows exists.
Well, you deliberately carry a device that must know where you are to work properly. That's deliberate, to me. And your right to be ignorant does not impose an unreasonable requirement to ignore where you are on my part.
All I see is so much hyperbole and chicken little "sky is falling" without any facts to back them up.
This whole hysteria over "Comcast could do X" is just that. If you read TFA, that's what you see. Comcast could do X. Comcast could do Y. If you get rid of law A, Comcast could do Z. Comcast didn't repeat their previous promises verbatim, so that means they intend on doing now what they promised not to then.
Hate for what they do, if you must, not for what you think they could do. You only weaken your arguments against what they do when you go off into predictions and coulds.
Would that be something you want the government (or anyone) doing?
You can't put toothpaste back into the tube. Don't walk into a major airport, they already do this. Don't walk into any major retailer, they already do this. Don't drive down any major freeway, they already do this. Don't park in any parking lot or space where there is a time limit, they already do this.
You are in plain sight. If you are in plain sight, don't expect privacy laws to protect you from being seen.
Slashdot Mirror
Some statistics I've seen show pilots may fly 900 of the legally allowed hours per month, on average.
A pilot flying 900 hours in a 30-day month is flying 30 hours per day. On average, of course. Some will fly less, some will fly more.
I'd guess that the monthly limit is more like 240 -- 8 hours, 30 days.
"You" used to be plural,
It still can be.
Mobile phone interference with plane instruments: Myth or reality?
Cool. You've found one stupid link that talks about "galvanometer instruments", and a pop-culture TV show, that can't show that the specific devices they tested interfered with the specific aircraft systems they tested against, and leap to the conclusion that this proves that PED cannot interfere.
The issue is not that EVERY device WILL interfere. Proof that EVERY device does not interfere with EVERY system is irrelevant.
If they were that sensitive, they wouldn't work in the first place with all the electronic noise their systems emit.
You don't believe that a system can be sensitive to certain RF signal interference just because it might emit some on some other frequency? Hmmm. I have a GPS system that emits a birdie smack on top of a specific active local amateur frequency. The amateur radio is blocked despite it being able to "emit electronic noise" quite well, by an electronic system that works quite well despite emitting a significant noise signal.
Simple analysis of complicated systems is often incorrect and misleading.
They are shielded, and don't care about that frequency, which is why wifi is allowed on the planes.
WiFi is allowed on planes after testing to determine that it is not going to cause interference, with the provision that the flight crew can turn it off, and demand that you turn off your clients, at any time they suspect interference.
A bomb threat leads to the authorities making sure there isn't a bomb there, which shouldn't lead to any deaths
And yelling "fire" in a crowded theater should result in an orderly evacuation in a calm and reasonable manner through the nearest sufficient and adequately marked emergency exits, and will not result in an emergency response by fire services that would endanger any of them or put them in an unavailable status for any other actual fire.
Here on Earth, we understand things don't always work out so simply. We understand the effects of panic and costs of deploying emergency services when they are not needed.
We also understand that the desired effect of terrorism is terror, and getting a tin can filled with trapped passengers to panic is a great way to achieve that, even if there is no actual explosion. And when you do it enough so that the system becomes desensitized to the threat, that becomes the best time to actually carry it out. "Athens Control, Turkish 84, we've got just another one of those joke bomb threats, we're going to continue as if nothing was abnorm *&^%$%^* NO CARRIER"
Are you going to criminalize the parent who thinks "bomb on board" is a funny name for their wireless access point because their baby seems to explode a lot?
Yes. You aren't supposed to be running a WiFi hotspot on board an aircraft (at least not in US airspace) at all, according to federal law. Second, it is a deliberate act to turn on the hotspot function of a phone, since it is not normally on. At least, it is on any phone or device I've had that has hotspot functionality. It's a waste of battery and a security issue otherwise. "I accidentally turned on the beacon, which I just now remember is grail shaped" is a poor excuse.
If there was a bomb on board, I bet you trying to ground the flight would set it off a lot sooner than not.
If the bomb was triggered by descent to landing, then it would go off on approach to the intended destination, too. Unless you think they're going to find and disarm the thing while aloft, you lose nothing by getting on the ground sooner.
On the other hand, if it is timed, then the sooner you land the better.
So, one kind of bomb makes no difference when you land, the other means people don't die. Do you land early or not?
People who actually follow through on these sorts of things rarely warn others of it.
People who do these kinds of things are trying to create fear and terror. Slipping a device into someone's carry-on with an open WiFi SID of "bomb on board" would do just that. A small tin can of people, a couple of whom have discovered this as a warning when they turn on their WiFi to connect to the in-flight entertainment system, who spread this to others, would result in a win even if there were no bomb.
Was this over-reaction? The airline had no other choice. If they keep flying and it goes off, they get sued and lose. If they land and there is nothing there, they may get sued by morons but they'll win.
If you are ever testing (or writing) a login thing, make sure you test the case with no password.
The claim that nobody thinks to try root with no password is just bullshit. I get daily logs of failed SSH logins on several net-facing devices I have and they always have root/(none) listed multiple times.
If you get no spam today
I didn't say I get no spam today. The claim is that my ISP cannot do what it is doing, so obviously it is violating net neutrality as some people imagine it to mean. Thus, if we ever get NN in that definition, then my mailbox will be flooded with unreadable chicken scratch.
There are exceptions for standard network management activities.
Whenever NN is mentioned, there are never "exceptions." It's "never" and "always". The comment I replied to was one of the "nevers". That's why I replied.
Under net neutrality rules, the ISPs would have to justify this behavior if it were ever challenged---and face fines if their justification is bullshit.
The ISP should not be under threat of fines for doing something that is so obviously common sense.
The rules published under Wheeler were actually quite good.
Other than being from an agency that doesn't have the authority, you betcha. Let's put the rules where they belong, not where it is convenient, and let's stop ignoring the jurisdictional issues just because we like the rules.
Wrong. Net neutrality says that internet providers may not censor or discriminate.
I rather like it that my ISP blocks traffic from some Chinese-based IP addresses. I was getting hundreds of spam emails from one specific domain per day -- now I get none.
With net neutrality, the FCC could guarantee an open internet regardless of how much competition is permitted at the state/municipal level. It protects the internet as a whole.
Any rule that protects the internet INTO getting hundreds of useless spam messages per day is a bad rule.
That's the most important thing the federal government can do.
The problem is that there are always unintended consequences from federal regulation, simply because federal regulation cannot be written to cover all possible situations or provide the right answer in all cases.
By demand, I mean that the telco tells the cops "you can rifle through my database over my dead body if you don't have a search warrant",
I know what "demand" means, thank you. This case is not about the ability of the telco to demand a warrant, it is about whether they MUST demand one. Are the cops required to get a warrant before they can get the data, or is a simple request enough?
I'm pretty sure I created the data by having my phone in the vicinity of that tower at that time.
I'm pretty sure you are wrong. The cell phone company determined your location, you did not tell them.
The phone company is simply logging it,
No.
Wow. Slashdot seriously canÃ(TM)t handle posting from a phone?! It totally mangled my apostrophes.
It's not slashdot's fault that your "smart" phone cannot produce a simple ASCII apostrophe and thinks it needs to produce Unicode for that simple, standard, common glyph.
Actually, while you personally might not have the right to demand a search warrant, the telco however should.
The court cast in question has nothing to do with whether the telco can demand a search warrant. The question is whether the telco MUST demand a search warrant. The claim is that the information is unusable for the criminal prosecution because the police did not get a warrant, they just asked and were given the data.
And a side note, most phone calls sent to and from towers are encrypted precisely to prevent snooping by wardriving eavesdroppers, so they are also not public in the first place.
The issue is not the content of the encrypted call. It's the location data, which is not sent to and from cell towers to start with.
Oh fuck off.
Well, that convinced me of the validity of your argument.
Let's just skip to GESTAPO hauling people away because "time matters".
Godwin suits you. How you leap from being able to get the location of a dementia walk-away to "hauling people away" because they might commit treason is amazing.
Typically it takes a couple of hours at most.
In a couple of hours a dementia patient can freeze to death at worst, walk out of cell range and be really lost, drown, or any number of things. They're pretty amazing for being old and demented. We had one guy where we had just started setting up for the search close to his house, and he was located when he walked into the University library ten miles away "looking disoriented".
I'm glad that you don't have anyone who might fit into the "need to find him fast" category, but to force searches to waste time getting location data because you're worried that they're going to haul you away for treason based on your cell location data is just pathetic. If you're that worried, then you better worry more. If you are suspected of treason there won't be any problem getting a warrant. You had better just turn you cell phone off when you are committing treason to be safe from the surveilance state.
You mean like long-distance calling?
And in the same vein, I get a "fast-lane" because I pay extra for "extended local area" calling. OMG, the telephone sky is falling!
This has nothing to do with speech and everything to do with identifying and milking high-bandwidth users of their network.
Why shouldn't the high-bandwidth users pay more for their use? If 1% of the people are using 50% of the available bandwidth, why shouldn't they be charged a lot more than the 99% who split the other half? Yes, I deliberately put this in terms of the "1%-ers".
There are already tiers of access, so how is charging high-bandwidth users more changing anything? It isn't against net neutrality to charge more for more service.
No reasonable person would think that in order to use a modern phone they would have to give up All expectations of privacy.
Straw man. Nobody said anything about all expectations of privacy. The issue is privacy in data that you did not create and do not own, but a reasonable person knows is being collected and can prevent with one simple act.
So what's your point?
That there are times when time matters.
I've pointed out that even in your (pretty crazy) scenario
There is nothing crazy about a dementia walk-away scenario. It happens a lot more than perhaps you realize, and will only happen more often as a larger percentage of the population reaches the age where dementia is common.
It can quite literally be done in 15 minutes if officers so desire.
If you can find a judge that fast. It is much easier to send in the form signed by the appropriate party (which is often just the dispatcher who is already handling the traffic) and get the data, and that still takes more than 15 minutes. Adding an extra step cannot make the process faster.
Requiring the police to get a warrant may slow this process down by several minutes.
It might prevent this from happening at all, but I think that's what you were actually trying to convey. Your scenario might be "fishing", but a more relevant scenario would be narrowing the field down to half a dozen suspects and then asking if any of them was in the vicinity during both events -- which would be more likely to be approved for a warrant, were one to be necessary.
It would be like needing to get a warrant before questioning the valet at the club about seeing any of the suspects being there both times. He's got data "about someone". Should a warrant be required before the police can get any data "about someone"?
Do you think the police need a warrant to peruse through your credit card statements at will or perhaps take a look at your bank accounts whenever they feel the need to ?
You created that information. You did not create the location information that the cell phone company measured.
The bottom line is this: If you want identifying or detailed information of any kind on an individual, then a warrant shoud be required.
I see you rob a bank. Should the police have to get a warrant before I tell them what you were wearing, what the license plate number of the car you were driving was, or perhaps even your name and address if I recognized you? That's "detailed information" on an individual.
The bank has cameras. Should the police be required to get a warrant to get copies of the video from the bank you robbed, or can the bank hand it over without concern for your fourth amendment rights?
A customer pulled out their cell phone without you noticing it and they started recording video of you. Can they give this to the cops without them needing a warrant?
In your glee at making off with a few thousand bucks, you call a friend, who calls the cops on you. Do they need a warrant for that, too? Would you seriously claim that the police need to get a warrant to listen to the 911 tape of your friend reporting some very specific information about you and your location and what you had told him you did?
Regardless of where the information is stored, it still pertains to an individual.
The difference is who created the data, not where it is stored.
And people who radiate heat should know that it could be used to track them even through curtains and walls?
Hmm. Already discussed and ruled on. Did you choose to radiate heat or is it an inevitable result of being alive? Next.
There's something known as "a reasonable expectation of privacy".
Yes, there is. "Transmitting my voice by unencrypted radio signals and receiving unencrypted radio signals in return" should yield no expectation of privacy to a reasonable person. The reason why legislation was enacted to "protect" such ignorant people was two-fold: first was to protect the profits of the cell phone companies* because second it was being proven beyond a shadow of doubt that the system had no privacy. That latter issue was why nobody should have had an expectation of privacy. We lied to ignorant people by telling them that they had privacy when transmitting their signals in the clear and created stupid laws to make them feel better. And a lot of us laughed our asses off while we listened to morons talking about extremely personal matters over a medium where they had no true privacy.
* cell phone companies who, I might add, had taken NO steps to protect their users by using even the most minimal of encryption or scrambling, despite the technology to do so being quite trivial. It would have cost too much to do that! Frequency inversion is ridiculously simple, and they didn't even do that. That's how much the cell phone companies cared about your privacy.
Now it is mapping into cell phone location data, which is created by the cell phone company in order for the system to work. Reasonable people should realize that a system that relies on knowing where your phone is so it can function will know where you are when you are with your phone. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding your location when you carry a device that tracks your location for a corporate purpose. It's not even your data, it's the cell phone company's data. You didn't create it, they did. You don't use it, they do.
Unlike the thermal imaging issue you refer to earlier, all you have to do to stop them from tracking you is turn your phone off. It doesn't even take special equipment to track you, it's a built-in mandatory function of the system you choose to use.
When lawmakers in the 19th century talked about "a walk in the woods" having an expectation of privacy, I'm fairly certain that they didn't mean that you should be free to track their location.
Anyone who thought they had a right to privacy when walking in a public woods where anyone might see them, and might follow them, is a loon. Period. Tracking was a valuable skill in the 1800s, even today, and people then knew it was possible. Anyone who walks through the public woulds leaving tracks is a loon for thinking they have some reasonable expectation that they either will not be seen or not be tracked. You have a right to make tracks in the woods, I have the right to follow them. You have a right to be in the woods, I have the right to see you. There is no reasonable law that would ever say that I have to close my eyes so I cannot see what you are doing just because you think you have a right to privacy when walking in public.
Unless you deliberately broadcast where you are, you should have the expectation that no-one is triangulating traffic the average user may not even knows exists.
Well, you deliberately carry a device that must know where you are to work properly. That's deliberate, to me. And your right to be ignorant does not impose an unreasonable requirement to ignore where you are on my part.
All I see is so much hyperbole and chicken little "sky is falling" without any facts to back them up.
This whole hysteria over "Comcast could do X" is just that. If you read TFA, that's what you see. Comcast could do X. Comcast could do Y. If you get rid of law A, Comcast could do Z. Comcast didn't repeat their previous promises verbatim, so that means they intend on doing now what they promised not to then.
Hate for what they do, if you must, not for what you think they could do. You only weaken your arguments against what they do when you go off into predictions and coulds.
Would that be something you want the government (or anyone) doing?
You can't put toothpaste back into the tube. Don't walk into a major airport, they already do this. Don't walk into any major retailer, they already do this. Don't drive down any major freeway, they already do this. Don't park in any parking lot or space where there is a time limit, they already do this.
You are in plain sight. If you are in plain sight, don't expect privacy laws to protect you from being seen.