After Town Bans Flock, Councilmember Crashes Out, Proposes Internet and Phone Ban
www.404media.co
A Texas councilmember will propose “a total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits" and"a total termination of all internet services."
  • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    39 minutes ago

    Wish my town would ban Flock. They are popping up everywhere and it’s disgusting. It amazes me how tolerant the general public is of this.

    • Insekticus@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      11 minutes ago

      Unfortunately, the general public has been sedated with ultra-processed and fast food, movies, games, and culture wars.

  • TheFogan@programming.devEnglish
    3·
    59 minutes ago

    He’s mad because he’s going to miss being able to watch playgrounds without violating his restraining orders.

    • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      57 minutes ago

      Like the Terms and Conditions May Apply final scene, but you actually mean it

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    5·
    2 hours ago

    So, there is actually a point there in that there is a lot of movement data harvested from cell phones, and I think that we could probably improve on the situation there if we wanted. The town government level is probably not in a great place to do that, but compared to ALPRs:

    • Cell phones can be turned off.

    • Cell phones can have their GPS stuff and/or location services disabled, though I realize that a limited number of people are going to actually do so. You cannot legally cover up a license plate.

    • For Android (and I assume iOS, though I haven’t looked at the situation there), the OS permission system permits restricting an app permission to data that would permit it to infer location. It may not be perfect — for example, I’ve seen research projects that try to do things like use accelerometer data and match it to street maps to try to figure out where someone is without access to Bluetooth/WiFi beacons or GPS data. But certainly there are real efforts to limit that.

    • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      Google Play Services is the biggest bane of privacy on Google’s official Android itself (It feeds motion data to applications without giving you an opt-out). But like you mentioned, people can leave their phone at home, or put it in a Faraday cage, disable Play Services, or install Graphene and local mapping app.

      If anybody’s intrigued by those options, I hope they follow up on them.