
Toronto is gathering cellphone location data to find people congregating - colinprince
https://business.financialpost.com/technology/city-of-toronto-gathering-cellphone-location-data-from-telecoms-in-bid-to-slow-spread-of-covid-19-tory
======
Proziam
You can dislike the behavior all you want, and call it out as being immoral
and stupid. You can fine people if they take risks that cause harm to others.
But if you get in the way of the freedom to assemble and communicate like
human beings without being _straight up spied on_ that, to me, is crossing a
very big red line.

Anyone who believes for a moment that the information they collect can't be
deanonymized is deluding themselves. This is a precursor to some straight-up
Orwellian evil.

~~~
borkt
No one is forcing you to carry a cellphone, and a cellphone really isn’t an
inalienable right. There’s a pretty easy solution to this problem if you don’t
want to tracked. I’m not in support of what they are doing, but its a bit
different than if it were being done with a government mandated biochip or
ankle monitor rather than with a phone you voluntarily carry

~~~
twojacobtwo
Given that a cellphone is necessary for many people to conduct their daily
lives/business now[0] and that necessity is increasing over time, your
argument quickly boils down to "no one is forcing you to take part in
society". Sure, it may true, but what a terrible standard to set or defend.

[0] e.g. If I didn't carry a cell phone, I would be fired because I am
expected to be reachable while away from the office. This is not a unique
situation.

~~~
hnrodey
> If I didn't carry a cell phone, I would be fired because I am expected to be
> reachable while away from the office. This is not a unique situation.

I would argue that this is unique or at the very least, the minority of
positions.

Only here to say that it's your choice to engage with an employer who makes
that decision for you. In other words, find a new job.

~~~
twojacobtwo
That is just a single example from my personal situation and in my own circle
of friends, I am not alone in that expectation.

We could look at another example, say the increasingly widespread use of
mobile payments in China. How about people living in areas without other major
services who need to keep in touch with family/friends/emergency services?

Regardless of the other situations, you're also making the assumption that I
and others can just immediately find other employment. With the current
massive number of layoffs, alternative employment prospects are dropping for a
hell of a lot of people. So if this is the only job I can get right now, is it
reasonable still to say that I can 'easily' give up my cell phone, for the low
low price of not having enough money for rent/mortgage and food?

~~~
hnrodey
> Regardless of the other situations, you're also making the assumption that I
> and others can just immediately find other employment.

Losing your job because you're "off the grid" is always terrible. This is not
an excuse just because now there is more serious ramifications. Perhaps it's
just now extra terrible.

------
lucidone
I am Canadian, and I considered myself an advocate of privacy up until
COVID-19 made me realize I'd pretty much give up all my civil liberties if it
meant my immunocompromised parents were less likely to fall ill and
potentially die as a consequence. Trudeau can enact marshal law for all I
care, I just don't want my folks to die.

~~~
AlexandrB
I think you have to accept that your parents are going to die one day, whether
we contain COVID-19 or not. But you and your (future?) kids are going to have
to live with the political consequences of this crisis for many years to come.

~~~
lucidone
The other side of that argument being that people in the future can always
fight for their rights, whereas we can never get back lost time with our loved
ones.

~~~
mrlanderson
Such a selfish argument

~~~
lucidone
You're absolutely right. Thankfully, in reality, I don't think the measures
taken will be as strong as dismantling our civil liberties. However, if the
dichotomy was either our civil rights at large (expand this to the economy,
whatever you want) or the lives of the sick and elderly, I'd opt for saving
human lives every time. I even think there is a Trek episode about this. Not
very utilitarian of me I realize, but it's a trade off I'd make without
hesitation.

------
dontbenebby
>totally anonymous cellphone location information

that's a bold claim

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak)

|[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize#Privacy_concerns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize#Privacy_concerns)

and so on and so forth, these data sets are hard to truly anonymize

~~~
ctrl-j
Only because they capture a lot of data and keep the row level information.

If you just grabbed clustered coordinates without any device information there
wouldn't be enough data to be able to reconstruct identity information.

~~~
Cpoll
There's a lot of ways it can go wrong though:

\- If they provide a unique ID with each coordinate. Now you can deanonymize
by correlation

\- If they provide a coordinate for every used in the system. Now you know
where everyone is

\- From the above, if the data is presented in frequent intervals, you can
correlate coordinates with last know coordinates and start drawing paths

I'd be comfortable if the request is "give us a coordinate for every area that
has more than N users in it" for some large N. Filtering out apartment
buildings shouldn't be too difficult.

~~~
zelphirkalt
> every useD in the system

Funny typo, or perhaps not? Reminds me of Stallman talking about Facebook and
switching out "users" with "useds".

------
zelphirkalt
Imagine this happening under normal circumstances. Now that they did it, the
threshold will be lower to do it again next time, when they see it fit.

The future will show, whether it will be appropriate, when they do it next
time.

~~~
BitwiseFool
People might accuse you of using a Slippery Slope fallacy, but in reality
they're just establishing a precedent. And the justification will get weaker
each time.

~~~
zelphirkalt
You are right, not water tight argumenting on my part. I wonder, whether
slippery slope is OK, if the action in reality can be seen as a slippery slope
that society is probably sliding down.

------
bb123
I think part of the problem is that the hacker news community has to accept
that we are in minority in terms of opinion on this. The general public is
either okay with it or doesn't care. Anyone who has tried to explain this to a
non-tech person knows what I mean.

------
motohagiography
How long do they get this information, and who has access to it?

The privacy culture in Canada is different from that of the US or Germany,
with some major privacy players today having close law enforcement and
intelligence community backgrounds.

For example, the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Civil Liberties
in the article also happens to be a former provincial attorney general
responsible for some pretty hysterical anti-civil liberties regulations in
regard to law enforcement discretion (automatic roadside vehicle seizure for
speeding, "pit bull" ban), in addition to his ideological anti-firearms
advocacy in a country with some of the strictest and most byzantine gun laws
on the planet. The federal privacy commissioner is a former federal assistant
deputy attorney general which arguably makes him a member of the intelligence
community.

Regardless of your political leanings, it's hard to make the case that former
prosecutors and intelligence community members make credible privacy
advocates.

In Canada, there is a popular contempt for the notion of "freedom," in the
American sense, as the concept implies there may be limits to bureaucratic
remit and to the total sovereign power of the crown. Such freedom is a myth
only the young or uneducated believe in. There are a few rights carved out of
the total dominion of the crown, but those are exceptions. It's a very
different culture here.

In terms of using cell tracking data to manage the pandemic, the case for what
difference the data would makes needs to be clearer. Leveraging the crisis to
get the data ("squeezing the toothpaste out of the tube") is standard
bureaucracy playbook here, and everyone should be skeptical of it.

"Because crisis!" is not a reason or justification people should accept for
anything, and we should push back on anyone who seems to be leveraging
hysteria and who won't provide a sound and transparent rationale with clear
limits.

------
bluehazed
As the article says, this isn't legal, and violates Provincial Privacy law.

~~~
usr01398132
These laws have been violated by DOOH companies for the past decade. Yet no
one really talks about the private sector tracking people without consent.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22685912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22685912)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-
home_advertising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-home_advertising)

~~~
refurb
People talk about the private sector violating privacy all the time.

The gov't doing it is even worse since they have the power to put you in jail
and take all your possessions if they want to. Private companies don't.

------
arkadiyt
Similar / more invasive product being sold by NSO Group (yes, that NSO Group)
to a dozen governments around the world:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/surveilla...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/surveillance-
company-nso-supplying-data-analysis-to-stop-virus)

------
bearcobra
It should be noted that the city came out and denied that this was actually
happening or that they've received any data

[Paywalled] [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toronto-
may...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toronto-mayors-
office-denies-use-of-cellphone-tracking-data/)

~~~
marketgod
Yeah Tory denied it on live TV as well.

Some things to be aware of are that Tory was the CEO of Rogers previously.
Maybe he knew which data they have available and since it was a company owned
by a family friend he could get whatever he wants.

Michael Bryant while allegeldy drunk rammed a bicycle off the road on purpose
(self-defense) and killed the guy. His wife was in the car as well and they
got separated a few months later. He was also the previous Attorney General in
Ontario.

------
lifeformed
It feels like everyone here is treating it as an all or nothing thing. People
are acting like if we allow the government to do this, then the next step
surely can only be total state surveillance. Can't we come up with some
reasonable balance where we can give up some privacy during extreme
situations, but have strong safeguards in place to keep it emergency only?

~~~
justanotherc
If you allow a precedent to be set it can be very difficult to get the genie
back in the bottle...

------
wtcac
I am finding it very interesting to read the disparaging reaction to this
measure by the Canadian government, and the reaction to a similar measure
taken by the Israeli government.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22592168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22592168)

------
ulucs
They should have taken timely precautions instead of trying to go all out
after they found out the cat was out of the bag. I find it apalling that they
took forever to cancel Chinese/Iranian/Italian flights, but now it's time to
disregard all civil liberties.

------
zzo38computer
I do not have a cell phone; since some people do not have a cell phone (or may
temporarily have loss of communication for whatever reason, including airplane
mode, loss of battery power, leaving it at home, etc) it may not work. But
what if someone has more than one cell phone?

------
totony
Obscene, the upsides of this are nothing compared to it's impact on freedom
and in normalizing such behavior.

I have trouble comprehending how governements (and people) think so little of
individual freedom that as soon as a crisis hits their first instinct is
giving it all up

------
hypertexthero
> QA: What, as an ordinary citizen now, frightens you most, would you wish,
> most could happen, to stop the panic at least.

> YH: I think the worse thing is the disunity we see in the world, the lack of
> cooperation and coordination we see between different countries, and the
> lack of trust, both between countries, and also between the population and
> the government. ¶ This is basically the payday for what we've been seeing in
> the last few years, with the epidemic of fake news, and with the
> deterioration of international relations. ¶ If you compare this for example
> with the 2008 financial crisis — which is of course a crisis of a different
> kind, but there are similarities — in 2008 you had responsible adults in the
> world which took a leadership position, rallied the world behind them, and
> prevented the worst outcomes. But over the last four years basically we've
> seen a rapid deterioration of trust in the international system. The country
> which was the leader previously, both in the 2008 financial crisis and also
> in the last big epidemic, the Ebola epidemic in 2014 — and that country is
> the United States — now it is not taking any kind of leadership position.
> Actually since 2016, the current administration has made it very clear that
> the US has resigned its role as world leader, it made it very clear that the
> US has no longer any friends in the world, it has only interests. And even
> if now, the US — which is not doing so far — but even if it will try to
> assume a leadership position, nobody would follow a leader who's motto is
> “Me first.” ¶ So what really frightens me is the lack of leadership and
> cooperation, and what people should realize, is that the spread of the
> epidemic in any one country threatens the entire world because of the danger
> that if we don't contain this in time, the virus will evolve — that is maybe
> one of the worse problems with this kind of epidemic — is actually a rapid
> evolution of the virus. We saw it before with the 2014 Ebola epidemic. It
> actually started, the Ebola epidemic started, with one genetic mutation in
> one virus in one person in West Africa, which turned Ebola from a relatively
> rare disease into a raging epidemic, because this single mutation increased
> the contagiousness of the virus four times. ¶ Now this could be happening
> right now, somewhere in Iran, or in Italy, or in anywhere else, and wherever
> it happens, it endangers the entire world. ¶ Humanity needs to close ranks
> against the viruses.

Yuval Harari then goes on to describe the second thing that scares him the
most: The rise of authoritarianism through governments taking advantage of
peoples’ fear about the virus.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwusbaOFr2Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwusbaOFr2Y)

------
Scoundreller
Jokes on them.

Rogers struggles to make/receive phone calls during peak hours for the past
week.

------
xenospn
As does Israel, as does Norway.

