The question is, is it legal for you to collect everyone's emissions automatically, process them, derive conclusions from them and sell them to third parties?
The assumption that "if doing 1x of something is okay, then surely so is doing 10000x of it fully automatically" has gone unchallenged for too long. We can see the societal implications this has had so far, and it's fully logically consistent to be able to say no to that. Just because I can see you out on the street, broadcasting your visual appearance for the whole world, doesn't mean I should be allowed to record you, analyze your appearance, retain recordings of you forever, automatically track you across the places that many cameras spotted you at and then resell that data to advertising and tech corporations.
Small-scale individual recording is okay. Automated mass recording and processing without an extremely convincing reason and thorough limitations and checks should not be.
"Solve this problem perfectly right now with no edge cases whatsoever, or it's not even worth discussing." The go-to mantra for opposing any complex proposed change. You know, lots of issues in society can't be solved perfectly or on the first try, should we do nothing about those too?
There are laws based on ambiguity and discretion, you know. Those seem to work. How about we get anything in place and iron out the kinks later instead of resigning on step one? Making the idea of retaining irrelevant private data even slightly toxic to businesses will already have a chilling effect where your parking app or grocery store will think twice before stuffing every corner of their hard drives with terabytes of surveillance data.
And discretion, tests, broad adjectives - that's just the last resort of the legal system. I think that the terms can be defined much more concretely in reality by someone who knows more than me about law. Ask 100 anti-surveillance advocates to choose examples of surveillance from a list and I guarantee that most of them will agree on most answers. Do you believe there's a limitation of reality that prevents the drafting of a law that encompasses at least 90% of the points that people are able to agree on? Can we not distill the actions that make them think 'this is surveillance, but this isn't' into a list of rules?
> Solve this problem perfectly right now with no edge cases whatsoever,
This issue is more like "solve this problem without violating the First Amendment." The United States is not a European regulatory nanny state, despite many left-leaning attempts to make it that way. You seem to be advocating "we have to do something! - something must be better than nothing! Perfect is the enemy of good!" - this is a classic "progressive" ratchet used to slowly abridge freedoms since the founding of this nation.
We can certainly pass laws to prevent the government from using this data - no question, case law might also emerge with this effect. However: preventing the private collection of this information is without question prior restraint and therefore unconstitutional.
"1x vs 1000x" - How many newspapers am I allowed to publish? Can I now not have CCTV at my business because of your regulatory regime?
In my opinion it should be unlawful for anyone to receive, store, or process a user’s “emissions” for any purpose that a reasonable user would not anticipate and consent to.
For example, misusing bluetooth or wifi pairing broadcasts from a client to track the client or build any type of advertising profile.
Sad, isn’t it? I saw this coming many years ago, as I’m sure many of you did. We create so much metadata in our lives, both physically and digitally evident, that our past and future behaviors can be observed at a level of detail only previously imagined in dystopian fiction.
We learned about the government’s domestic surveillance programs from Snowden over 13 years ago.
About ten years ago, I learned about fiber optic and WiFi sensing techniques that would make the hair stand up on the back of most people’s necks.
14 years ago, stories were written about a pregnant teen whose parents were sent coupons from Target for baby items, because Target had automatically marked the girl as pregnant because of her shopping habits.
Computers, vehicles, and software that we pay for have so many built in tracking mechanisms that I think circumventing them would make you more of a surveillance target at this point than not.
I know people try to rationalize the whole “I said something near my phone and Facebook gave me ad impressions for it” as simply the algorithm finding a strong signal in your browsing data, but I’m fully convinced that Meta apps are listening on iOS, even with the screen locked.
Those who enable these sorts of things should feel shame. You’d have to be a complete asshole to do this stuff to fellow humans just for money.
Friendly reminder many manufactured goods also have RFID stickers within, used to track/trace parts during factory assembly. These are active and readable at all times by systems like this - irrespective of if the devices are powered.
Are passive RFID tags actually trackable for these purposes? That's horrifying. But I thought they would only be readable from at most a meter, maybe several with sensitive equipment - far too short of a range, no?
I turned on the RFID scanner and did a leisurely stroll through a local Walmart Supercenter.
I read nearly 6200 unique tags over 39,000 times in the span of a ~20 minute walk in the store. Every single tag has a unique serial number and a unique serialized EPC GTIN.
RFID/EPC enabled merchandise is going to be a huge trackpoint for passive RFID scanning moving forward. Walmart attempted this back in the early 2010s (and failed because it cost so much) and now that tags are pennies a tag, they can finally force suppliers to roll it out (starting with apparel, then hardlines over time).
ha my shoes have RFid tags for stock tracking, I wonder how far away that can be read
even most watches people have now broadcast bluetooth MAC (and maybe ANT+ id)
and that data is never ever going away, there's no warrant and no law to regulate it
they still have tracking data for everyone who visited Epstein Island decades ago (which is even more crazy that no-one was prosecuted out of hundreds)
"Right equipment" is probably very load bearing. Wouls need a very high gain directional antenna, not sure if a camera next to the road has the space to pick this up from a moving car.
Long distance RFID readers are currently used mostly for warehouse inventory tracking. Nowadays you can steer antennas using phased arrays like they use in 5G.
we have reached the point where now at any point in the future they can trace anyone backwards for months without a warrant (and without probable cause)
they can pick a person and then just look for a crime to prosecute since most people break laws daily without realizing it
Nah, they won't prosecute for a crime. People accused of crimes have these pesky things called rights.
They'll find some civil infraction to threaten you with. You'll be cast into a kangaroo system where the deck is stacked against you, you have no presumption of innocence, no right to not self incriminate, you have nearly no right to see let alone question the evidince against you. And of course the civil infraction will have some absurd dollar figure attached thanks to all the useful idiots who think that the fine "needs to be a deterrent".
there were bluetooth recievers placed in road beds when tire pressure sensors started useing bluetooth, 20? years ago?
local garage does not even ask before ripping them out and replacing with conventional valve stems.
Malls and stores have done this for a decade and then some, from devices on you.
wow. is it legal to capture and process such data?
So the question is, is it legal for me to receive radio emissions that your device freely emits?
The question is, is it legal for you to collect everyone's emissions automatically, process them, derive conclusions from them and sell them to third parties?
The assumption that "if doing 1x of something is okay, then surely so is doing 10000x of it fully automatically" has gone unchallenged for too long. We can see the societal implications this has had so far, and it's fully logically consistent to be able to say no to that. Just because I can see you out on the street, broadcasting your visual appearance for the whole world, doesn't mean I should be allowed to record you, analyze your appearance, retain recordings of you forever, automatically track you across the places that many cameras spotted you at and then resell that data to advertising and tech corporations.
Small-scale individual recording is okay. Automated mass recording and processing without an extremely convincing reason and thorough limitations and checks should not be.
As an exercise, write the statute that you think would prevent this behavior. Then, let's poke holes in it.
"Solve this problem perfectly right now with no edge cases whatsoever, or it's not even worth discussing." The go-to mantra for opposing any complex proposed change. You know, lots of issues in society can't be solved perfectly or on the first try, should we do nothing about those too?
There are laws based on ambiguity and discretion, you know. Those seem to work. How about we get anything in place and iron out the kinks later instead of resigning on step one? Making the idea of retaining irrelevant private data even slightly toxic to businesses will already have a chilling effect where your parking app or grocery store will think twice before stuffing every corner of their hard drives with terabytes of surveillance data.
And discretion, tests, broad adjectives - that's just the last resort of the legal system. I think that the terms can be defined much more concretely in reality by someone who knows more than me about law. Ask 100 anti-surveillance advocates to choose examples of surveillance from a list and I guarantee that most of them will agree on most answers. Do you believe there's a limitation of reality that prevents the drafting of a law that encompasses at least 90% of the points that people are able to agree on? Can we not distill the actions that make them think 'this is surveillance, but this isn't' into a list of rules?
> Solve this problem perfectly right now with no edge cases whatsoever,
This issue is more like "solve this problem without violating the First Amendment." The United States is not a European regulatory nanny state, despite many left-leaning attempts to make it that way. You seem to be advocating "we have to do something! - something must be better than nothing! Perfect is the enemy of good!" - this is a classic "progressive" ratchet used to slowly abridge freedoms since the founding of this nation.
We can certainly pass laws to prevent the government from using this data - no question, case law might also emerge with this effect. However: preventing the private collection of this information is without question prior restraint and therefore unconstitutional.
"1x vs 1000x" - How many newspapers am I allowed to publish? Can I now not have CCTV at my business because of your regulatory regime?
How do you split these cases out?
In my opinion it should be unlawful for anyone to receive, store, or process a user’s “emissions” for any purpose that a reasonable user would not anticipate and consent to.
For example, misusing bluetooth or wifi pairing broadcasts from a client to track the client or build any type of advertising profile.
Just classify it as wiretapping and mail fraud. That would solve most of the problems.
Torment Nexus looms ever closer.
Sad, isn’t it? I saw this coming many years ago, as I’m sure many of you did. We create so much metadata in our lives, both physically and digitally evident, that our past and future behaviors can be observed at a level of detail only previously imagined in dystopian fiction.
We learned about the government’s domestic surveillance programs from Snowden over 13 years ago.
About ten years ago, I learned about fiber optic and WiFi sensing techniques that would make the hair stand up on the back of most people’s necks.
14 years ago, stories were written about a pregnant teen whose parents were sent coupons from Target for baby items, because Target had automatically marked the girl as pregnant because of her shopping habits.
Computers, vehicles, and software that we pay for have so many built in tracking mechanisms that I think circumventing them would make you more of a surveillance target at this point than not.
I know people try to rationalize the whole “I said something near my phone and Facebook gave me ad impressions for it” as simply the algorithm finding a strong signal in your browsing data, but I’m fully convinced that Meta apps are listening on iOS, even with the screen locked.
Those who enable these sorts of things should feel shame. You’d have to be a complete asshole to do this stuff to fellow humans just for money.
Can this not be mitigated by simply turning off WiFi and Bluetooth on the devices?
Friendly reminder many manufactured goods also have RFID stickers within, used to track/trace parts during factory assembly. These are active and readable at all times by systems like this - irrespective of if the devices are powered.
So do all four tires on your car: https://dspace.networks.imdea.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12...
Are passive RFID tags actually trackable for these purposes? That's horrifying. But I thought they would only be readable from at most a meter, maybe several with sensitive equipment - far too short of a range, no?
Ironically just picked up a Zebra EM45 RFID recently.
https://www.zebra.com/us/en/products/mobile-computers/handhe...
I turned on the RFID scanner and did a leisurely stroll through a local Walmart Supercenter.
I read nearly 6200 unique tags over 39,000 times in the span of a ~20 minute walk in the store. Every single tag has a unique serial number and a unique serialized EPC GTIN.
https://i.ibb.co/994NJfgJ/photo-2026-08-16-13-14-52.jpg
RFID/EPC enabled merchandise is going to be a huge trackpoint for passive RFID scanning moving forward. Walmart attempted this back in the early 2010s (and failed because it cost so much) and now that tags are pennies a tag, they can finally force suppliers to roll it out (starting with apparel, then hardlines over time).
its fun when you shuffle these stickers around...
https://rfidtag.com/how-to-program-rfid-tags/
ha my shoes have RFid tags for stock tracking, I wonder how far away that can be read
even most watches people have now broadcast bluetooth MAC (and maybe ANT+ id)
and that data is never ever going away, there's no warrant and no law to regulate it
they still have tracking data for everyone who visited Epstein Island decades ago (which is even more crazy that no-one was prosecuted out of hundreds)
You can read a passive RFID from about 30 meters with the right equipment.
"Right equipment" is probably very load bearing. Wouls need a very high gain directional antenna, not sure if a camera next to the road has the space to pick this up from a moving car.
Long distance RFID readers are currently used mostly for warehouse inventory tracking. Nowadays you can steer antennas using phased arrays like they use in 5G.
https://www.zebra.com/us/en/products/rfid/rfid-readers.html?...
Although, as I understand it, Flock itself is mostly just looking for Bluetooth, BTLE, TPMS Sensors, and Wifi devices.
mirror: https://tech.yahoo.com/cybersecurity/articles/flock-style-sc...
we have reached the point where now at any point in the future they can trace anyone backwards for months without a warrant (and without probable cause)
they can pick a person and then just look for a crime to prosecute since most people break laws daily without realizing it
Nah, they won't prosecute for a crime. People accused of crimes have these pesky things called rights.
They'll find some civil infraction to threaten you with. You'll be cast into a kangaroo system where the deck is stacked against you, you have no presumption of innocence, no right to not self incriminate, you have nearly no right to see let alone question the evidince against you. And of course the civil infraction will have some absurd dollar figure attached thanks to all the useful idiots who think that the fine "needs to be a deterrent".
(In)justice system
they said can. and some do.
there were bluetooth recievers placed in road beds when tire pressure sensors started useing bluetooth, 20? years ago? local garage does not even ask before ripping them out and replacing with conventional valve stems.