The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by Syonyk on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:48PM (#28555609)

This is another thing rarely talked about that's quite common - people really high up in the tech companies don't use the stuff.

Remember, when Steve Jobs' biographer asked him what his kids thought about the iPad, his response was, "They haven't used it." You're more likely to find the "cellphone free" group among high level tech execs and such.

Why is that? It's worth pondering.

I know more and more people, deeply in tech professionally, who are opting out of it in their personal life, across the board. They know what it can do, they've seen it, may have worked on older versions of it, and simply want no part of it anymore.

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Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by ghaff on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:59PM (#28555781)

The main answer is probably that they don't need to. They have personal assistants and admins who deal with their appointments, their email, etc. And, believe it or not, some of them really do unplug when they go on vacation.

In a former life when internal company email was becoming a thing, there were execs at my computer company that made one of these minicomputer-based office productivity systems who had their admins print out their email, they'd write responses by hand, and have the admin send the response.

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Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by tharne on Thursday September 16, 2021 @04:22PM (#28557031)

> This is another thing rarely talked about that's quite common - people really high up in the tech companies don't use the stuff.

This is true, kind of like how most drug dealers don't do drugs themselves.

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Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by fragmede on Thursday September 16, 2021 @11:28PM (#28560873)

I know I'm personally burnt out on tech by the end of the day from working on it all day, and I'm not "really high up in tech". But also at the end of the day, if I'm not making dinner, then it's DoorDash. If I need a ride somewhere, I use Uber/Lyft. It would be nice to be rich enough to afford a live-in chef and a driver instead of those two apps. I'm not (yet), but it becomes far easier to eschew technology if you aren't forced (no matter how gently) to have any of it.

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Re:The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your locat... by ghaff on Friday September 17, 2021 @09:09AM (#28565038)

I find smartphones mostly useful when traveling. I've never used DoorDash and maybe use Uber/Lyft a half dozen times a year and essentially never locally. Being able to receive texts is increasingly difficult to opt out of for various purposes but you don't need a smartphone specifically for that.

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