How can I be sure that the underlying mechanism doesn't have a back door that allows anyone with access to track me all the time?
Your argument is very similar to the argument advanced by the government for key escrow and other backdoors in encryption systems: this mechanism will only be used with proper legal safeguards to catch "bad guys". Don't you want that?
How can you be sure your phone doesn’t have such a back door *now?
I don’t understand why you’d be ok with a cell phone as it stands today, but think that a cell phone which can send a bunch of data when you send 911 is completely unacceptable.
> How can you be sure your phone doesn’t have such a back door *now?
I can't.
> I don’t understand why you’d be ok with a cell phone as it stands today, but think that a cell phone which can send a bunch of data when you send 911 is completely unacceptable.
I didn't say that it's completely unacceptable. What I said was that talking about expanding this kind of data sharing is if there were a consensus that only good things could result scares me.
The reason I'm OK with my cell phone today is that the default assumption today is that my location is private, or at least under my control. There could be a back door, but that is a risk I'm willing to take.
What scares me is that we seem to be oozing slowly towards bringing up a whole generation who have never known privacy, and so have no idea what its value is.
I believe you are assuming that this feature would let the government request your geolocation on demand, but I don't think this is what they are actually suggesting: the idea is to make your phone automatically send your current coordinate after you make a call to 911.
That's the feature described in the original article. But the comment I was responding to advocates expanding that capability without any specified limits (except, perhaps, that it be limited to "emergency" situations, but "emergency" is a very malleable word).
I'm pretty sure they were describing a system where that additional information would be sent when calling 911, not that it could be activated remotely on command.
Yes. That's why 1) the story you linked to describes how users are prompted for consent and 2) the leakage of this data is sufficiently scandalous to be newsworthy.
You should give me spare keys to your car, in case you can't find your current pair. It's okay if you're uncomfortable with that, because I might have already made a copy without your knowledge, so you should give me a copy anyway.
I don't understand this analogy. I'm not giving keys to anything, I'm just having my phone do some more stuff when I call 911. It's like saying I should have the ability to give you the keys to my car (which, I do!) or I should have the ability to make a video call (ditto).
Your argument is very similar to the argument advanced by the government for key escrow and other backdoors in encryption systems: this mechanism will only be used with proper legal safeguards to catch "bad guys". Don't you want that?
No, I don't. I really don't.