[Carrok]

So you're saying you're ok with me knowing everywhere you've been for the past few years?

I'm going to assume then that you don't visit strip clubs, bars, 'adult book' stores, the house of your drug dealer, the house of your secret lover, a proctologists office, an OBGYN, an abortion clinic, or a million other places. You may not visit these places, but many others do, and having that information publicly available could be devastating to families, careers, entire lives.

On the other end of the spectrum, say you happen to be in the general vicinity of multiple burglaries at the time these crimes are believed to have happened. You're arrested and have to prove your own innocence.

Or maybe someone who wants to do you harm looks at your data for patterns, and goes to the right place at the right time to rob, extort, harass, rape, even murder you.

In general, I think having your location information public is a terrifying prospect.

[Valseuss]

You don't even have to have been there at all. Once an entity holds all your personal information like that, they can just say "Oh you were here, here, here and here at these times" even if it was not true. Who would doubt them? After all they have all the information right? RIGHT?

Perfect way to set up someone you don't like.

[imgabe]

If the government has devolved to the point that we have to worry about them framing people unjustly, we have FAR, FAR bigger problems than a database of location information. Hiding the information in that scenario is, at best, a temporary band aid. The appropriate fix is limiting the power of the government and requiring strict and transparent conditions on when and why someone can be arrested.

[x0x0]

The government has so devolved -- they're using (most likely illegal) nsa spy tools and stolen data to arrest drug dealers, then lying to everyone involved about how they "stumbled" across the information, or so-called "parallel construction" [1]. While all the tools whine about slippery slope fallacies, the fact of the matter is we're already sliding down.

   The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the 
   investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information 
   originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's 
   Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an 
   investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of 
   exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or 
   biased witnesses. [2]

   Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents 
   reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to 
   conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers 
   but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. [3]

[1] http://my.firedoglake.com/wendydavis/2014/02/10/dea-parallel...

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/dea-surveillance-co...

[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE...

[mathrawka]

One thing that people do is just say "the government" like it is a single entity. It is not one entity. It is made up of hundreds of thousands of individuals.

You know that guy that used to scare your wife/daughter with his stalking? Well he just happens to have a government job and may be in a position to abuse the knowledge that he has access to for personal gains.

[billiam]

I'm sorry, I just don't follow this slippery slope argument. We have lots of examples of the government abusing their use of online information. For the haves, we have the still-minor indignities of the no-fly list and targeting certain political stripes for IRS audits. For the have-nots, it is terrorism fusion data centers, predatory civil forfeiture and, jeez, a lot of the criminal justice system. So that world does exist now.

Many of these excesses have been driven by "limiting the size of government" by defunding local governments and relying on private information brokers (license plate readers, etc), rather than passing better laws.

[imgabe]

The things you've mentioned are all generally Bad Things and things that we should be fighting to stop. Fighting to obscure your location information and even protect your privacy in general doesn't stop any of the things you mentioned if you believe the government is acting in bad faith.

[seanflyon]

It mitigates the risk. Someone cannot do bad things with your location information if they do not have your location information.

[imgabe]

I think it is naive to think that a bad actor who intends you harm will be stopped or even slowed down by the fact that there isn't a log of every location you've visited.

[Guvante]

> We have lots of examples of the government abusing their use of online information.

That isn't what he said. He said that if the government is going to forge information, then the availability of location information is not necessary nor useful for that task.

[mirkules]

It looks like someone is systematically downvoting rational arguments in this thread without explanation, yours among them..

[imgabe]

strip clubs, bars, 'adult book' stores - these are all perfectly legal and innocuous activities. Who cares?

the house of your drug dealer - being in someone's house in circumstantial at best. By your logic they would also have to arrest the drug dealer's mailman, maid, meter reader, etc.

burglaries - again, circumstantial.

Someone who wants to do me harm doesn't need a database full of comprehensive location information. They'd only have to find out where I live and wait for me there.

[mirkules]

Without intending to invoke Godwin's Law, I think what happened in WWII is a good lesson in dangers of overexposing your private life. Before WWII, Germany used "tax deductions" to entice people to reveal their religion to the government. Data which was later used to identify Jews during wartime.

Nobody is saying you need to unplug your machine from the internet, but just that because something doesn't impact you today, might not be true tomorrow. If you decide to run for office in 10 years, for example, you can bet your location data will become relevant (and it's not that far-fetched that the other party will try to obtain that data - reference the IRS email scandal).

The point is to minimize the aggregation of your data, to limit the impact it will have on your life once it leaks. After all, you never know who will get a hold of all your data once a company goes out of business (fir example).

[imgabe]

The problem in WWII was not that the government had a list of who all the Jews were. The problem was that there was a government that wanted to kill all the Jews. If the latter is true, they'll find out the information they want one way or another. Hiding a list does not solve the problem, which is that you have elected genocidal maniacs to your government.

[mirkules]

Your line of thinking hinges on an optimistic view: "As long as X doesn't happen, we're fine". But what will you do when X does happen? You'll be completely unprepared for it.

I prefer to take the "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" approach: if something bad were to happen, I would have a better chance of not being impacted.

[imgabe]

No, my line of thinking is more like "If X happens, we're fucked regardless of whether we have privacy or not, so we need to focus on not letting X happen"

If an insane genocidal dictatorship comes to power, you will be impacted, unless you're on the side of the dictators.

[mirkules]

I'll bet you top dollar that's not what Jennifer Lawrence is thinking right now. She's not thinking "It was inevitable that someone will get my photos from iCloud". Instead, she's thinking "I should have never put my photos on iCloud in the first place".

Hence the point of this thread: don't expose more information than you need to.

Edit: just as I typed this, the top story details the perils of data theft, exactly the point I'm trying to get across here: https://www.nikcub.com/posts/notes-on-the-celebrity-data-the...

[rybosome]

Not having data which would incriminate you to a party which will misuse it is something of a pyrrhic victory, but I still see your point. It would be preferable to have no parties which would misuse this data, but if such a party does exist then you would be better off remaining anonymous. As with all risk analysis, there's no clear answer. Deciding whether or not using a service which tracks such data is a consideration of the convenience gained, sensitivity of the data, propensity of the parties in play to respect the privacy of this data, potential for future incrimination, etc.

[Pxtl]

It suddenly occurred to me that I live an intensely boring life. I'm unblackmailable, yay!

[joeclark77]

But somebody who wants to burglarize your house, or worse, could figure out when you're likely not to be home.

[imgabe]

This supposes that burglars work by picking out a person, then waiting until they're not home to go rob their house. Instead, burglars search through a neighborhood to find houses where nobody is home, then break in and steal things. It's the other way around.

Regardless, if you're an average adult in the US, "weekdays between 9 and 5" is a fairly reasonable assumption of when you won't be home. No giant database needed.

[joeclark77]

I didn't want to expand on what I meant by "or worse", but let's imagine you have a teenage daughter...