

Battle Brews Over FBI's Warrantless GPS Tracking - grellas
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/gps/

======
raganwald
Step 1: Place GPS tracking device on every car (alternatives include demand
GPS tracking devices be built into cars by manufacturers or build them into
license plates as part of a move to save money on toll collections).

Step 2: Analyze data algorithmically, looking for suspicious correlations.

Step 3: 1984.

Another thought: If you don't need a warrant to place GPS tracking device on a
car, you ought to be able to obtain location tracking data from a telephone
company without a warrant. Wherever your phone goes, the FBI is simply
following you with a virtual agent.

~~~
shasta
I frequently encounter people who insist that the US style government, while
not perfect, is the greatest form of government, and they question how much
room for improvement there really is. And yet, when issues such as increased
surveillance arise, everyone is (mostly rightly) alarmed at the increase in
power this could provide to the government. Cries of "1984" are an internet
staple. But rather than only insisting that this new capability be denied to
our government, I wish people would also question whether it is really a
fundamental truth that government cannot be trusted with such capabilities or
whether it's possibly just our current forms of government that cannot.

Just in case it's not obvious why we'd want a government spying on us, I'll
briefly make the case. There might be some side benefit, such as automatically
identifying emergency situations, but realistically the main benefit comes
from increased effectiveness of law enforcement. Yes, that ought to be a
benefit. If it isn't, that points to a problem with the laws or the way
they're enforced. Increasing the effectiveness with which we can identify
violations will not only lead to a reduction in violations, but will also let
us lower punishments (speeding tickets would work fine at $10 each if every
speeder were cited, etc).

Some people will argue that such a government could never exist. "Who watches
the watchers?", the cliche goes. Well, why couldn't the answer be "other
watchers"? Isn't that the idea of checks and balances? I don't think that
there's much chance of a sufficiently better form of government emerging from
our current political machine anytime soon, but if it were to happen it
wouldn't be accomplished by getting everyone to agree on the details, many of
which I probably imagine wrong myself. Rather, I think it would be
accomplished by making the very idea of a better system of government popular,
and getting people to agree on a transparent process and criteria for working
out the details. (Well, there might be other ways. If someone posted
instructions for a relatively easy to make, low cost nuclear bomb to the
internet I think that, after a few detonations, we'd have mass internment that
would give everyone ample free time to discuss whether a surveillance state is
really necessarily bad.)

~~~
raganwald
In software development, I am cynical of any tool, language, or process that
promises to somehow make a team of ineffective programmers produce software of
value. However, given a team of developers with some sort of baseline
competence, I strongly believe that some tools increase their effectiveness
while others hold them back.

Translating this to forms of government, I conjecture that if we elect
ineffective and/or untrustworthy officials, and if enough untrustworthy
persons obtain power in unelected positions, I doubt there is any system that
can somehow prevent them from doing bad things. But given a certain critical
mass of honesty and effectiveness in the people placed in charge, some forms
of government provide superior results to others.

I am not going to say that America has the greatest form of government here,
but is it possible that what we have here is a people problem, not a
government problem?

~~~
danilocampos
This is very well said. I'm reminded of the cliche that the people get the
government they deserve. And boy, have we got ours in the United States. As
long as the majority remains lazy and ignorant, the successful politicians
will be mostly power-seekers, narcissists or agents of industry.

~~~
raganwald
I can't speak to American politics, but it is with shame that I report that
here in Canada, ourMinister of State for Science and Technology, Gary
Goodyear, refuses to confirm that he believes in evolution:

    
    
        I'm not going to answer that question. I am a
        Christian, and I don't think anybody asking
        a question about my religion is appropriate.
    

Well, gosh, asking the Minister of State for Science and Technology to discuss
his belief in Science is asking him about his religion. And here's the rub:
This was widely reported and we Canadians sent this team back into office for
another four years with a majority.

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/article320476.e...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/article320476.ece)

Can I really blame Mr. Goodyear? Or our system? Or should Canadians have a
good, hard look at themselves in the mirror?

~~~
shasta
That position could be dominant because of a relatively small minority of
Canadians who feel strongly about creationism who will actually vote on that
issue.

~~~
raganwald
Agreed. Or to put it another way, that party could have been elected because
the majority of people who bothered to vote were apathetic about the
qualifications and bias of the Minister of State for Science and Technology
and what implications that might have for funding science and industry.

------
eck
To me, the interesting question would be, were a private citizen to build a
tracking device and attach it to an FBI vehicle, would they have a problem
with that? My guess is they would arrest you and figure out something to
charge you with -- even though, by their own logic, since you could follow an
FBI vehicle around to see where it goes, attaching a GPS is equivalent.

A logical standard would be "that which isn't legal for a private citizen to
do, the police need a warrant for" -- but hey, I'm an engineer, not a
lawyer...

------
bediger
The FBI, as an institution, can't feel shame or embarassment. But individuals
employed by the FBI can feel shame. Don't they? Are all FBI agents who do this
kind of un-american activity sociopaths, or do some of them feel ashamed at
underminging a free society?

But the upper levels of authority at the FBI, they must all be pervets who
like to snoop on people. Shame on them for doing this un-american, unnatural
voyeurism.

~~~
dpatru
I suspect many law enforcement people take the attitude that if someone hasn't
done anything wrong, they have nothing to hide, and if they have done
something wrong, they should be brought to justice. Also, the use of
electronic surveillance doesn't normally inconvenience a law-abiding person,
but it can help catch dangerous criminals.

~~~
bediger
I think that warrantless electronic surveillance very clearly violates USA
Citizen's presumption of innocence and freedom from unreasonable search and
seizure. It's fishing, plain and simple. The FBI knows what a warrant is, they
should go get one. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, that's what they'd tell
a non-FBI person.

I think they are fishing for wrongdoing, and it's a waste of taxpayer money,
and a shameful act.Shame on you, FBI. You're acting like perverts.

------
ck2
If it goes before the current supreme court, the country is screwed, they will
rule it legal and then it will be "settled law" for decades to come.

Few warrants are ever turned down at every level of law enforcement (feds have
100% approval apparently) why do they endanger any case they may have by
skipping a warrant? Is it ego? Is it laziness?

~~~
DenisM
data mining. it's hard to justify 300 million warrants.

~~~
nickpinkston
Too late... Carnivore, Echelon, etc...

------
dpatru
Electronic tracking is a very cheap way to gain a lot of possibly useful
information about potential suspects. It thus allows government to keep us
safe without spending a lot of money. There are only two downsides.

First, innocent people may be singled out to be tracked without having done
anything wrong. However, tracking, by itself, does not negatively impact the
life of the person being tracked. Most are completely unaware of it, and those
that are aware that they are being tracked have nothing to complain about:
there is no expectation of privacy while traveling on public roads. And, as
the technology gets cheaper, more people will get tracked, making the
"singling out" less significant. When everyone is tracked, no one will be
singled out.

The second downside to electronic tracking is that it vastly increases the
power of government. But most people view this as a good thing. A more
powerful government can keep us safer. If it can do it cheaply, so much the
better.

~~~
raganwald
_The second downside to electronic tracking is that it vastly increases the
power of government. But most people view this as a good thing. A more
powerful government can keep us safer. If it can do it cheaply, so much the
better._

First, "most people view this as a good thing" is clearly an appeal to
popularity, which is a fallacious reasoning. At one time, most people believed
slavery was a good thing. Discuss.

"A more powerful government can keep us safer." The word "can" is a weasel-
word. We are not debating whether the government "can" do something, we are
debating whether they actually do something. I challenge you to strengthen
your statement by claiming that the increase in power given to the government
is _actually_ keeping us safer.

"if it can do it cheaply, so much the better." Hanging around startups, I have
become enamoured of the idea that when certain things become extremely cheap,
the entire dynamic changes. Radio car phones existed when I was a teen-ager.
Then analog cell-phones, then digital cell-phones. Each new wave of technology
was cheaper than the previous one. At some point, untethered phones became so
cheap that the entire dynamic around telephony changed, and it changed very
quickly.

Getting back to cheap spying on people, if you like what they are doing, then
doing it cheaper seems to be a good thing. But at some point, it becomes so
cheap that the entire dynamic changes. For example, if these devices were so
cheap that they could be disposable, why not spy on everyone, all of the time?

This completely changes the dynamic of law enforcement. You don't start with a
person suspected of breaking the law and spy on them, you simply spy on
everyone and save everything. When and if you become interested in someone,
you open up their file and voila! All of their movements since they bought
their first car, all of their rental car movements, all of the movements of
everyone who knew them and might have given them a ride, going back decades.

I need a bit more meat to the assertion that this scenario is "so much the
better" before I will accept it.

~~~
GHFigs
_At one time, most people believed slavery was a good thing. Discuss._

This may be true for some places and times, but societies that practiced
slavery commonly suffered from the demographic problem that the slaves
outnumbered their masters (and other freemen). That is to say, most people
_were_ slaves.

 _When and if you become interested in someone, you open up their file and
voila!_

The file is just data. That data can be used to establish the guilt of the
guilty or the innocence of the innocent. It can also be used to make cool
looking graphs and heatmaps to post on your blog, improve the flow of traffic,
better design cars and cities, tax emissions, target advertisements, set
insurance rates, get you laid, etc.

It's not that I disagree with you, but I think with time we need more
specificity as to what the onerous scenarios are. Is the collection of that
data the problem, or is it the collection of that data directly by law
enforcement that bothers us? Is it the collection or is it the ease with which
they do it? Is it the access to that data by law enforcement or the potential
for abuse, misuse, and falsely convicting the innocent? And so on.

To take it in the more general direction: When exactly does more and better
data become a bad thing? When exactly is the ambiguity in our lives sacred
enough to shield against the tide of data and the changing dynamics that
enable it?

~~~
raganwald
America in 1860 may have been one of those places and times where most people
believed slavery was a good thing:

<http://www.civilwarhome.com/population1860.htm>

Total Free Population 27,489,561 Total Slave Population 3,953,760 Grand Total
31,443,321

The freemen outnumbered the slaves in all but two states. And in any event,
nobody asked the slaves.

As for the file being "just" data, so is a picture of a man with his mistress,
or an email conversation, or a list of the books you purchased online, or a
list of URLs you visited this year. You tell me: Is this all just "data?"

Are you good with the FBI/CSIS having all this stuff about you or any other
citizen who is not being investigated with cause? I'm not, and furthermore I
won't be tricked into some kind of reverse onus where I have to explain why
it's a bad thing for the government to have this data just for the sake of
having all this data. It's the other way around: The government should have to
tell us, the people, why it needs this data. If it can't justify the
collection of this data, it shouldn't collect it.

The reason why the onus is upon the government to prove why it needs the data
and not on us to prove why we're entitled to some privacy is because humans
have an unbroken track record for abusing information about each other, and
governments even more so. To argue that somehow 2011 it is all going to be
different is to argue that this month will be full of Sundays or that pigs
have finally taken flight with their new wings.

