[HN Gopher] Mobilewalla used cellphone data to estimate the demo...
___________________________________________________________________
Mobilewalla used cellphone data to estimate the demographics of
protesters
Author : psychanarch
Score : 319 points
Date : 2020-06-26 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.buzzfeednews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.buzzfeednews.com)
| ogre_codes wrote:
| It seems like it would be very difficult to distinguish which
| side of the police line someone is on based on a pile of
| demographics. How many of those are protestors versus police?
| Likewise, National Guard, reporters, fire department, medical,
| etc. If they separated them out, it doesn't say they did in the
| article or even hint at an attempt.
| sukilot wrote:
| Government workers are a tiny fraction of population at a
| protest.
| jleach82 wrote:
| I don't think so. Read this:
| https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-help...
|
| I am fairly confident they can easily tell which way someone
| leans on the matter.
| jleach82 wrote:
| Data Breaches, Crisis and Opportunity (ISBN 978-0-13-450678-4)
|
| I always "knew" that mass data is evaluated for many things, but
| I had no idea how much I didn't know. That book - besides being
| an excellent reference for anyone responsible for protecting data
| - is unsettling in showing the depth of the market and how it
| works. The topic headline doesn't even scratch the surface.
| loraa wrote:
| It's beautiful how people get the latest and greatest smart
| phone, never read the manual, turn on all the features and keeps
| all setting at default, eats out of Google or apples ass, and
| then complain that their privacy has been violated? Really?
| oyra wrote:
| offtopic, but how come there are only two genders participating
| in these protests?! there must be something wrong with the
| analysis.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system
| truculent wrote:
| > Mobilewalla does not collect the data itself, but rather buys
| it from a variety of sources, including advertisers, data
| brokers, and internet service providers.
|
| So we can mobilise to use this data for profiling protestors, but
| not to help tackle a pandemic which is spreading concurrently?
| thatlongthrow1 wrote:
| They don't get the fine detailed data that is needed for
| contact tracing.
| nodelessness wrote:
| We cant we just dont care to.
| soared wrote:
| This data has an accuracy of something like ~80ft on average.
|
| https://www.mobilemarketer.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/news/re...
| .
| one2know wrote:
| If you have been watching live streams, you will learn many
| protesters don't understand what a "live stream" is, because the
| streamer tries to explain it to them and they still think it is a
| recording that can be deleted.
| not2b wrote:
| But while it initially goes out live, after the live stream
| ends the video becomes a recording, which can be deleted.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Unless someone saves that stream.
| one2know wrote:
| On one stream I watched, the streamer tells a protester they
| are live streaming. The protester literally says, "I don't
| know what that is." And actually recordings can't be deleted
| because viewers are recording the live stream and have their
| own copies instantly which they upload to twitter or youtube.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Between the article and the orig report, I found the data
| presented in a confusing way.
|
| > "African American males made up the majority of protesters in
| the four observed cities vs. females"
|
| Then follows pie charts showing Caucasians outnumbered African-
| Americans 6:1.
|
| It looks like what they meant was 'among African-American
| protesters, the majority were male'.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yes that's what they meant. It is really poorly worded. They
| could have used a copy editor to check that.
|
| That said it looks like males dominated most of the charts in
| most cities cited.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The square with the color in the legend is very small, so it's
| very difficult to understand what the pies represent.
|
| (I don't understand how they choose the colors.)
| fmakunbound wrote:
| How do these ass-clowns get stuff like mobile application I'm
| using
| https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4309344/Mobilewalla%20Data%20...
| https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4309344/Content%20Offers/Mobi...
| and even location data https://www.mobilewalla.com/places-of-
| interest-data-schema Do carriers ship some kind of Mobilewalla
| telemetry app on the phone people use?
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Probably from network calls (DNS and HTTPS).
|
| An easy one is to provide a mobile hotspot with the name
| `attwifi` with no password and just sniff the data. You can
| derive a lot of data just from the network activity on a phone
| and since you're on WiFi, you can get approximate WiFi
| location. A couple of dozen laptops in a couple of buildings
| and you can also approximate the direction the phones moved as
| they go from device to device.
| surround wrote:
| A comment I made recently:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23138828
|
| Basically, cell service providers collect as much data as
| possible and share it with as many third parties as possible.
| They keep track of your internet traffic, and they can keep
| track of your location based upon signal strength.
|
| This is just one of the sources they get their data from, but
| there's no way to stop it, short of removing your SIM card.
| [deleted]
| notyourday wrote:
| That's why it is extremely important to run apps like
| NoRootFirewall and block all the apps from being able to access
| internet while they are not in use.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| How do you feel about Blokada application?
| notyourday wrote:
| I do not know it/of it so I cannot really say. If it works
| along the lines of NoRootFirewall ( creates a firewall to
| localhost and forces all internet connectivity to to go
| through that tunnel with a per app/per host allow/deny
| policies that are easy for a user to enale/disable ) then
| it is strictly the question of UX/design decisions.
|
| FFS, my _camera_ application wants to talk to the internet,
| sometimes when I 'm NOT using it!
| jmatthews wrote:
| Having done some work in this space I can tell you the exact
| process. Applications on your phone provide a maid. Mobile
| Application ID. Which reports back it's(the phones) geo
| location. Using some basic statistics regarding location,
| duration of stay, time of day, you infer home address, work
| address. Once you have a small foothold you go to aggregated
| data repositories and run a query. Once you get a positive hit
| the rest is dead simple.
| bosswipe wrote:
| Is the Mobile Application ID the same as the Advertising ID
| found on Android and iPhone?
| soared wrote:
| MAID, IDFA, etc are all slightly different but in effect
| yes, they provide a device id for use in advertising.
| kjaftaedi wrote:
| Out of curiosity, are you able to provide any examples of
| these aggregated data repositories?
| soared wrote:
| Data management platform 'dmp' is the software where these
| segments are stored and used in advertising. ie
| http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/cloud/data-
| directory-2810...
| mtgp1000 wrote:
| I had been paranoid about this for some time, thanks for
| confirming.
|
| It is so trivially easy to decipher a person's life from
| their location data, especially with some simple ML.
|
| The fact that it's so easy ensures in my mind that it's only
| a matter of time before this data falls into the hands of a
| true authoritarian administration.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| This data has been commercially available for years. Assume
| that every government has it.
| sukilot wrote:
| Vulgar language makes your comment hard to read.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I disagree. It's an effective way of conveying emotion and in
| so breathes "life" to the words. It's a gentle reminder that
| the person typing these things is human; bringing along a
| range of complicated life experiences and emotions that you
| may be unaware of. Perhaps you need to look inwards and
| discover why something that is ordinarily insignificant
| brings you so much frustration. Is it from a preconceived
| idea that swearing implies a lack of intelligence? Time for
| some introspection.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Buzzfeed uses a kinda misleading pull-quote from the analytics:
| "African American males made up the majority of protesters in the
| four observed cities vs. females".
|
| The stat this refers to is gender ratio /amongst Black protestors
| only/; the overall racial mix of the protests really wasn't much
| different from their observed daytime (ie, control) racial mix.
|
| FWIW, they also observe the same in-city out-of-city breakdown
| during the day and night, indicating that the 'bussed in
| protestor' fantasies of the right wing conspiracy machine were
| baseless. (though, really, that was pretty obvious anyway, and
| the tin-foil hats won't be convinced by any kind of evidence...)
| cbhl wrote:
| Yeah, I was confused by this pull quote given the pie charts
| later on the page showing majority-caucasian (over 72% in the
| four cities)
| rydre wrote:
| [deleted]
| jleach82 wrote:
| Part of the problem is that this type of data collection and
| market environment evolves much more quickly than legislation
| can ever keep up. They're trying, but..
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Data collection existed in the US, and probably most major
| markets, a century ago, it's just that then it was primarily
| keyed on mailing address instead of telephone number.
| Legislators are never going to do anything about it unless
| absolutely forced to, because they rely on targeted campaigns
| themselves.
|
| (and if you're in the US, it gets worse. When I lived in
| California, I asked my letter carrier if I could put a "no
| junk mail please" sign on the box like we do here. I was told
| to please not call it junk mail, but "bulk mail", as it
| provides a significant fraction of their funding.)
|
| Anyone up for a game of 35 questions?
|
| Edit: https://www.msp-pgh.com/history-direct-mail-marketing/
|
| > The American Anti-Slavery Society printed and mailed
| marketing materials to religious and civic leaders in the
| south in 1835. This is likely the first direct mail campaign.
| They created a mailing list from names in newspapers and city
| directories, among other public lists.
|
| the poorly-targeted campaign was not well-received:
| https://postalmuseum.si.edu/node/1912
| jsilence wrote:
| Could Meshtastic alleviate this?
| mc32 wrote:
| >" If [this data] ends up in hands of the government, or if
| protesters are concerned that it could end up in the hands of the
| government, that may suppress speech, it may deter people from
| going to protests," Hussain said."
|
| At this point I don't think it's government so much as private
| companies I'm concerned about.
|
| Candidates silently get ignored depending on what this kind of
| data shows.
| Vervious wrote:
| I'm confused why hacker news thinks collecting demographic data
| is a bad thing, and is all about regulating it... when everyone's
| personal website has google analytics installed and is doing the
| exact same thing. Yet we don't bat an eye at it.
| zucker42 wrote:
| There's a real, specific concern here that doesn't apply to
| Google analytics on blogs. The concern is that if this data is
| available for purchase by a company consumers haven't heard of,
| it's available for purchase by police. Police could use
| location details to track, arrest, or harass people they don't
| like. And this has implications outside the U.S. as well.
|
| But also I think you'll find that some of the same people in
| this thread also complain about Google analytics. My personal
| website, for example, does not use Google analytics.
| driverdan wrote:
| What makes you think we don't care about both?
| rhizome wrote:
| Not everyone's. The majority, probably, sure, but it's not at
| all required or anything.
|
| And "hacker news thinks collecting demographic data is a bad
| thing" is uncharitably broad.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| I don't mean to ask in bad faith - does Google Analytics
| collect information about my race/age/other personal
| information, or just data about my computer? I haven't
| personally used GA so I don't know.
| tjpnz wrote:
| I suspect the target audience of many a website would be
| blocking GA too.
| Vervious wrote:
| Seriously though, doesn't it strike any of you as absolutely
| hypocritical? We're attacking data collection in public spaces
| in real life, while defending it in our own domain (virtual
| life). I know that a lot of tech industry paychecks come from
| monetizing people's data...
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Part of the difference is scope and purpose. I'm ok with
| Amazon using my purchase, and product viewing data, to
| recommend products I might like to purchase. I'm even ok with
| them using aggregated data to determine where to invest in
| white-labled products, fix UX issues, or find fraud rings.
|
| What I'm not ok with, is them selling my data, combining it
| with cellphone data, netflix viewing data, creditcard data,
| magazine subscriptions, email subscriptions, and many others,
| and building personal profiles that governments, political
| organizations, and commercial enterprises I don't have a
| direct relationship with to abuse.
|
| I don't think it is a slippery-slope from from the more
| narrow, single-firm use case to the broad-profile-being
| abused. GDPR and similar regulation is one way we can get
| there. We are going to need probably another generation of
| people and laws to figure out the right regulatory norms and
| frameworks, but it seems like a tractable problem.
| soared wrote:
| Amazon doesn't sell your data. You can't have a legitimate
| discussion about this on HN because no one does their
| research and so just make outrageously incorrect claims
| like that.
|
| Netflix, apple, etc don't sell data. There is no such thing
| as building a 'personal profile' by combining data from all
| these different sources. Data is licensed in aggregate, and
| typically anything under 1,000 user ids can't be used.
| Unless your bringing in data yourself, you can't build
| profiles on individuals.
|
| I 100% agree that we need major privacy regulation, but the
| first step in that is putting in effort to actually
| understand and discuss the facts.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| > Data is licensed in aggregate, and typically anything
| under 1,000 user ids can't be used.
|
| You are correct that the reputable companies I used in my
| strawman apply practices like this. But it is certainly
| not the case that this is universal. I've worked
| professionally with all sorts of a data brokers (for
| anti-abuse/fraud purposes) and there are many who deal
| with non-anonymized datasets, especially if we are
| talking about firms that evolved out the direct-marketing
| space. Further, there are many ways to make use of semi-
| anonymized data that while, not strictly joining private
| information, are able to perform profile appends and data
| imputation in ways that allow for inferences many would
| consider privacy violations regardless of the fact the
| technical construction methods don't directly access
| specific profiles and are at some level stochastic.
|
| But all that was besides my point, which was perhaps lost
| with a bad example. HN readers can be both FOR increased
| use of customer data for acute purposes and AGAINST
| broader abuses of such data without being hypocritical.
| There is a relevant distinction to be drawn.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Credit card providers most certainly sell your data. Data
| brokers have detailed profiles on _everyone_. They don 't
| anonymize anything when their whole business is selling
| names and addresses of hyper-specific demographics.
| zucker42 wrote:
| It's quite possibly different people arguing either side.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's definitely going to continue to be a thing.
|
| New technology adds new ways to protest and counter-protest. Cell
| phones have brought us mass-tracking and flash-mobs.
| soared wrote:
| Mobilewalla data 101: Mobilewalla is a next generation data
| company that employs big data, artificial intelligence, machine
| learning, and creativity to power the most granular consumer
| intelligence platform on the planet. Mobilewalla is the only
| consumer data provider employing time-based analysis of location
| and app usage. The leading provider of Nielsen-verified mobile
| audience insights, Mobilewalla's cutting-edge proprietary
| compression algorithm enables the storage, accessing, and
| analysis of 80 petabytes of data.
|
| Collection methodology: Mobilewalla harnesses location and
| behavior-based data to understand consumers and recognize where
| individuals are in their life journey based on two years of
| historical data. User information is collected from a variety of
| sources so advertisers can engage consumers who are ready to buy
| and develop compelling advertising campaigns that speak directly
| to their best customers.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > Datta [Mobilewalla CEO] said Mobilewalla didn't prepare the
| report for law enforcement or a public agency, but rather to
| satisfy its own employees' curiosity about what its vast trove of
| unregulated data could reveal about the demonstrators. Datta told
| BuzzFeed News that the company doesn't plan to include
| information about whether a person attended a protest to its
| clients, or to law enforcement agencies.
|
| > Mobilewalla does not collect the data itself, but rather buys
| it from a variety of sources, including advertisers, data
| brokers, and internet service providers.
| Blahah wrote:
| So really a whole load of different companies are tracking tons
| of people, and anyone can buy and aggregate the data, then
| query it for insights. It's good that they publicised it rather
| than capitalising on it.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| They also mentioned their disapproval of riots and that they
| were worried about 'outside agitators', so it reads very much
| as if they went looking for the data to support their theory.
| The notion of wicked 'outside agitators' has often been
| thrown out by politicians who don't want to engage with an
| issue; it's an old trope that was used to delegitimize the
| civil rights movement in the 1960s by blaming it on
| communists or the influence of Martin Luther King. He
| commented on the trope explicitly in one of his _Letters from
| Birmingham Jail_ :
|
| _Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all
| communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and
| not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice
| anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in
| an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment
| of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all
| indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the
| narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives
| inside the United States can never be considered an outsider
| anywhere within its bounds._
|
| Most recently, this was heard in Georgia following the death
| of Rayshard Brooks, and a subsequent riot in which a Wendy's
| restaurant was burnt down. A cry went up about 'outside
| agitators' and suspicion fell on a woman pictured at the
| scene; it turned out she was the late Mr Brooks' girlfriend.
| sambull wrote:
| If you expect a discount on your mcmuffin expect your data to
| be sold. That's the only reason store apps exist. To
| exfiltrate your data including tracking your movements.
| sukilot wrote:
| Mobilewalla literally exists for the primary purpose of
| capitalizing on that data.
| mc32 wrote:
| This almost mirrors OkCupid's dataviz articles they'd do for
| publicity.
|
| The data is aggregate data. It shows mostly males, in the 18-34
| age bracket, mostly white.
|
| The CEO whose surname is Datta. Quite appropos.
| giardini wrote:
| mc32 says> _" This almost mirrors ok Cupid's dataviz articles
| ... The data ... shows mostly males...mostly white."_
|
| No. MobileWalla's statement in the article:
|
| _" African American males made up the majority of protesters
| in the four observed cities vs. females," Mobilewalla
| claimed. "Men vs. women in Atlanta (61% vs. 39%), in Los
| Angeles (65% vs. 35%), in Minneapolis (54% vs. 46%) and in
| New York (59% vs. 41%). "_
| marci wrote:
| The wording + the way the article is layed out may blur the
| information.
|
| I think the source is a little bit clearer.
|
| https://www.mobilewalla.com/about/press/new-report-
| reveals-d...
| giardini wrote:
| I call BS. The link you supply
|
| https://www.mobilewalla.com/about/press/new-report-
| reveals-d...
|
| has no data and no clarification.
| marci wrote:
| I don't know what's up with their website. The link
| redirect to a page about covid-19 as of now
| (https://www.mobilewalla.com/blog/fighting-covid-19-with-
| loca...)
| giardini wrote:
| marci says>* marci 10 minutes ago | parent | on:
| Mobilewalla used cellphone data to estimate the de...
|
| I don't know what's up with their website. The link
| redirect to a page about covid-19 as of now
| (https://www.mobilewalla.com/blog/fighting-covid-19-with-
| loca...
|
| Same: no data and no clarification at that URL.
| mc32 wrote:
| Looks like the removed/moved the page; see: https://webca
| che.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pX1Cst...
|
| Bing cache: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=https%3a%2f
| %2fwww.mobilewa...
| giardini wrote:
| 404.
| mc32 wrote:
| No, that's a problem with their sentence construction.
|
| All it means is that among African American blacks, males
| were the majority.
|
| The key is:
|
| ""African American males made up the majority of protesters
| in the four observed cities _vs. females_ ,""
|
| vs. females (when looking at male-female distribution in
| the African American pop of protesters, in those four
| cities the majority were men).
| pinfisher wrote:
| "African American males made up the majority of
| protesters "
|
| This is very clear. No idea what you are talking about.
| michaelmior wrote:
| The full sentence you're quoting makes things a bit
| murkier to me: "African American males made up the
| majority of protesters in the four observed cities vs.
| females,"
| vmh1928 wrote:
| possibly more clear to say something like: "for African
| American protesters the majority, xx%, were males." If
| that's what they're trying to say.
| mc32 wrote:
| Then either their pie charts are wrong/mislabeled or
| their prose writing sucks. Compare the two.
| sukilot wrote:
| That's not how language works. You can't freely remove
| words from a sentence and assets that the meaning remains
| the same.
| marci wrote:
| Ethnicity Distribution:
|
| A substantial majority of the protesters were white, in
| the cities where the data was gathered, with the highest
| percentage in Minneapolis (85%), followed by Los Angeles
| (78%), and Atlanta and New York (both at 76%). A total of
| 18% of the protesters were African American in Atlanta,
| 11% in Minneapolis, 13% in New York and 3% in Los
| Angeles. Those numbers remained steady during the
| nighttime hours. Hispanic and Asian American
| participation was less than 10% in all four cities.
|
| https://www.mobilewalla.com/about/press/new-report-
| reveals-d...
| giardini wrote:
| Marc1 says>" _Ethnicity Distribution: A substantial
| majority of the protesters were white, in the cities
| where the data was gathered, with the highest percentage
| in Minneapolis (85%), followed by Los Angeles (78%), and
| Atlanta and New York (both at 76%). A total of 18% of the
| protesters were African American in Atlanta, 11% in
| Minneapolis, 13% in New York and 3% in Los Angeles. Those
| numbers remained steady during the nighttime hours.
| Hispanic and Asian American participation was less than
| 10% in all four cities._
|
| https://www.mobilewalla.com/about/press/new-report-
| reveals-d...
|
| Again, nothing you say here can be found at the URL you
| provided. In fact the words "male", "female" and even "%"
| do not exist at that URL.
| [deleted]
| mc32 wrote:
| They moved/removed the doc. Here's the link of the cached
| copy [ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=ca
| che:pX1Cst...] and text:
|
| >"Ethnicity Distribution: A substantial majority of the
| protesters were white, in the cities where the data was
| gathered, with the highest percentage in Minneapolis
| (85%), followed by Los Angeles (78%), and Atlanta and New
| York (both at 76%). A total of 18% of the protesters were
| African American in Atlanta, 11% in Minneapolis, 13% in
| New York and 3% in Los Angeles. Those numbers remained
| steady during the nighttime hours. Hispanic and Asian
| American participation was less than 10% in all four
| cities.
|
| Male vs. Female During the daytime hours, the majority of
| Black Lives Matter protesters were male in Atlanta (58%),
| Minneapolis (56%) and New York (62%). However, in Los
| Angeles, the greatest number of protesters during daytime
| were women. At nighttime, the percentage of male
| protesters increased in all four cities.
|
| African American Males vs. Females African American males
| made up the majority of protesters in the four observed
| cities vs. females. Men vs. women in Atlanta (61% vs.
| 39%), in Los Angeles (65% vs. 35%), in Minneapolis (54%
| vs. 46%) and in New York (59% vs. 41%). There was no
| statistical change for the nighttime hours.
|
| How Old Were the Protesters? The overall age of the
| protesters in all four cities skewed heavily in the 18-34
| age ranging from 66% in New York and L.A., 67% in
| Minneapolis to 69% in Atlanta. Protesters in the 55+ age
| group ranked second ranging from 24% in New York, 23% in
| Atlanta and Minneapolis to 20% in Los Angeles."
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| Reminder: OKCupid is owned by Match Group (also owns Tinder,
| Plenty of Fish, BlackPeopleMeet, OurTime, Twoo, match.com,
| and others), which sells their entire profile database
| (unredacted(!), with full names, sexual preferences,
| locations, and photos) to data brokers[1].
|
| Very few services are immune from this. I learned recently
| that Airbnb (YC W09) actually sells your chat logs[2] and
| stay history(!) to data brokers, which can be used for
| stalking or kidnapping in the wrong hands.
|
| Coinbase (YC S12) is also one of the companies that sells
| your activity log (including IP addresses and timestamps,
| which amounts to a location tracklog) to a third party
| without your explicit consent (other than creating a Coinbase
| account).
|
| 1: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59vbp5/shady-data-
| brokers...
|
| 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/business/secret-
| consumer-...
| sukilot wrote:
| Remember that YC prefers to fund "naughty" founders, to use
| their own term.
| Drdrdrq wrote:
| http://paulgraham.com/founders.html
|
| What We Look for in Founders
|
| 4. Naughtiness
|
| Though the most successful founders are usually good
| people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye.
| They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care
| about getting the big questions right, but not about
| observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word
| naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules,
| but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant
| though; it may be implied by imagination.
| mercer wrote:
| Jesus. I imagine getting the 'big questions' right is so
| vague as to remove any culpability from both YC and those
| it funds.
|
| I mean, if I had a friend who openly claimed to be
| 'naughty' in this way, I'd start being very cautious
| around them.
| gmantg wrote:
| YC is right, though. People who play by others rules
| rarely succeed. All these senior managers, vps, execs,
| business owners arent known for following the silly
| rules.
| bhntr3 wrote:
| > I learned recently that Airbnb (YC W09) actually sells
| your chat logs[2] and stay history(!) to data brokers,
| which can be used for stalking or kidnapping in the wrong
| hands.
|
| That's a pretty big misrepresentation of the NY Times
| article. From the article:
|
| > Sift doesn't sell or share any of the data it has with
| third parties.
|
| Sift is a third party risk analysis provider. One of its
| big selling points is that it can correlate fraud signals
| across multiple data sets. So, essentially, companies that
| DON'T want to share data with each other can share data
| with sift and rely on it to provide aggregate results back.
| In this way it's the opposite of a data broker. Companies
| trust it to hold sensitive data they don't want to share.
|
| There are a lot of reasons why any centralized fraud
| prevention service is concerning and I know that many
| companies, including Airbnb, limit their use of these
| signals for that reason. Truthfully, I think the dangers of
| such a service far outweigh their value and it simply
| shouldn't exist at all.
|
| Regardless, it's quite different than selling your data to
| a data broker. If there were any indication that Sift were
| selling or sharing this data I guarantee they would get
| dropped instantly. If you believe that a company can't
| really care about its users' privacy (and you might be
| justified in that) just consider that sharing this data
| would be the same as sharing it with the fraudsters it
| ostensibly tries to stop. That would defeat the entire
| point of the service.
|
| To a sibling poster, the premise of the NYT article is that
| Sift allowed end users to download their own data because
| of GDPR not in violation of it.
|
| There are often threads on here criticizing Airbnb for
| allowing fraud on the platform and saying they do nothing
| to prevent it. Here we're criticizing them for sharing data
| with a centralized fraud system to gain signal on potential
| fraud.
|
| I think this is the crux of the discussion about the
| surveillance state vs "defund the police". Algorithmic
| fraud detection is a frequently racist invasion of privacy.
| But fraud and crime are also both bad and tend to have a
| more significant impact on a company's brand / reputation
| than overreaching in terms of data collection and
| surveillance. So it's very important to hold them
| accountable for their use of data but let's not muddy the
| argument by misrepresenting what's happening.
| sneak wrote:
| How did Sift get it, if it wasn't disclosed by the second
| party in the first place?
|
| I don't want my booking site disclosing my location to
| others who may use it to harm me, full stop. I have no
| idea what internal controls, if any, Sift or any other
| service provider has in place to screen their own staff
| or their own data handling procedures for safety. Even
| Equifax didn't get this stuff right.
|
| If I am telling a vendor where I sleep and when I am
| sleeping there, it is a huge breach of my privacy and
| safety for them to tell third parties without my explicit
| consent. This includes even relatively innocuous stuff,
| like database hosting. One disgruntled employee and a
| .torrent file later and many people's lives or safety are
| put at risk.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Sounds like a GDPR fine waiting to happen.
| dreggie wrote:
| CCPA is really focused on sellers and aggregators of
| personal data, and this is a perfect example of why they
| need regulation.
| crobertsbmw wrote:
| That vice article is more interesting than the OPs one.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| I wonder if this is an example of nominative determinism[0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
| triceratops wrote:
| It's not an English surname though.
| mc32 wrote:
| That's true but they may have grown up with English or at
| least studied in university where English was spoken.
| fivre wrote:
| OKC's collection was from their own service that people had
| clearly signed up for and provided data too--even if they
| released those studies a ways in the past before people were
| as familiar with privacy concerns, it was at least a more
| direct relationship with the subjects.
|
| Some aggregator third-party add-on library integrated into
| other apps snarfing up data is a bit different and more
| concerning, though thankfully it's the specific sort of thing
| GDPR and CCPA were designed against.
| escape_goat wrote:
| The difference between a report and a publicity stunt is the
| detailed discussion of sampling and category inference
| methodology contained in a report.
| andai wrote:
| How was this data collected? They bought it, but how was it
| collected in the first place? Random apps with shady privacy
| policies?
| prostoalex wrote:
| There's a whole cottage industry of apps monetizing user
| location in bulk.
|
| They mainly position themselves as local deals apps (find the
| best restaurant, get a coupon from nearby store) and fitness
| apps (rewards for walking, running, etc.)
|
| Both use cases call for always-on location sharing.
| Sindrome wrote:
| Once I was approached by an ad company that wanted to use geo
| data gathered by Candy Crush that they purchased to target
| people with ads on their daily commute.
| supahfly_remix wrote:
| The reports showed ethnicity of the protestors. Is this inferred
| from ad preferences? Or, is there a database that keeps this?
| jleach82 wrote:
| It comes from many different places and is cross-correlated at
| many levels. From credit card purchase history to social media
| to phone location data, across multiple agents and brokers
| throughout the data market. See: Data Breaches, Crisis and
| Opportunity (ISBN 978-0-13-450678-4)
| supahfly_remix wrote:
| Thank you for the reference. I will look for it.
| akerro wrote:
| It's US so mobile providers, ISP very likely have such data
| from being voluntary provided by customers.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Are you implying that US ISP's ask the race of their
| customers? I've never been asked by AT&T, Comcast, Time
| Warner, Spectrum, or other ISPs I've used.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm not in the business but I'd guess that an ISP can
| determine with pretty high confidence your race, ethnicity,
| gender, approximate age and approximate income simply by
| analyzing your DNS requests. And they probably have a lot
| more data than DNS.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Agreed, but I wouldn't describe that as "being voluntary
| provided by customers."
| agakshat wrote:
| The report mentions ethnicity is inferred from browsing
| history, which they are also able to purchase from data
| brokers.
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| > "It's hard to tell you a specific reason as to why we did
| this," [Mobilewalla CEO Anindya] Datta said. "But over time, a
| bunch of us in the company were watching with curiosity and some
| degree of alarm as to what's going on." He defined those sources
| of alarm as what he called "antisocial behavior," including
| vandalism, looting, and actions like "breaking the glass of an
| Apple store." He added that they were attempting to test if
| protests were being driven by outside agitators.
|
| Probably not the best defense to be made when people are
| concerned that this technology is being used to suppress and
| monitor protestors...
| throwaway29639 wrote:
| The people breaking glass in an Apple store are violent
| criminals. Peaceful protestors exercising their first amendment
| right to assembly should applaud the ability to remove violent
| members from their ranks. Your pull quote describes a company
| concerned about criminals. The actions they are concerned with
| are not constitutionally protected.
|
| Probably not the best attack to lump together rioters and
| protestors. And I thought all the rioters at the protests were
| white supremacists trying to start shit anyway; don't you want
| to track them?
| burkaman wrote:
| Only speaking for myself, but no, I don't think tracking all
| citizens to determine which ones are white supremacists is a
| good idea.
| smitty1e wrote:
| This information is Checkov's Gun[1].
|
| Stipulate that the current crop of businesses and customers
| are ethical.
|
| There are zero (0) guarantees regarding what happens in the
| next act.
|
| So more thought is needed about the who/what/where/when/why
| about collecting data.
|
| The newest and shiniest technology is not automatically
| optimal in the long term.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun
| throwaway20394 wrote:
| Wow that's a complete misrepresentation of what I said, but
| the post was flagged so now nobody will ever know. I'm not
| going to repeat my original point, even though it was
| valid, on topic, and not abusive. HN censors absolutely
| everything that doesn't fall in line with the narrative.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > Probably not the best attack to lump together rioters and
| protestors. And I thought all the rioters at the protests
| were white supremacists trying to start shit anyway; don't
| you want to track them?
|
| What exactly are you going to do with information about who
| is starting the riots, turn it over to the police? Are they
| going to arrest the white supremacists who are more or less
| on their side in this debate?
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| > Are they going to arrest the white supremacists who are
| more or less on their side in this debate?
|
| Please don't talk out of your rear end. There are plenty of
| good cops out there: I know and have worked with a bunch.
| In fact, some of them go after white supremacists.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the site guidelines like this. It's
| against the rules, it helps nothing, and it detracts from
| your point. Your comment would be fine without the first
| sentence.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Not sure "defense" is a good characterization. Doesn't sound to
| me like they felt accused or guilty. Sounds like an
| explanation. They felt some amount of civic duty in publishing
| their findings, or they'd have kept this to themselves.
| giardini wrote:
| They're examining the data to determine how to market it.
| Just a normal internet business trying to get by and expand
| their market. This article is excellent advertising.
|
| Look on their web pages:
|
| " _Why Partner with Mobilewalla? Our partners are always
| looking for rich, comprehensive data and profiles to provide
| to their clients. Likewise, Mobilewalla is always looking to
| increase the quality of our data through partnerships with
| companies like Oracle Data Cloud.
|
| Mobilewalla provides brands from any vertical or industry
| with the insights and long-term needs to personalize, target,
| and scale their marketing initiatives - from basic
| demographics like gender, location, and device type, to
| highly nuanced and detailed profiles...Mobilewalla provides
| insights into customer behaviors as they exist in the real
| world, all based on mobile-app usage and location-based
| intelligence._"
| [deleted]
| colinprince wrote:
| "It is really just fundamentally terrifying" -from TFA.
|
| Yes, yes it is.
|
| Those handling data like this, from whatever source, need much
| tighter regulation, since they are unable to regulate themselves.
| [deleted]
| sitkack wrote:
| Much of this data comes from a company called
| https://www.airsage.com/
|
| The anonymization is a joke, they had fixed IDs over I think a 30
| day window.
|
| Airsage should be shut down and C-levels to the board should be
| jailed for wire tapping.
| austincheney wrote:
| I wonder if that data can be correlated against recent Covid
| spikes. The cities in Texas showing the most dramatic rise in
| diagnosis are also those that experienced the largest quantities
| of protests delayed exactly the same amount of time as the
| incubation period.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I rarely like to trot out the 'correlation is not causation'
| thing, but that's just what you'd expect given the large
| population. but it's not borne out in other places, eg Florida
| has not had massive protests but they are suffering from a big
| spike in coronavirus cases. And if we look at this stats page
| focusing on California down to the county level (but also
| including other state data), you can see that the rate of
| increase is not really well correlated with protest activity
| after all unless you cherry-pick the data .
|
| https://ca-covid-r.info/
| adamsea wrote:
| Occam's razor suggests un-wise decisions like re-opening bars
| in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic, and
| undermining currently-accepted best practices like having the
| general public wear masks, would be the first things one should
| consider in determining the cause of recent Covid spikes in
| Texas.
|
| Not saying protests couldn't / don't have an effect. Saying
| that if we want to determine the root cause of the dramatic
| rise of Covid-19 in Texas, let's be logical about it.
|
| [EDIT: Instead of calling Texas's decisions stupid, I changed
| my language to "un-wise", in the interests of precision.]
| ouid wrote:
| Unwise, but also unintelligent. Either stat would tell you
| this was a bad idea.
| ezrast wrote:
| This NBER study suggests that protests had, if anything, a
| slightly _favorable_ impact on infection rates:
| https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408
| DailyHN wrote:
| That doesn't explain Florida. The biggest days of protests
| nationwide were rained out in FL.
| notJim wrote:
| Minneapolis and Seattle testing related to the protestors has
| not shown a spike in cases [1,2,3].
|
| [1] https://www.twincities.com/2020/06/12/mn-coronavirus-
| george-...
|
| [2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/minnesota-sees-rise-
| covid-19-cases...
|
| [3] https://komonews.com/news/local/fewer-than-1-of-seattle-
| prot...
| danso wrote:
| That wouldn't explain the flat rates in NYC [0] or Minneapolis
| and St. Paul (Hennepin/Ramsey County) [1]
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-
| coronav...
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/minnesota-
| corona...
|
| edit: Also, Texas had a Phase 3 reopening on June 3, which is
| around the time of peak protest:
| https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-ph...
| dehrmann wrote:
| A few weeks ago, I remember Cuomo patting himself and New
| Yorkers on the back for continuing to see a decline in cases.
| It's a lot easier to do that when 20% of NYC residents have
| antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, and that was in May. I'm sure this
| limited spread during protests somewhat in NYC.
|
| That said, social distancing during protests, being outdoors,
| how many people had active infections (this varies wildly
| across the US), mask use, actions (positive and negative) by
| the police, and living situations of the protesters (alone in
| an apartment or four roommates) all have an effect.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Only in the presence of social distancing or other
| countermeasures.
|
| 20% antibodies means that you could have an R = 1.25 and
| still get an effective R < 1.0, preventing further onwards
| transmission. R0 estimates for COVID-19 ranged from 2.5-6,
| so by itself 20% of the population with antibodies wouldn't
| do anything (it'd reduce R to 2-4.8, which is still pretty
| quick exponential spread, faster than the flu). However, R
| in the U.S. around the time of the protests was measured at
| about 1.07, because it wasn't fully opened up yet and many
| people are staying home out of fear. Under those conditions
| NYC gets an effective R = 0.85 (epidemic dies out), while a
| state with 2% antibodies has an effective R = 1.05, which
| is still positive (albeit slow) exponential spread.
|
| I suspect it's a combination of the lax social distancing
| requirements + lack of immunity. NYC would still be
| experiencing exponential spread without existing immunity,
| but it's only because they're still locked down that the
| level of immunity they have can prevent an epidemic.
| [deleted]
| wavefunction wrote:
| As someone who lives in Texas, I'd point out that Texas
| "reopened" before the protests and I saw people with huge
| public gatherings and birthday and pool parties and no masks.
| not2b wrote:
| I was initially concerned about that. But it appears that
| protests didn't cause big spikes, or even detectable spikes,
| probably for two reasons: first, the protests were outdoors.
| Second, almost all the protesters wore masks. The recent super-
| spreader events have mainly been large indoor gatherings,
| parties and the like.
| yardie wrote:
| Doesn't explain New York where Covid is just a little over 100
| new cases/day. And there were, and still are, plenty of
| protests.
| plasticchris wrote:
| Maybe they achieved hard immunity? The spike there was much
| taller / narrower than elsewhere, leading to the ironic
| situation where the worst handling of the disease leads to
| great numbers once past the peak. Compare to CA where the
| curve was flattened and then leveled out - had we allowed
| exponential growth here we would also likely see fewer cases
| today.
| pkaye wrote:
| I used to look at the BLM protest videos to determine how
| many of them wore masks and a vast majority of them did in
| the videos I saw. Meanwhile those protesting the lockdowns
| and going to bars and beaches hardly did any.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Herd immunity for COVID-19 is 60-85% of the population.
| (The formula is 1 - 1 / R0; intuitively, the average person
| spreads the virus to R0 other people, so if only 1 / R0
| people are still susceptible, effective R = R0 * 1 / R0 = 1
| and the epidemic reaches a steady-state instead of
| growing.) NYC antibody tests have indicated about 20%
| immunity. They're still a long way away from herd immunity.
| sjg007 wrote:
| No they haven't.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Considering cell phone companies in the US already have this
| data have this data and have been anonymizing it for covid-19
| research, and considering public health officials are doing
| some degree of contact tracing, it's pretty strange how little
| information has been coming out about how and where most people
| have been getting it. Not just in the context of protests, even
| before that, it's been a huge hole in data released to the
| public.
| tzs wrote:
| It gives what percentage of the protestors were black in each
| city, 18% in Atlanta, 3% in Los Angeles, 11% in Minneapolis, and
| 14% in New York City.
|
| In all of those cities that's lower than the percentage of black
| people in the general population, so black people were
| underrepresented. But they were much more underrepresented in Los
| Angeles and Atlanta than in Minneapolis or New York.
|
| Here's a table. First column is percent among protestors. Second
| is percent among general population. Third is first column as a
| percent of second column. 18 52 35 Atlanta
| 3 11 27 Los Angeles 11 19 58 Minneapolis 14 24 58 New
| York City
|
| I.e., in New York and Minneapolis you had close to 60% as many
| black people as you would have expected if you just went by city
| demographics. In Atlanta it was only 35% and only 27% in Los
| Angeles.
|
| I wonder if there is some factor, especially in Los Angeles and
| Atlanta, that discouraged black people from wanting to attend or
| some hardship to attending that disproportionately fell on black
| people?
| throwAwayAcc88 wrote:
| Some sort of factor, that exists most strongly in large urban
| centers, that discourages black people from acting out of line?
|
| Perhaps, like, a racist police force?
| Forbo wrote:
| I don't know why this is being downvoted, I think it's a
| perfectly valid point. The entire basis of BLM protests is
| about use of police violence against black people. If I were
| black and think I'm more likely to get the shit beat out of
| me (pepper-balled, rubber bulleted, tear gassed, etc.) at a
| protest I'm more likely to avoid it entirely.
|
| Edit: On reflection, maybe the downvote was more about the
| tone that it was presented in?
| dsp wrote:
| Another possibility: the Mobilewalla data is bad.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Just like voting, attending protests is a privilege to those
| who can afford to not be working 24/7. Lower-income jobs don't
| even have the concept of "time off" or flexible schedules.
|
| Protests also have the risk of being wrongfully arrested or
| injured and not being able to get to work the next day.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| Interesting, but is it possible that it's bad data? What app
| gave them permission to have this data --- is it possible that
| the app's users are a similar demographic?
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Well, it could also be about the sort of data the company is
| collecting. Here in NYC there have been smaller protests in
| neighborhoods that are predominantly PoC, and this company may
| be only collecting data on the main large events.
|
| Also, for a place like LA, there are systemic factors of
| poverty and homelessness in their Black populations that might
| make something like ownership of a permanent mobile number less
| likely [1].
|
| Regardless, this practice of data harvesting should be illegal.
|
| [1]
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-13/column-a...
| bzb3 wrote:
| Or maybe they simply didn't agree with the premise of the
| protests.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Of the people I've talked to _in real life_ , most don't, so
| these numbers are not too surprising to me.
| dwiel wrote:
| It's also possible that people who felt most at risk were also
| most likely to turn off their phones or leave them at home.
|
| It's hard to know what kind of biases are in this data without
| access to it.
| teenbear wrote:
| You're assuming that their information is accurate which we
| have no real reason to do.
|
| From the article "It's unclear how accurate Mobilewalla's
| analysis actually is"
| godelski wrote:
| More specifically
|
| > Datta told BuzzFeed News that his company, on average, has
| access to location data for 30% to 60% of people in any given
| location in the United States.
|
| And getting down to it more: which 30-60% of people? I find
| it odd that when HN is talking about Covid they are so keen
| on finding the slightest bias in data/report and arguing over
| that, yet in posts like this most of the comments presume
| accuracy. I would expect the same scrutiny (which I think is
| good!) everywhere.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Not that I have an opinion about Mobilewalla's analysis but
| polling gets accurate results with far less than 30-60%
| sampling, so that, in and of itself, is not necessarily a
| problem.
| godelski wrote:
| > polling gets accurate results with far less than 30-60%
| sampling, so that, in and of itself, is not necessarily a
| problem.
|
| I'd like to refer you to the sentence after I quoted the
| article.
|
| >> And getting down to it more: which 30-60% of people?
|
| Polling works hard to ensure that their data set is a
| representative demographic. We don't know that here.
| Considering that there are socioeconomic correlations
| between race, it isn't out of the question that this data
| is not representative. You could have 60% but if your
| data set isn't representative, you aren't going to draw
| accurate conclusions.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Polling has random sampling. We don't know if
| Mobilewalla's sampling is truly random or not.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| And is there any bias inherent in that data along economic
| or racial lines? Given that black people are poorer on
| average in the US, any collection of data that's biased
| based on cell phone cost might incidentally pick up a
| racial bias too.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| Someone interviewed white people in New York about abolishing
| police and lots of them whole-heartedly agreed. They
| interviewed black people in New York about it, and they said it
| was insane to want to do that. That would fit these statistics.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It wouldn't explain the wide statistical variation between
| cities.
| DanHulton wrote:
| Link?
| zpallin wrote:
| Interesting, do you have a link?
| ghayes wrote:
| Not OP, but this Vox article has some interesting
| information about race disparities in viewpoints of police.
|
| [0] https://www.vox.com/2020/6/3/21276824/defund-police-
| divest-e...
| zpallin wrote:
| Nice. This is very interesting. I suppose it would be
| hard to make any assumptions about the reasoning here. At
| least Vox interprets this as black people "view
| inadequate protection and inadequate service levels as
| part of the larger pattern of mistreatment." That's
| entirely reasonable. If someone were to believe that the
| police institution itself is not racist, and it's just
| the individual cops who are the problem, then it's fair
| to come to the conclusion that more policing may solve
| the very real issue of crime in black communities.
|
| However, just like the author of the article, I agree
| that we would need to see a similar poll now after the
| George Floyd protests to see if the opinion still stands,
| but it's important to note.
| II2II wrote:
| > then it's fair to come to the conclusion that more
| policing may solve the very real issue of crime in black
| communities.
|
| It depends upon what more policing means. I have been
| keeping a closer eye on what's happening in Canada, and
| it seems clear that the police are not trained or do not
| internalize training to handle certain situations
| particularly well. In extreme cases, this has resulted in
| situations being escalated and deadly force being used.
| Given complaints ranging from excessive force to racial
| profiling, it sounds like problem routinely plays itself
| out on a smaller scale. If a community is reluctant to
| trust the police, I doubt that they will see benefits
| from more traditional policing.
|
| Some of the de-funding discussion has been about reducing
| police funding to allocate it to other social services,
| but I suppose that it could also be reallocated training
| officers who's primary purpose is community relations,
| responding to mental health issues, or handling criminal
| activity that is unlikely to require an armed response.
| This may make more sense than dumping responsibility onto
| social service agencies both due to the quality of
| training and the ability to immediately access police
| resources if escalation is inescapable.
| zpallin wrote:
| Agreed. To a lot of people, policing means "solve
| disruptions in society" but that's an oversimplistic and
| unrealistic idea of what police are trained to do and
| what is even possible with an institution that treats
| violence as a necessary means to do their job.
|
| And for the record, I am squarely in the defund camp, but
| also open minded to discussion.
| rayiner wrote:
| Here is a post-George Floyd poll: https://docs.cdn.yougov
| .com/86ijosd7cy/20200611_yahoo_race_p...
|
| A plurality of African Americans (38-31) oppose cutting
| police budgets. African Americans are split 50-50 in
| whether we need more or fewer police on the streets. A
| supermajority (64-33) believe that the current police
| departments can be reformed.
|
| A majority (51-17) support spending less on police and
| increasing funding for social programs, but try to
| reconcile this with the statistic above, where half want
| more police on the streets. (People might perceive this
| question as reduced budgets would hit management, etc.,
| rather than beat cops).
| zpallin wrote:
| Nice. However, since yougov experiences sample bias due
| to their data collection method being only online
| participants, and the sample size of black people isn't
| anywhere near even 5% margin of error (meaning it could
| be completely wrong) this study is not usable to draw
| conclusions on its own.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| The sampling bias would have to be very large to throw
| off those numbers with 140+ African American
| participants.
|
| Do you have a better poll that shows different numbers?
| zpallin wrote:
| I don't but that's not really my point -- the poll itself
| isn't a problem, it's the lack of multiple polls that
| cautions me to draw concrete conclusions from it as
| rayiner did. 140 people out of 30 million is about 10%
| margin of error. Add sample bias to that and this poll
| alone is nowhere near conclusive, although as I indicated
| it's still useful to reflect on the issue.
| sukilot wrote:
| Who is "someone"? How many people did they ask? What were the
| questions?
| foobarian wrote:
| Without the police would we have bands of marauding warlords
| tormenting the citizens that are much worse than the police?
| Maybe some people are less aware of what that would look
| like, and some are more aware. Especially when it comes to
| their families/loved ones.
| godelski wrote:
| From my understanding "abolish the police" means to
| reorganize it and greatly reduced the funding. For example in
| L.A. the police budget is about $3bn and the next biggest
| item is public works at $1.5bn. That's kinda a ridiculous
| amount. I saw a reddit post in /r/dataisbeautiful [0] that
| broke it down and showed some redistribution.
|
| But of course "abolish the police" means a lot of different
| things to different people. I'm sure there are people that
| want literally no police but I'm also sure they are a
| minority.
|
| That's kinda the problem we have today. We turn complex
| conversations and topics into their most extreme forms and so
| we can actually discuss them. And we presume the other person
| has an extreme view that opposes ours but we ourselves are
| smarter and now nuanced than the person we're "discussing"
| with. There's lots of examples. For example here we're
| discussing "should police exist" instead of "what should
| police be doing" and often people are even divided on the
| topic because "police stop bad guys" and "police are to serve
| the community and uphold the social contract."
|
| [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hflutt/
| rei...
| A_non_e-moose wrote:
| Language has to be precise for any nuanced conversation to
| be effective, otherwise it risks becoming rushed,
| oversimplistic and divisive. --- Abolish = to end an
| activity or custom officially
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/abolish
| ?...
|
| 1) "Abolish the police" = To end the police officially ---
| Defund = to stop providing the money to pay for something
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/defund?
| q...
|
| 2) "Defund the police" = To stop providing the money for
| police --- Reform = to make an improvement, especially by
| changing a person's behaviour or the structure of
| something.
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/reform?
| q...
|
| 3) "Reform the police" = To improve the police by changing
| its behavior/structure --- The meaning of these sentences
| is very clear and is not open to discussion.
|
| My opinion: 1) is simply anarchic and unrealistic in any
| form of civilization. 2) is similar to 1), but might
| suggested perhaps a privately funded police instead of
| publicly funded? (a whole can of worms there) 3) is the
| most realistic and practical option and seems to me to be
| what most people mean and what states are doing. It's not
| the most dramatic and "attractive" thing to write on a
| poster though...
|
| There are many more views and opinions of course, these are
| just my takes in 10m of writing and thinking.
|
| Regardless, attempts to make this into an oversimplified
| binarily sided discussion reveal, IMHO, a lack of reading
| and comprehension ability or an agenda that is alternative
| to understanding and resolving these issues as a
| collaborative democratic society.
| godelski wrote:
| > Language has to be precise for any nuanced conversation
| to be effective, otherwise it risks becoming rushed,
| oversimplistic and divisive. --- Abolish = to end an
| activity or custom officially
|
| But language __ISN'T__ precise and that's why we are
| required to understand one another in "good faith." I've
| said in many comments that communication has 3 parts:
| what is meant, what is said, and what is heard. Dr. Suss
| and Lewis Carol exemplify this in their literature.
|
| Not only that, but definitions of words are constantly
| changing. A dictionary always lags behind the true
| definition. After all, any linguist will tell you that
| words only mean what a society agrees that they mean
| (note the difference between "a society" vs "the speakers
| of that language"). We see this quite frequently. An
| perfect example is "capitalism" and "socialism," if
| you're go to is the dictionary then you're probably
| extremely frustrated with how most everyone uses these
| terms and will notice that different groups use the same
| words to mean completely different things!
|
| Language really is a mess.
|
| > Regardless, attempts to make this into an
| oversimplified binarily sided discussion reveal, IMHO, a
| lack of reading and comprehension ability or an agenda
| that is alternative to understanding and resolving these
| issues as a collaborative democratic society.
|
| This, I completely agree with. But the reason this is "a
| lack of reading and comprehension" is because
| "comprehension" is the acknowledgement that language is
| of itself imprecise and that your job as a reader is the
| read what was meant, and not what was said.
| serf wrote:
| >From my understanding "abolish the police" means to
| reorganize it and greatly reduced the funding.
|
| sort of just depends on who you ask.
|
| I have people within my social circle that want to
| literally abolish the police -- erase the concept entirely
| -- citing historical examples groups of people that had no
| such similar concept as a central policing group.
|
| Because of fringe opinions like that I tend to take care
| when I read or say things like "'X' means this", because
| that's the power of language, some folks _really do mean_
| abolish the police, while some simply use such language
| with a somewhat 'hyperbolic' or satirical meaning.
| nbardy wrote:
| Seconded, The power of language is incredibly important.
| "Defund the police", "Abolish the police", the many
| different ways it's being phrased are radical demands. If
| the people saying these things mean something else they
| should use another set of words. Because there are plenty
| of people in this movement who really want to tear things
| down.
| throwaway062620 wrote:
| Yep. When there's a New York Times OpEd titled "Yes, We
| Mean Literally Abolish the Police"[1] it seems inaccurate
| to tell people that this is simply a poorly worded slogan
| that really just means "reallocate funding."
|
| I get the impression that the minority of protesters who
| started using the slogan "Defund the Police" meant
| "Defund the police." But then there were a number of
| people who were sympathetic to these protesters but also
| realized that getting rid of the police is a very extreme
| position, and they started rationalizing things by saying
| that the protesters _really_ meant something else ("When
| people say "Defund the Police" what they actually man
| is..."). Even when the people themselves keep saying,
| "No, we really mean get rid of the police."
|
| [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
| abol...
| godelski wrote:
| But you can't make a sign that says "We want to radically
| change the duties of law enforcement but we aren't
| exactly sure what that should look like and need to start
| a national discussion so that we can move forward and fix
| what is clearly a problem."
|
| At least not a very good sign.
| ajzinsbwbs wrote:
| You could have a sign that said "fix the police", "reform
| the police", etc and it would more accurately describe
| your views than "abolish the police" (assuming you are
| indeed not a person who wants to abolish the police). And
| I'm sure you could come up with a lot of creative and
| compelling ways to say it. It's not possible to fully
| describe the subtlety of your views in a protest sign,
| but at least you can make a sign that'a compatible with
| your views.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with you. I think "fix the police" is
| a more accurate slogan. But slogans are intended to prime
| someone about an idea (not to convey!) and generate
| emotion. But trying to read any slogan as a literal
| meaning is simply naive. Slogans have to be smaller than
| a tweet and look at what a clusterfuck conversations on
| twitter are. Hell, even here where we can type hundreds
| of words it is difficult to accurately convey complex
| ideas.
|
| I said in another comment, communication has 3
| components: what is said, what was meant, and what was
| heard. We have to recognize that these are 3 different
| things and frequently all 3 are different. Communication
| is extremely difficult. So try to say what you mean and
| try to hear what was meant. (obviously this is a saying
| and in of itself is limited and should be taken more as a
| baseline idea rather than a literal and absolute point to
| stand on)
| triceratops wrote:
| "Defund police" isn't the same string value as "Abolish
| police". In your haste to demand correctness from others,
| you seem to be twisting words yourself.
| ajzinsbwbs wrote:
| The phrase "abolish the police" is used in the
| grandparent, great-grandparent, 4-parent, 5-parent, and
| 6-parent of my post.
| triceratops wrote:
| You're right, fair enough.
| triceratops wrote:
| I don't see it as a lot different than "Starve the
| beast"[1]. "Starve" means kill by removing nutrition or
| sustenance. But do we literally take it to mean "cancel
| the government by removing funding"?
|
| There's a difference between a slogan and a program.
| Somehow accuracy and correctness in slogans are only
| demanded when someone doesn't agree with the basic
| premise of the program.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
| DenisM wrote:
| Starve: ... transitive verb a: to
| kill with hunger b: to deprive of nourishment
| c: to cause to capitulate by or as if by depriving of
| nourishment
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/starve
| godelski wrote:
| I feel that this was missed so I'm reiterating.
|
| >> But of course "abolish the police" means a lot of
| different things to different people. I'm sure there are
| people that want literally no police but I'm also sure
| they are a minority.
|
| I'm under the opinion that you actually __AGREE__ with me
| considering
|
| > Because of fringe opinions like that
|
| If we presume "fringe" and "minority" hold similar
| meanings here.
|
| > that's the power of language, some folks really do mean
| abolish the police, while some simply use such language
| with a somewhat 'hyperbolic' or satirical meaning.
|
| This is what I'm driving at, except I want to change it
| up a bit
|
| > that's the power of language, _a few_ folks really do
| mean abolish the police, while _most_ simply use such
| language with a somewhat 'hyperbolic' or satirical
| meaning.
|
| We're discussing the power of language, so I think the
| distinction here is important. The fact that we're having
| this conversation was kinda my point. We're arguing over
| what people mean instead of arguing over what should be
| done. We're letting fringe/minority voices represent the
| majority opinions. This distracts us from the nuances and
| complicated discussions that we need to be having. I am
| claiming that the way these topics are being represented
| is itself a major issue, because of the power of
| language. We are being primed to view others opinions in
| ways that do not represent them. All that causes us to do
| is fight and never have the true discussion.
|
| You can always find someone that has "X" position. The
| problem is that when you represent group "Y" with
| position "X" when "Y" doesn't hold that position. It is a
| problem that we have to discuss this before we discuss
| what needs to be done. I personally am deeply frustrated
| by this.
|
| So I will ask: "What led to you responding to me in this
| way? What part was I unclear about?" Because to me it is
| clear, but given your response it is apparent that I
| wasn't.
|
| EDIT: To the downvoters, I am honestly trying to get
| feedback into how I can better convey the message. Would
| you mind also leaving a comment along with the downvote?
| That way I can understand?
| icelancer wrote:
| Abolition has a specific meaning in America. So when you
| use "Abolish" as the root word, people think you mean to
| completely ban it. If the conversation should have been
| around something else, "reduce police funding" is the same
| amount of words as "defund the police" or "abolish the
| police" and actually means what protestors say it means.
| Chathamization wrote:
| This a good example of misleading data. For instance, the
| school district budget doesn't appear because it's part of
| the budget for LA County not LA City. But If you look at
| it[1] and adjust per capita, you actually get almost twice
| the budget as the police. It also leaves out that a very
| large part of these budgets are pensions.
|
| But beyond that, I've always felt that the attitude of
| "this is a lot of money, therefore we should cut it" to be
| a poor way of approaching things. We should allocate funds
| based on whether or not the return we get is worth it, not
| based on whether or not the number we invest sounds big.
| Cutting specific things that are unnecessary or saving
| money by making things more efficient seem like a good
| idea, but cutting budgets just to say that you're cutting
| budgets doesn't.
|
| [1] https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity
| /Doma...
| godelski wrote:
| It's funny, because I actually agree with you
|
| > I've always felt that the attitude of "this is a lot of
| money, therefore we should cut it" to be a poor way of
| approaching things. We should allocate funds based on
| whether or not the return we get is worth it
|
| The difference is I think: "When we're scrutinizing
| budgets we should look at the largest ones first." Which
| would be a pretty logical way to investigate.
|
| So pretty much we're in agreement.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| Many people, including me, take simple English words rather
| literally. So the usage of "defund" is simply "prevent from
| continuing to receive funds". Thus, the entire movement is
| discredited in my mind as something insane.
|
| It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting
| language "less accurately". I'll continue to agree that we
| need change, but I'm still more happy than unhappy with the
| basic existence of law enforcement.
| triceratops wrote:
| > It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting
| language "less accurately".
|
| Do you feel the same way about "Starve the beast"?[1]
| Surely you understand the difference between a slogan and
| a program?
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Many people, including me, take simple English words
| rather literally....
|
| > It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting
| language "less accurately".
|
| But, in this case, the literal interpretation is the
| "less accurate" one. Literal != accurate.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| While I agree that "defund the police" is a bad slogan,
| no fluent speaker of any language takes words and phrases
| literally. Human communication is chock full of idioms,
| allusions, allegories, and a number of other rhetorical
| devices that depend on a non-literal interpretation of
| words. It's highly unrealistic for you to declare that
| you "take simple English words rather literally", as
| that's not how natural languages work.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a thing I constantly tell people. Communication
| often has three components: 1) What you mean to say, 2)
| What you say, 3) What was heard. As a communicator you
| should try to ensure that what you say and what you mean
| are the same. All the while you have to keep in mind your
| audience to ensure what was heard was what was intended.
| At the same time, as a listener your job is to try to
| understand the meaning and not what was said. Getting the
| intent is much harder and requires one to be aware of the
| limitations of language and communication as well as your
| own internal biases and often the biases of the one
| communicating (what assumptions are they operating
| under).
|
| Additionally, analogies, slogans, sayings, and such are
| all simplified and reduced methods intended to prime a
| person to remember or think of a more complicated topic.
| Here "defund/abolish the police" is an easy to
| remember/say slogan (and can be easily written down and
| read from afar). It is much harder to communicate "we
| need to rethink policing in general, their funding, and
| what they should be doing. Currently we do not know the
| answer but are trying to drive a national discussion so
| that we can come to an agreement and fix what a large
| portion of us believe is a problem." The latter is much
| more vague and is trying to bring together people with
| wildly different opinions but do agree with that main
| point.
|
| Reading __ANY__ slogan as an absolute and/or literal
| meaning is simply naive. It's hard enough to communicate
| accurately with the roughly 300 words in this comment,
| let alone slogans, which need to be smaller than a tweet.
| rbecker wrote:
| "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a
| scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--
| neither more nor less."
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That's a straw man.
|
| I never claimed that anyone can make up their own
| definitions, only that setting the bar at "literal
| meaning" is unrealistic, as that's not how language
| actually works.
|
| See: catching a bus by the skin of your teeth so that you
| and your friends can have a night out and paint the town
| red.
|
| Chances are you understood exactly what I meant, but
| taken literally that sentence is utter jibberish.
| rbecker wrote:
| But "abolish the police" _isn 't_ jibberish, and _is_
| what some people actually, literally, mean. So how can I
| tell?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| How can you tell what's an idiom, and what isn't? Context
| clues. Do the same thing here.
|
| Or, actually listen to people. Your call.
| rbecker wrote:
| So when I see someone on TV holding an "abolish the
| police" banner, which context clues should I use to
| figure out what they _really_ mean?
|
| The slogan makes many people think you're advocating an
| unreasonable idea that you're not actually advocating. Do
| you think that makes for a good slogan?
|
| Edit: I apologize. I missed where you said it's a bad
| slogan, and took your defense of it as implying it's
| good.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I've made it clear I think it's a bad slogan, why are you
| insisting on the contrary?
| ardy42 wrote:
| > So when I see someone on TV holding an "abolish the
| police" banner, which context clues should I use to
| figure out what they really mean?
|
| The same ones you use to understand what the word
| "police" means. Human language isn't a direct, thought
| transmission mechanism (especially with short
| utterances). Ambiguity and uncertainty and reliance on
| _shared_ context are inherent. The artificial language
| Toki Pona gives an exaggerated demonstration of this [1].
|
| > The slogan makes many people think you're advocating an
| unreasonable idea that you're not actually advocating. Do
| you think that makes for a good slogan?
|
| No one can ever cram the nuance of a complex political
| position onto a slogan to fit on a sign, inevitably
| you'll have to misunderstand to some degree, then go read
| one of the hundreds of articles titled "what does 'defund
| the police' mean?" to correct your misunderstanding.
|
| If you're searching for some optimal slogan, you're not
| going to find it. Sure there are alternatives, but a
| couple things count in "defund the police"'s favor: 1) it
| succinctly indicates the topic and 2) pretty clearly
| conveys the opinion that a radical break with prior
| reform efforts is needed.
|
| [1] https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/tokipona
| [deleted]
| godelski wrote:
| > So how can I tell?
|
| In communication as the recipient your job is to try to
| understand what is _meant_ , not what is said.
|
| Conversely, as the communicator, your job is to say what
| you mean, and ensure what is said is in line with what is
| meant. The added complexity is that to do this you need
| to have a decent grasp on what recipients will hear (as
| in "understand intent," as opposed to the literal words
| that they physically hear)
| chooseaname wrote:
| I think very few people want to get rid of the police. I
| think people are tired of the militarized police. They
| don't need MRAPS. They don't need to show up at a domestic
| call with full body armor and assault rifles. We need to
| end programs like 1033 that gave them access to military
| equipment. End no-knock warrants. Things like that.
| gwern wrote:
| > From my understanding "abolish the police" means to
| reorganize it and greatly reduced the funding.
|
| "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police"
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
| abol...
| godelski wrote:
| Can you clarify how this contradicts my comment? I am at
| a loss in how this shows me wrong. Or maybe I'm
| misunderstanding the intent of your reply.
| secondcoming wrote:
| > We turn complex conversations and topics into their most
| extreme forms and so we can actually discuss them
|
| As an outsider watching all this going on, it seems the
| last thing anyone seems to want is a discussion; you're
| either on board or a racist. It's all very odd.
| godelski wrote:
| As an insider it is quite frustrating. The discussions
| seem to be just polarized to ends that are both
| ridiculous. "No police vs police should be more violent."
| "Open borders vs deport everyone and build a wall." Etc.
| The vast majority of people don't hold the positions on
| the extremes, but we talk like they are the
| representative voice. And look even at these comments. I
| said "These people are not the representative voice" and
| people are responding "But I know people that believe
| this! They aren't the majority, but they exist!" How is
| that the top response to my comment?! The comment is
| ironically the problem I'm specifically addressing. But I
| don't know what is unclear and how to tackle this.
| Feedback needed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > From my understanding "abolish the police" means to
| reorganize it and greatly reduced the funding.
|
| No, it means abolish the police (the centralized,
| monolithic, paramilitary local law enforcement agencies.)
|
| It also means to reorganize the law enforcement function
| within local government, and probably reduce the
| distribution of resources devoted to armed law enforcement.
| But just reorganize/reduce funding is the "defund" not
| "abolish" position, which are related but distinct
| viewpoints.
| m0zg wrote:
| And therein lies the main problem with all of this "abolish
| the police" bullshit. It's driven mainly by upper middle
| class whites who live in low crime areas and rarely if ever
| need police, and think everyone is the same way. Watch the
| protest videos carefully - there are hardly any black people
| there in a lot of cases. In fact last night I counted more
| high end bicycles in a protest video than black people. It's
| a common occurrence nowadays to see a self-righteous 20 year
| old trust fund kid "educate" a black police officer on how to
| be black. This is utterly idiotic.
|
| I interacted with the police exactly 3 times in 20 years I
| lived in my neighborhood. Once I got a ticket for the missing
| front license plate on my car (deservedly so, paid the fine).
| Once my mailbox was broken into, and a police officer stopped
| by to ask questions and see if I'd press charges if they
| found the thief (of course I would, but they never found the
| guy), and once I had to call police on a neighbor who thought
| it'd be a wonderful idea to blast music at full volume at 2AM
| in the middle of the work week. That's the extent of it.
| There's no crime in my neighborhood, violent or otherwise, by
| any meaningful metric. If I thought all neighborhoods were
| like this, of course I'd be in favor of simultaneously
| defunding police and abolishing the second amendment.
|
| Having seen total lawlessness first hand during the "wild
| 90's" in Russia, I don't have such illusions. I once saw a
| dude on his knees with a gun pointed at his forehead within
| 200m of the Red Square, with police officers watching but not
| intervening in the proceedings, probably because the mobster
| with the gun was above their pay grade. Don't know if the guy
| got shot or not, I couldn't do anything anyway, so I entered
| the nearby subway station and went home, but the image seared
| into my mind. Remember, this was in the very center of a
| large city. You can imagine what kinds of crazy shit went on
| on the outskirts.
|
| People in South Chicago or in the bad parts of NY have no
| such illusions either. That's why I support _gradual_ police
| reform and increased funding (you can't, as a rule, get
| better service by paying less), have a safe full of guns and
| ammo, and will vote strenuously against any politician,
| irrespective of party affiliation or just about any other
| views, who tries to "defund" the police or restrict 2A. I
| fail to see how such measures would be in anyone's longer
| term interest.
| narrator wrote:
| Black people are victims of crime that is perpetrated by
| people who are not police officers.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| This (and much worse) has been happening for decades. "Don't take
| your cell phone" is pretty much rule #1 of going to protests.
|
| I don't even go to protests, but this is in the news all the
| time. E.g. the surveillance tactics the government used to break
| up the Dakota Access Pipeline protests was a major news story
| around the entire world.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| your cell phone is your camera though, which can be a very
| powerful accountability tool. Is there a reason that it
| wouldn't be better to go into airplane mode, disable wifi and
| bluetooth?
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| Don't forget the locations services
| _jal wrote:
| Confiscation/search is still an issue.
|
| As far as the camera, the country is awash in old cell
| phones. If your goal is documentation (as opposed to
| immediate Twitter posts), it is far better than using the one
| with a phone number.
| snazz wrote:
| Have there been recorded cases of police forcing people to
| unlock encrypted phones of protesters in the US? I would
| feel pretty safe with my iPhone in airplane mode (with all
| the radios off).
| _jal wrote:
| I don't know of any cases specifically from protests. And
| this time most of the cop riots seemed far more focused
| on cracking skulls than surveillance - it seemed more
| about defending their egos against status attacks than
| more carefully planned oppression.
|
| But there have been many cases of cops forcing or
| attempting to force phone unlocks, and more where they
| coerce unlocking by lying about the law. Which is
| perfectly legal - the cliche about cops being being paid
| to lie is perfectly accurate, if not a full explication
| of their duties.
|
| Feelings of safety are pretty individual. Apps that
| access personal data of importance don't live on my phone
| that leaves the house.
| Icathian wrote:
| I feel like a $25 digital camera would be a better bet for
| several reasons.
| antpls wrote:
| The camera can be lost or break. With a phone you can live
| stream to the internet, and everything will be remotely
| recorded no matter what happens on the site (unless lose of
| internet connection), and no matter what police do to your
| phone
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > Is there a reason that it wouldn't be better to go into
| airplane mode, disable wifi and bluetooth?
|
| If that worked then presumably Snowden would just do that
| instead of turning his phone off, taking out the battery, and
| putting it in the refrigerator.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| That _does_ work, unless you 're someone like Snowden, who
| is targeted by the strong surveillance apparatus.
|
| Do you believe >300M Americans already have malware on
| their phones which runs when they hit Airplane mode, and
| tricks them in to believing all radios are off, when it is
| in fact still pinging NSA servers with telemetry data?
|
| I don't. Such technology surely exists, but it is not
| massively deployed, because doing so would spoil its
| usefulness. Basically, "We're not _that_ important. "
| nexuist wrote:
| At WWDC Apple revealed that their "Car Keys" feature
| would work 5 hours after the phone has died, so you don't
| lose the ability to access your car.
|
| They didn't announce new hardware that could do this.
| It's available in every new iPhone. This is proof that
| this capability (to run software even when the phone is
| "off") has been around at least for a number of years.
| It's not a huge leap to imagine that some malware could
| rewrite the firmware and enable e.g. microphone listening
| when the phone is off.
| yters wrote:
| So mostly young white males trashing black neighborhoods? Who is
| exploiting who again?
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Be careful, some of these young white middle class people
| trashing neighborhoods could be the next Che, Lenin or Pol
| Pott.
|
| Agitation is the first stage of a physical revolution.
|
| No, I'm not being hyperbolic... history repeats itself
| aszantu wrote:
| I remember that there was some protest survival guide, and it
| mentioned to either leave the smartphone at home, or bring a dumb
| phone w/o contract, so you can at least call an ambulance if need
| be.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| Why would you need to hide having participated in a protest? It
| is an act which is protected by _the First_ Amendment in the US
| Constitution.
| llampx wrote:
| The reality is that you night be illegally targeted and
| profiled based on data that is freely accessible. Robbery is
| illegal, yet it still makes sense to avoid behavior that can
| get you robbed.
| andonisus wrote:
| To what end is the targeting and profiling illegal? Simply
| having publicly-available analyzed is not illegal.
| r00fus wrote:
| It's not illegal (though unethical imho), it's the
| actions taken using that knowledge. Most effective if
| combined with parallel construction [1] that allow police
| to issue a trumped-up charge on a specific target.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| function_seven wrote:
| > _It is an act which is protected by the_ First Amendment
| _in the US Constitution._
|
| Which is just a piece of paper. It has absolutely no power to
| protect you. Only a government that respects it can do that,
| and it's a certainty that our government will, from time to
| time, completely disregard that document when it feels the
| need to.
|
| People have good rational reasons for hiding all sorts of
| legal activities they participate in.
| bosswipe wrote:
| During Occupy I remember cops targeted a protester that had
| driven in on a company vehicle and told the company to get
| him fired.
| sukilot wrote:
| Because law enforcement and the justicr system do not
| strictly obey the Constitution.
|
| To put it another way: you can't rely on the Constitution to
| protect you during a _protest against violations of the
| Constitution_.
| mtgp1000 wrote:
| Imagine attending a left leaning protest, having your
| participation recorded (unknowingly) forever by your phone,
| and then having a right wing, authoritarian government come
| to power and use that forever information to round up
| yourself and your friends.
|
| Or imagine a left wing authoritarian government targeting
| lockdown protestors.
|
| We should all be concerned about wanton data collection.
| AlphaGeekZulu wrote:
| Exactly! Never bring a smartphone to a protest and keep the
| dumb phone shut off, except if an emergency qualifies
| otherwise.
|
| There are hundreds of reasons for not bringing a smartphone,
| not only the abuse of companies like Mobilewalla. Imagine if
| you happen to be close to a storefront that is vandalized or a
| statue that is brought down - cellphone data will make you a
| terrorist suspect! (At least in the current US).
| whoopdedo wrote:
| More specifically, this undermines the stated justification
| for Mobilewalla's report. Which was to determine the amount
| of protestors who came from outside the cities they appeared
| in. If I'm the operator of a protests-as-a-service company
| the first thing I do is make sure none of the people have a
| cell phone that can be used to trace them back to me.
|
| But that was the stated justification. The real purpose of
| the report is to advertise what Mobilewalla does. I consider
| this a form of profiteering.
| sukilot wrote:
| If you assume that everyone has perfect Opsec, then there
| is now need for law enforcement at all, because all crime
| would be undetectable.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| This is going to be skewed by the fact that not all people - and
| certainly not all protestors - carry cell phones. It also
| wouldn't be terribly surprising if the rate at which they do so
| varies by race, income, etc.
| paulcarroty wrote:
| China does it for decades.
|
| Every any kind of activist should know online privacy 101 and use
| burner phone/sim.
| gojomo wrote:
| While the demographics, techniques, & reaction are all
| interesting, there's no support in the article text for
| Buzzfeed's headline claim of "almost 17k protestors had no idea a
| tech company was tracing their location". For example, there's no
| survey of the involved mobile users - or even a quote from a
| present individual! - to ask or otherwise confirm how many had
| 'no idea' of such tracking.
|
| While often people are surprised at the tracking that's happened,
| usually as a result of 'fine print' they've clicked-through at
| some point, this is a young, activist & heavy-mobile-using
| population. Many will know or suspect tracking is happening. The
| more privacy-oriented organizers often inform participants of
| such considerations.
|
| Those affected have probably consciously enabled many kinds of
| 'location sharing' options & location-sensitive apps - and then
| specifically used those features to share updates/photos, with
| explicit location disclosure, from the protest site. Many may
| have a generationally blase attitude about the inevitability of
| such tracking.
|
| Some may even be happy that "I'm being counted". There's always
| controversy after mass actions as to the actual number of
| participants, or how many truly represent a certain local
| community, with biased estimates from those with agendas. A
| possible silver-lining of technological tracking, if the
| potential abuse for persecuting individuals can be prevented, is
| that it can turn mass actions into more-accurately-measured
| "super-petitions", reflecting both viewpoint & intensity-of-
| commitment, for change.
| kome wrote:
| btw, it is common (in france) for the police to use "scanners" to
| grab all the phone numbers of protesters.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Also here - read up on 'IMSI catchers'.
| coronadisaster wrote:
| We need a non-profit company (or something) that will purchase
| all location data from cellphone companies, all purchase
| histories from credit card companies, etc and post it online for
| everyone to see... maybe that would wake up some people.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Does anyone know more specifically how a company like Mobilewalla
| gets location data? Is it from Google, or from apps people open
| on their phone, or from trackers on websites, or from cell data,
| or from something else?
|
| Also, is there any way to prevent Google from tracking the
| location of my Android phone short of uninstalling Android?
| [deleted]
| jleach82 wrote:
| The data is all over. It goes through brokers and agents and
| multiple companies that perform various aggregations and
| shapings... Data Breaches, Crisis and Opportunity (ISBN
| 978-0-13-450678-4)
| julesallen wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/14/how-to-tu...
|
| Basically use somebody else's maps, at the extreme end you can
| opt out of find my phone, and just don't manually use any
| Google services at all.
| spyder wrote:
| "T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their
| customers' location data..."
|
| https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hu...
| agakshat wrote:
| Very often, it's the phone networks which are selling our
| location data to these brokers. There is virtually no
| regulation on this, and for phone companies it's basically free
| money.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Does the ethnicity data also come from phone companies?
| agakshat wrote:
| I hope not, but I expect that with a few days of browsing
| history it's trivial to predict ethnicity.
| rhizome wrote:
| Probably easier to get it via match.com and their
| subsidiaries.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| It's unlikely this information is coming from Google or Apple
| directly. There are a ton of ad supported apps out there which
| collect location data and feed location data (and piles of
| other metrics) back to the advertising companies who sell the
| data to data brokers and use it for advertising.
|
| > Also, is there any way to prevent Google from tracking the
| location of my Android phone short of uninstalling Android?
|
| Good question.
| surround wrote:
| Cell service companies track your location based on signal
| strength, and are known for selling this data to as many third
| parties as possible. There is no way to stop them from tracking
| your phone location, short of removing your SIM card.
| zucker42 wrote:
| > There is no way to stop them from tracking your phone
| location
|
| Is airplane mode or turning your phone off effective? I've
| heard stated before that they are not, but I don't understand
| the technical details.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Even if the individual is privacy focused, careful with the apps
| on their smartphone, if the cellular service provider pimps out
| the telemetry there's little one could do to protect the privacy.
|
| One of the reasons to have 'Non cellular network mobile
| Internet'[1] via long range hotspots where we could use standard
| techniques we use to protect ourselves from the ISP.
|
| [1]https://needgap.com/problems/51-non-cellular-network-
| mobile-...
| centimeter wrote:
| The best technical option here is to allow for dynamic payment
| for cellular services (via privacy-preserving payment protocols
| like Lightning) and no fixed hardware identifiers like IMEI.
| You just randomize your IMEI/MAC/whatever every time you
| connect to a new provider. Many of the challenges here are that
| wireless regulators outlaw such privacy-protecting measures.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| How is 'dynamic payment for cellular services' the best
| technical option than ditching SIM altogether for WiFi and
| using encrypted apps for voice calls? More over, no handset
| level changes or changes to govt. policy is required, user
| can choose to not have a cellular provider(Parent link has
| couple of companies doing that in India).
| centimeter wrote:
| Range outside of hyperdense urban centers.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Not to wear a tinfoil hat, but couldn't this data be entirely
| made up?
|
| It also seems to imply that the data is 100% accurate. And that
| is also wrong based on what I see.
| sukilot wrote:
| Sure. Any researcher could be lying.
| jordache wrote:
| as long as the data is stripped of PII. I don't care..
|
| what's the harm?
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