IMO the embedding of electronics and tracking in every aspect of our lives becomes too complex for the average non-techie to make informed decisions about the technology they use.

Maybe it should be "obvious" with a phone, but what if your bluetooth headset tried to pair against someone's electronics and got detected? What about the GPS history from your Apple Watch (should that data be available)? How many RFID-tagged devices are in your wallet?

I'm not saying that any of these aren't convenient or worth the tradeoff, but the last assertion (telling people to just be smart about what electronics they bring) is not realistic as the vast majority of THINGS we own become trackable electronics, whether the average consumer knows it or not.

A fair point.

Ideally we can build ways to make it easier to learn how tech works.

God knows it took me decades to figure it out.

I was wondering if they were going to do this, and I'm on the fence. If they can accurately (90%+) get it to a very tight parameter, ok, but a lot of protesters in the general aread weren't actually involved in entering the building, so if they're getting investigated too, it's a bit of an overreach.

well, tbf it absolutely could work without a trail of pings. But no system is designed that way because metrics are, unsurprisingly, useful. All that said I still agree 100% with you, don't carry an internet connected GPS with you while you're out criming!

This seems like an extension of "“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” (NTHNTF) fallacy [1][2][3]

[1] https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-Tru...

[2] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-...

[3] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-...

Not a big deal. Good engineering demands logged pings. Not doing that would be bad engineering.

Could it be abused? Sure. But that's why we need to continue to engineer a better democracy as well.

We can do both.

No we cant, the US was never to be a democracy, and you can not engineer a better one

We are a constitutional republic with a LIMITED government, we as a society has lost respect for those constitutional limits and instead of taking principled stands to restrict government we have taken unprincipled stands based on the outcome we desire for society

Attempting to "engineer" a better society is the exact problem we have. That is Authoritarianism not liberty

Liberty is not attempting to engineer a better society or democracy, Liberty is allowing people to live their lives unmolested by government laws and regulations

> the US was never to be a democracy, and you can not engineer a better one

If it wasn't designed to be democracy, it should be trivial to design a better one, just like it's trivial to build a better automobile than a tricycle, which wasn't designed to be an auto.

> We are a constitutional republic with a LIMITED government

That's not incompatible with democracy, and suggesting that they are exclusive alternatives just means you don't understand at least one of “democracy”, “constitutional republic”, or “limited governmemt”.

(And more fully, you want to say “federal republic with constitutionally-limited government and both the federal and state levels, and reserved powers for the states”, but that still isn't exclusive with “democracy”.)

> we as a society has lost respect for those constitutional limits

I don't see any evidence that respect for Constitutional limits has declined, which seems to be a result of combining a cynical view of the present with a rosy view of the past (the First Amendment is a beautiful set of Constitutional limits, but the Alien and Sedition Acts were adopted when the ink on it was barely dry.)

> and instead of taking principled stands to restrict government we have taken unprincipled stands based on the outcome we desire for society

Stands made on different sets of principles than you prefer do not thereby become “unprincipled”.

    Liberty is allowing people to live their lives
    unmolested by government laws and regulations 

You live in a society.

Presumably you would like some legal remedy if somebody tries to harm you, or poison your drinking water upstream, or violates a written contract, sexually assaults your loved ones, or so forth.

A life "unmolested by laws and regulations" is the most naive kind of fantasy imaginable. If history has taught us anything via failed states, lassiez-faire governments, and the like it's that power consolidates. Soon people would band together, form factions/tribes, and you'd be subject to their power.

Democracy kind of sucks in all of the obvious ways, but at least it's actually possible and sort of works. This can't be said for the delusional notion of living in your own little self-sufficient kingdom (in a world of over seven billion people, lol) where somehow you magically don't have anybody exerting influence on you, ever.

>>A life "unmolested by laws and regulations" is the most naive kind of fantasy imaginable.

Not really, the fundemntal foundation of a libertarian law would be best highlighted from Frederic Bastiat's The Law

"The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. "

The problem with modern society today is the law goes far far far beyond what individuals have the ethical right to do, namely self defense. Today the law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.

The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.

Your post is thoughtful and well-written. I upvoted your post even though I disagree. I dislike the HN tradition of "dislike = downvote." We need more posts like yours, not less.

    And this common force is to do only what the 
    individual forces have a natural and lawful 
    right to do: to protect persons, liberties, 
    and properties;

Progressives/liberals/etc wouldn't disagree much with this premise, but we'd differ mightily on what this premise means in practical terms.

- The FDA is far from perfect, but it generally does a good job of protecting my person from snake oil medicine and adulterated foods.

- A federal healthcare mandate/provider protects my person against dying of curable diseases because if I have no job/insurance at the moment

- Taxpayer-funded education gives me the liberty to become literate and obtain a basic level of education so that I may become employable and so forth even if my parents are unwilling or unable to educate me

And so on. There are a lot of ways for your person, properties, and liberties to be threatened, most of which are indirect.

    It has converted plunder into a right, in order to 
    protect plunder

Sounds like unfettered capitalism to me. I would strongly argue history tells us this is precisely what happens when government has too little influence and corporations therefore become centers of power.

We would agree, at least, that equally bad things happen when governments have too much power. We would disagree on what "too much" means, obviously.

>>Sounds like unfettered capitalism to me. I would strongly argue history tells us this is precisely what happens when government has too little influence and corporations therefore become centers of power.

My argument is not about the intensity of the influence but rather about the type of influence, and what influence the government is allowed.

I agree with most "progressives" on the nature of the problems we face as society, where I differ is on what should or can be done to solve them. History as shown that leaning on Authoritarian government regulations do not work out very well either, and leads to all kinds of unintended consequences. As the libertarian saying goes "Government: If you think you have problems now, what until you see our solutions"

The ironic thing as well is when people paint "unfettered capitalism" with "corporations" A Corporation is a government created liability shield that does not exist in a "unfettered capitalist" system or rather a true free market. Corporations are part of the government regulatory apparatus system.

One of the key problems we have is the regulatory capture, because we have allowed government to create corporations, which in turn become powerful and desire to capture the regulations that created them so they can make themselves more powerful, vicious circle

>>We would disagree on what "too much" means, obviously.

I dont know that we would disagree with "too much power", currently it is not how powerful the government is that I have the most problem with, it is the centralization of power that more concerning. The US for all its flaws did get one thing right. Power is best when it distributed. Power wants to consolidate, and centralize, it is up the the people to resist this and we the people have been very poor at that, especially since the Great Depression. We now look to the Federal government to solve all of our problems this is not how our system was to be.

    A Corporation is a government created liability 
    shield that does not exist in a "unfettered capitalist" 
    system or rather a true free market. Corporations are 
    part of the government regulatory apparatus system.

I'm intrigued. (That's not sarcasm)

What's the libertarian alternative? What are examples of situations where removing the liability shields would encourage more beneficial behaviors from corporations?

It seems to me that corporations, minus the liability shield, would still be nearly as potentially dangerous. They are more or less sociopathic entities by necessity; ceasing to exist if they cease to turn profits, a thing they can only do if they compete successfully against their equally sociopathic rivals. Corporations can of course behave responsibly and generously, but this is always going to be at odds with their fundamental mission.

(While all of this sounds anti-corporation, I'm not. Private enterprise is and should be the backbone of society. It's just that it's awfully destructive, unchecked.)

Private Enterprise should not be confused with corporations. Especially not modern corporations and all the legal structures that encapsulate them.

Libertarian Private enterprise is more like LLC's, and partnerships than Corporations.

As to where removing the liability shields would encourage more beneficial behaviors from corporations?

You see hints of it all the time, anytime you see a situation where someone comments "if a person would have done X they would be in jail" well the Corporation is shielding the people that actually did the harm to society from consequences from their actions. Most of the time the actual bad actors simply move from one corporation to another continuing to inflict manage on society with no accountability because of those liability shield

you view it as "sociopathic", but viewing it that way is part of the problem, we have anthropomorphized corporations to were we treat them like people, punish them (the corporations) with fines and other actions but never punish the actual human actors responsible for the activity

I understand the need for some kind of limited liability in business, Strict Liability would likely cause very poor investment into private enterprise the problem is with corporations, especially publicly traded corporations we have created such a impenetrable liability shield around them that the incentive curve has shift so far towards "profit by any means" that the people in corporations are only punished when they DO NOT do bad things (i.e Pollute the environment, screw workers, etc) in chasing of more profit, and NEVER when they do those thing at most the corporation may pay a fine for doing it but the actual people responsible are never liable

We probably won't ever agree, but that gives me some things to think about or at least a greater understanding. Thank you, I appreciate it a lot.

I do certainly agree that corporations ought to be less of a liability shield for things that would send a citizen to prison!

This is a losing battle long term I fear. Far too many people see government as the way to push their ideology onto society as a whole.

There's nothing about this that's cool! Not even close.