> At this point I’m carrying so many electronic devices with me or at home that I’ve give up on going out of my way to prevent getting tracked

As much as I hate the guy, Kissinger made a great point in an interview with Eric Schmidt paraphrased:

'We have lived a fairly peaceful period in the last century with a stable world order, we should not assume that this is guaranteed to continue forever.'

We usually don't like to think in centuries or decades. But a democratic state today can become autocratic 50 years from now.

Equally, today caring about my privacy is just adding a lot of friction to me daily live. 50 years from now, I have no guarantee that myself or someone in my family becomes 'a person of interest' for my government.

I start to think that in an ordinary human lifetime it is more likely than not to experience disaster. If you were born in 1945 and are still alive today, you may have picked the most lucky period to have lived through of all possible. I am not concvinced the next 75 years will be as peaceful as the past 75.

I'm not sure how true that is. I think it's dependent on location really or country for conflicts. Some places have seen a lot of violence. Violent crime rates were pretty high in some areas too.

Yes I realize it is not a very general statement. Many places have experienced conflicts also during this period. But in average, I think it may still be true.

> /or made to wear a mask

Just having to wear a mask for a year is "generational trauma" level horrific? Being a surgeon must be unbearable (that or you had a truly cushy life).

Those are most likely by far not the worst things that would have happened to somebody being born in 1945. And also very little compared to what other generations have endured, or even what other countries experienced in the last 75 years, and for some still right now.

The lack of perspective is astonishing.

> Several cities in the US were firebombed nightly for months in 2020.

What? What is this referring to?

From the general tone of the rest of the comment, it's likely they're referring to actions taken adjacent to the Black Lives Matter protests which were depicted in some news media as being like a war zone. Oddly, none of the cities today look like, I don't know, Ukraine. But some people will make mountains from molehills.

I was under the impression that “firebombing” exclusively referred to aerial firebombing during war, so it sounded super strange.

Now that i looked up the term, i see that it can mean “any act in which an incendiary device is used to initiate a fire”.

Does that technically include lighting a cigarette?

Depends on your definition of incendiary device. Wikipedia says weapons designed to start fires. I feel like a zippo thrown onto something flammable is about as far as that stretches.

But they were mostly peaceful mountains. Right?

You seem to be strangely emotionally invested in this issue. Did you witness these events yourself?

They were live streamed. I watched hundreds of hours of live feeds showing wide-spread violence, looting and burning down buildings.

Have there been worse conditions in the world? Obviously. But this isn't a competition for who had the worst things happen to them in all of history.

Portland, amongst others.

How many people died in the Portland firebombings? How much property was destroyed? Are we talking Dresden or Kobe levels? Because when you say 'firebombing nightly for months', that's what I think of.

BLM caused billions worth of damage over the course of the summer of love.

The Portland Business Alliance, which may not be an entirely unbiased source, put the dollar figure at 10s of millions for Portland, not billions.

Has anyone been able to resettle all the Portlandian refugees? From your comments, it must have been on par with Dresden in March of 1945, right?

Yeah, Portland was basically wiped off the map.

Actual photo of Portland June 2020.

https://i.imgur.com/LoNeyZa.jpg

Yes. Second amendment supporters often make the same point.

> But a democratic state today can become autocratic 50 years from now.

It can happen in years, nevermind decades.

"Equally, today caring about my privacy is just adding a lot of friction to me daily live. 50 years from now, I have no guarantee that myself or someone in my family becomes 'a person of interest' for my government."

Careful there. Now you're sounding like you you don't want to obey the government/laws if you don't agree with what is created in the future. At least this has been the argument around many gun laws that create registries, quasi-registries, or release identity information publically, especially with the Overton window and rhetoric.

Edit: why disagree? Really, still no response? Isn't this the general play that is being mentioned in the prior comment - information gathered now can be used against them by the government in the future when the laws change or are ignored? Is this only an issue when it's applied to some people or topics but not others?

What does Apple have to do with it here? The apps on your Apple device are exfiltrating data left and right every day - including parking apps which are the topic of this post.

Megacorporations aren't going to save you from this one. Actually creating regulation that will define where you're data is allowed to go (and stay) might.

I don’t think you (nor parent) read the actual post.

1. The problem presented is not that parking apps exfiltrate data from your phone, it’s that anyone can throw your plate number into it and get notified of when you pass through specific areas.

2. Your solution would not address the problem. Problem is not one of data portability, but the fact that your license plate may be registered in a system without your consent or awareness. The convenience of the service is directly at odds with privacy/security, and the post is asserting that the gain in convenience achieved through the current implementation is not worth the perils of the unfettered tracking possible through it. It provides non-governmental solutions to ameliorate the issue.

Apple has all the data at full precision. The few apps that are selling my data get the scraps of a Wi-Fi SSID here or there, and an IP address every once in a while.

This is how Apple comes into it.

I was a bit bored in 2021 and going out a lot less than normal, so I had time to experiment with an Android phone using all open source privacy respecting apps. I managed to make it work, but it took quite a lot of my time and resources and definitely meant sacrificing some conveniences. Eventually, when I started going out and being more socially active again, it got to be too inconvenient for me, and I decided to switch to Apple and be less strict about it. While I did pick up some more careful privacy practices, I have no doubt that my location could easily be tracked by multiple parties. To be honest, it could probably have been tracked much of the time when I was going all out to avoid it too. If nothing else, cellular network operators can determine my position by which towers my SIM card is connecting to, and I have no illusions about that data being private. I'm sure that being tracked by Wifi networks, bluetooth and payment terminals is also happening all the time. I don't like that everyone is so trackable in the modern world. But avoiding it basically means opting out of all of these trackable technologies and living like a monk: no cell phones, no cars, no cashless payments, etc. How many people really want to make those sacrifices?

Thank you for elucidating my two liner. I was writing from a similar experience as yours. Now I believe I've reached a reasonable compromise between inconvenience and privacy. Minimise my data footprint in the private corporation space which means no Google (almost, YouTube and Maps are still hard to replace), Apple ecosystem with all sorts of anti-tracking setting turned on (Privacy relay, hide-my-email, and what not), nextdns, own my email domain + Fastmail.

Which means Apple has just about all the data about me over last ~3 years and so far they seem to be doing a good job of holding fort. Obviously if a state actor wants to screw me then well, all bets are off so I'm not going to guard myself against that as it's way too more inconvenient as you stated.

> Apple ecosystem with all sorts of anti-tracking setting turned on (Privacy relay, hide-my-email, and what not), nextdns, own my email domain + Fastmail.

The best way to increase privacy in the Apple ecosystem is to not use iCloud at all. Most of it (including your photos and backups, which contain endpoint keys and chat history) is effectively unencrypted and Apple can read all of it at any time without your device. Apple intentionally preserves this encryption backdoor in iMessage/Photos/iCloud for the US federal government, who can then access this information without a search warrant or probable cause.

This means creating a burner phone number, using that to create a burner Apple ID that is used only for installing apps, using only free apps (because the moment you put your payment card information in, you're deanonymized) and only using devices bought for cash.

Then Apple has a fair amount of information about you, but it's not linked to your identity.

Apple turns over customer data to the US federal authorities without a warrant over 30,000 times per year per their own transparency report. This is in addition to the normal legal process stuff that involves subpoenas or probable cause-based search warrants.

You're not wrong. And I'm no fan of government surveillance. But my own threat model isn't concerned with protecting myself against state actors. Simply put, I don't have the resources or time to be vigilant about that, so I'm writing it off as a lost cause. My threat model is to protect myself from advertisers and small players.

You think that state actors are the only one that also get this data set? lol.

Inspiring