[ExI] Location Tracking Risks

[BillK]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2022 at 18:38, spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Hi BillK, thanks for that.  Cell phones have been in the constitutional gray
> area ever since they came about.  Strict constitutionalists have split both
> ways on it, and I myself have gone 360 at least 4 times over the past two
> decades.
>
> When one is a strict constitutionalist, as I am, that means strict.  Since
> the constitution predated cell phones (and abortion) it doesn't specifically
> give the federal government the authority to rule on those areas (by my
> reasoning.)  A strict constitutionalist would argue that this would be a
> state government call, if that state writes into its constitution the right
> to look at cell phone data.
>
> The way I would go is to consider cell phone tracking as metadata, which is
> analogous to the address on an envelope you drop off at the post office.
> Secure in houses and letters means the federal government is allowed to note
> if you are writing letters to commies for instance, but may not legally open
> and read the letters.  This is how I interpret that "secure in houses and
> letter" clause.  Your cell phone location is metadata, so I would say from a
> strict constitutionalist POV, the fed is allowed to collect it or buy it,
> but not to listen to the conversations.
>
> I am open to suggestion and counter-argument on that point.  Naturally yanks
> have grown quite distrustful of our FBI considering recent events, and I
> don't like their collecting location info, but as far as I can tell, it is
> constitutionally legal.
>
> spike
> _______________________________________________


Back when the Constitution was agreed, they would probably have been
quite agreeable to the notion that a suspicious criminal person could
be followed by undercover police and notes taken of places they
visited, who was present there and any events that happened.
But would they have agreed that this would be done for every citizen,
whether suspicious character or not?
Obviously not physically possible at that time, but now it is possible.
I doubt very much that they would have thought that watching and
recording every citizen activity would be a good idea. That makes
everyone into a suspected criminal, except that most haven't yet
committed a crime.

BillK



BillK