
Why Hong Kong protesters didn't use their own metro cards - walterbell
https://qz.com/1642441/extradition-law-why-hong-kong-protesters-didnt-use-own-metro-cards/
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AtomicOrbital
People who live in fear of their government deserve a better government ....
luckily history shows those governments fail

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gpm
Does it?

History shows that all governments fail, but does it show that governments
people live in fear of fail faster?

Is history still relevant? The creation of cameras, high speed communications,
and computers fundamentally changes the question. The capabilities of
citizens, governments, and bystanders have all changed. The capabilities are
still rapidly changing, e.g. facial recognition, and drones.

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aurelianito
They didn't use their metro cards but did use their cellphones, as it can be
seen in the pictures. The government can easily know that they were there, as
they can be triangulated using the cellphone towers information.

Not using their cards is useless.

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realusername
With one million people on the street, I don't know if that information is
really useful in this case.

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kazinator
But then that reasoning could apply to the train cards.

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throwaway1997
Our train cards (Octopus card) are often linked to our bank accounts so that
we can use the Automatic Add Value Service (AAVS). The only people travelling
to Causeway Bay and from Admiralty at that time would be protestors so it
would be fairly trivial to link protestors to individual identities using the
cards.

It wouldn't be too hard triangulating the cell towers because we have a huge
population density and, hence, cell towers attached to nearly every building.
But I feel this data would be harder to get hold of and may catch the hundreds
of thousands of "innocent" people who live in those buildings.

