Re: [PLUG] do no evil

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 12:05 PM, Greg Helledy <gregsonh@gra-inc.com> wrote:
>
>> All cell phone carriers monitor your location 24/7.
>
> Do they "monitor" your location 24/7, or do they merely know your location
> because of the cell tower you're connected to, plus the other towers that
> were within range when your phone last "pinged" and the network decided
> which tower to use?

Who knows.  The same issue basically applies to Google as well.

>From the Snowden revelations it sounds like this sort of information
is being tracked by the NSA, and my guess is that they basically keep
it forever (it isn't that much data compared to the amount of video
they probably also store).  However, the NSA data is probably only
used if you become a person of significant interest.

The real game-changer is that it is becoming increasingly easier to
store this stuff forever.  Bought in bulk hard drives probably don't
cost more than $40/TB or so.  I can only imagine how many lifetimes
worth of GPS location data that can store.  From talking to people who
work in defense contracting circles, I've heard of government storage
purchases of tens of thousands of large drives at a time (from what
I've heard their prices didn't even go up after the floods in Asia due
to standing contracts).  Of course the government is going to find
value in storing a lot of information that doesn't have commercial
value, but if information does have commercial value then you can
probably assume that somebody is trying to collect it.  Eventually
costs will drop to the point where people will store location history
and full video for everybody who has ever lived just for the lulz, the
way some people seem to have 4TB hard drives full of more mp3 files no
human could ever listen to in a lifetime.


-- 
Rich
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