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by ece 50 days ago
Only two of these companies actually needs your location data to function, it's Uber and Lyft. There's a reasonable case telcos might also need the data for network purposes, but cell tower data isn't going to be as accurate as GPS. It's safe to say everyone else is basically collecting data for serving ads even if they say otherwise.

The opposite of dragnet surveillance, which is what flock and geofencing warrants are: data aggregated and shared without the consent of the user, is data collection minimization even when done for security or apps.
3 comments
JadeNB 50 days ago
> Only two of these companies actually needs your location data to function, it's Uber and Lyft.

I disagree that they need my location data. I am perfectly capable of telling them the location where I want a pick-up, and they are perfectly capable of imposing penalties if I incorrectly report it. Just like happened with cabs in the old days, who were somehow able to pick me up without real-time location tracking.

(Not to say that you shouldn't be able to just turn on location tracking if that's what you want to do, but there's no reason that they can't function without it.)

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belthesar 50 days ago
> but cell tower data isn't going to be as accurate as GPS

Worth noting that 6G MIMO beamforming requires being able to calculate incredibly accurate location information in order to tune the signal towards your device. I don't know enough to be able to speak more in depth about this, but my guess would be that the adage of cell AP based aGPS is likely to be able to surface far more accurate device location than before.

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kingleopold 50 days ago
with 6G we as humans in everywhere will be able to achieve surveillance that was impossible to think decades ago!

Incredible

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mrktf 50 days ago
> but cell tower data isn't going to be as accurate as GPS

My knowledge in this topic is not deep, but cell precision should be pretty accurate, because modern cell tower areas are much smaller, then to have well tuned beamformer it need to have relative precise angles between antennas and know signal travel time (distance). I think it should achieve something 30 or 15 meter precision (doing assumption that distance is accurate in 50/100ns order)

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