

Experts recommend stronger protections for "Geodata" - bootload
http://webinsecurity.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/news-experts-suggest-that-geo-data.html

======
einhverfr
Sotomayor's recent concurrence in United States v Jones (about GPS monitoring)
gives a strong idea of exactly why this sort of thing is damaging.

One thing to keep in mind is that this sort of data, if available on everyone,
sets up an opportunity for the rise of a justice system based on "show me the
man and I'll find you the crime." And even if you haven't committed a crime,
enough circumstantial "evidence" might be put together to convince a jury that
you had.

Back in the 1970's, Justice Douglass dissented in California Bankers
Association v. Shultz, saying that if the government found financial
transactions helpful in monitoring crime, why stop there? Why not require all
book purchases, library records, and drugstore purchases as well? Douglass
painted a dystopian view of what the nation would be like with these areas of
data available to the government and not protected for the consumer. Little
did he know that thirty years later we'd have the USAPATRIOT act, bringing us
fairly close to exactly what he argued against.

I would argue that statutory protections are not enough. We need
Constitutional protections at least in the US as well. Sotomayor argues for
this in her concurrence in Jones, and also suggests that we have to think
about 4th amendment law in a new way, bringing us in many ways back to
Douglass's dissent. There is hope.

