Know before you go, with Google | Hacker News Reader

Know before you go, with Google

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98 pointsclbjnstn88 comments

Ignoring all the terrorism comments being made (the whole point of terrorism is terror - and by saying "let's not make this" arguably it's working), this is what Foursquare could have been. Knowing which bar (now) I can go to on my Friday evening for a quiet drink with friends, or a riotous night on the tiles is super useful.

I really like the work Google has been doing in this area. I trust Google map reviews more than, say foursquare and yelp, mostly because I already use their maps feature anyways. They also have something called a timeline, which is both creepy and awesome: it gives a timeline of where you've traveled, everyday.

Now, as far as this data doesn't fall in the hands of someone else, as long as its not available to anyone except myself and Google's ML algos, I'm fine. But can you imagine how much control this would give e.g. law enforcement officials? It can be used for good but can so easily be abused. Overall, I wouldn't like this data to be available to anyone else, or have a legal framework that requires the collection of this data and the ability for the govt. to acquire that data.

I'm happy with Google doing things like this, not to mention foursquare and Yelp have terrible UX. If I go to Yelp on my phone it bugs me to download the app to view the reviews. No, I don't want this app just to check what people are saying about this one off Vietnamese restaurant that I just drove past and am thinking about stopping at.

Google grabs my location, I search the place or something along the lines of it (Vietnamese restaurant) click reviews and I also clearly see the hours, location, etc.

Same thing with movie showtimes, being able to google and see this information for local theaters without having to go to these often terrible websites is awesome and I hope to see this type of stuff improve with google.

Speaking of trust and google maps.

On my vacation to New York I trusted google maps that Coney Island Luna Park would be open. I make the long trip out to the park hoping to ride the Cyclone. But of course it and the rest of the park were closed. Because I trusted google maps to make my schedule, I was unable to make it back out. On another day I blame google maps for depleting my battery by 1:00 PM.

This is how I feel about google at this point. When slack took out that full page ad warning Microsoft about the difficulties of messaging, my first thought was "if this were google that ad would make more sense". In my mind their failures and arrogance outweigh their success and the disappointment I experience. Granted though, when it works it can be awesome.

Wow. Seriously? Both the CIA and the NSA already have red-carpet access to Google. Besides which, Google has shown multiple times it is very very capable of doing the expedient thing the moment it senses its revenue is in jeopardy. They _will_ sell your data as soon as their revenues drop. They could easily avoid this by wording their service agreements / end user licenses as such, but ofcource like most web companies these days they don't rule out selling user data. Which one can naively attribute to "capitalism". But while companies are amoral by nature, I hope people can and do hold the people running those companies accountable to at-least a baseline level of morality.

I suppose that you can back your claims with sources, isn't?

Sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

And a giant backdoor with purposefully vague language in their privacy policy to let them sell data.

https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

"We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality and security measures."

There's no mention how the live feature works but I'd guess it's tied into the location services thing you can opt into on Android.

I really hope this doesn't turn into yet another death sentence via crowd sourced data (similar to review ratings on Yelp) to bars/restaurants that aren't getting full, making people think they're not good because no one is going there. The phenomena of waiting an absurd amount of time in line in cities like SF is quite popular.

> making people think they're not good because no one is going there.

The opposite argument is also true. I'll happily go to a bar that isn't full so I can get served.

Depends on the demographic and your goals for the evening.

Sure, if I was in college I'd probably look for a hopping bar. Not any more (o;

Which is only possible b/c through Google Play Services it tracks every move of every Android user. Unfortunately Google Play Services cannot be uninstalled/disabled without affecting the correct operation of the phone. The European Commission is right about investigating how Google is doing business lately.

Is that true?

No. You have to enable location reporting for Google to track your location.

Yeah, everything asks for permissions now. To me, it's worth it for location history and being able to see real time traffic and stuff like in the article. I'll just turn it off when I go to visit my secret family in Canada.

It's true that it is enabled by default but if you go into the Privacy Check page of your Google account you can completely disable location history, android or not.

I'm not sure exactly how you mean enabled by default -- I think you are always prompted when setting up a new device, but the default position of the toggle is enabled.

Isn't this feature disabled when you disable Google Location History?

I have location history disabled. Over the weekend I was prompted to give them more information about a restaurant I had visited.

Right up to the creepy line, then a giant leap over it.

I also went into the supermarket on the weekend, and when I left I had a notification telling me that Android pay is supported there. I normally have location turned off, but it really hit home just how much data Google is collecting, and the ability that affords them to be able to do some pretty serious user profiling. We have to remember that with Google, we are the product. We might all hate it, but that's how it is!

> The European Commission is right about investigating how Google is doing business lately.

Why is it right? Nobody forces people to buy Android phones

The basic problem is that all this leave AOSP as less than a full device OS, because Google has put so much of it into Play Services.

Never mind that to be able to bundle Play OEMs need to adhere to the requirements Google put forth in the CDD. And part of that requirement is that Google services apps are front and center when a new user boot up "their" device.

See, this is what I've never been able to understand. If you buy a camera and put it somewhere, would you complain that it's always recording you?

Google's product is this - helping you as much as possible in your daily activities. This obviously wouldn't be possible without user tracking. So I never understand those who buy Google's phones and then complain about the tracking the same time.

Google phones are Nexus and Pixel series and I'm willing to bet those aren't the majority sold. Data collection happens nevertheless the device.

If I buy a camera and it sends video of me to someone else all the time... yes.

I think Google's 'product' is their ability to demonstrate to advertisers Google's ability to manipulate users more effectively than their competitors can. To accomplish this, tracking is necessary. Any 'help' they provide you is purely incidental. If the data showed it was more effective to mislead users, they would be obliged to do that and ensure maximum value to shareholders. Look at the fake news controversy Facebook is dealing with. Fake news generated more page views and was more profitable, so that's what everyone pushed.

What I'd love to see is a service doing some or all of the tracking and data storage on the end user's device, with relevant data being matched and pushed to anonymous users algorithmically. Easier said than done I concede, but that's what I want. I'm happy to pay for such a useful service and I strongly prefer this to trading personal info.

Nobody forced them to buy Windows computers either. Directly. It's just the network effect and the market who do.

Consumers are not omniscient, and in my view should be able to pay (through taxes) to pre-vet products.

I think a good way of thinking about this is food laws - i am happy to pay for enforcement of laws that make sure when i buy beef it is not, in fact, horse meat, rather than having to carry round a testing kit or rely on reputation/brand etc.

Occasionally some work might be required to check new technologies are applied in a constructive way, e.g. that a new bleach used to whiten bread is safe.

Oh yes, and also there is a power imbalance between the individual consumer and corporations/market forces. Think of regulatory bodies as a "consumers union". Would it be possible to organise efficiently without the force of government?

I see your point, but this will lead to uncontrollable growth of civil servant class and effectively will inhibit any growth, plus as a side effect you'll get people not aware that one should use so called common sense.

I can agree that such laws should exist for things directly responsible for someone's health, but that should end there.

Power imbalance exists largely because of the regulations that are significantly increasing the barrier of entry for the new players. More regulation will make this problem worse.

> Power imbalance exists largely because of the regulations that are significantly increasing the barrier of entry for the new players. More regulation will make this problem worse.

Markets and the nature of economies of scale create barriers to entry. They are a normal entity of any economic system. The "free market" only alleviates situations in which there is small added value in being an entrenched player, something which just doesn't happen in many situations and which disregards network effects and established knowledge in specific industries.

What "common sense" do you expect people to have for mobile tech? 99% of people do not and should not have to know what Google Play Services is, in the same way that you probably lack knowledge of things many doctors would tell you should be "common sense", or lawyers, or accountants.

It is absolutely acceptable that there should be people on the lookout for these basic privacy issues.

OTOH not doing it, will lead to an uncontrollable growth of privacy abusing services and products, plus as a side effect we might reach a place where every single vendor is doing it.

>Power imbalance exists largely because of the regulations that are significantly increasing the barrier of entry for the new players.

There is also a barrier of entry for the new player who wants to do 'the right thing' because of an established economy where only certain business models can succeed.

>More regulation will make this problem worse.

No regulation will also make it worse.

Google Play is so creepily omniscient that my wife now firewalls it on her phone and only lets it out once per month for an hour to perform app updates.

But to do that she had to buy a phone that permitted rooting, which needed an delockable boot loader, which required me to sit for a few hours researching and a few more hours rooting. It is ridiculous and if it becomes any more difficult for the next upgrade then we'll just jump to another platform.

> It is ridiculous and if it becomes any more difficult for the next upgrade then we'll just jump to another platform.

I can't imagine IOS is any better. Is there another platform worth using?

I have my android completely de-googlefied via cyagenomod, but I will admit not being able to have apps like signal, etc, does somewhat limit phone operation. It's ok, as long as I have ssh/root, life is bearable.

I was quite shocked when I was asked by my android phone to rate a restaurant where I have been a day before. This is not the future I want.

I am sincerely not trying to be flippant, but can you just opt out then? I've set up a lot of Android phones, so I know that the entirety location services is explained with a clear opportunity to opt out at setup (plus, of course, you can always change your answer).

And in maps specifically, there is incredibly fine grained control over location history (controlled per device), you can retroactively delete location history individually or over entire time ranges. Plus you can control all of the individual notification types (e.g. disallow questions about your experience at restaurants you have visited).

Because honestly, so long as I retain the ability to decide when and if, this is the future I and others want.

I would prefer opt-in.

Fair point, although I suspect the counterargument centers around the reduction in participation in an opt-in system.

I wonder if something like a global "privacy" toggle could work -- a way to indicate what your own personal preferences for default behavior are. Apps would default sensitive features to the global toggle, while allowing specific overrides in either direction.

Of course the argument is reduction in participation... but that's fine. People should not be default-assumed to want to be stalked by Google. They should be prohibited from doing so, and be forced, like every other business, to seek informed interest in their product.

Then every time you:

    1. Install something
    2. Uninstall something
    3. Open Chrome
    4. Open Any other Google App
    5. Turn GPS on
    6. Turn GPS off

expect a nag requesting permission to track you. See, now, to get the nags to go away, you gave up your rights. But you know, you "gave permission"...

> Fair point, although I suspect the counterargument centers around the reduction in participation in an opt-in system.

That's not a counter-argument, that's whining that you can't have everything you want without deceptive practices.

Isn't it already opt-in? iirc you're always presented a screen asking you if you want to enable location history.

I think (s)he's right in pointing out that while location services as a whole has an initial prompt (I believe the default value is on, but you do have an opportunity to change it), the individual features in e.g. maps are default opt-in after install (and you have to navigate settings to turn them off).

The way to ensure that future isn't where we're going is to buy a phone from someone else. Sure, you can disable some of Google's tracking features, but they pretty much cripple your device if you do. (For instance, if you don't let them track you in the cloud, they won't even locally save your previously searched locations on the device, which is a pain.)

I tried to get along with a privacy-set Android for a while, but the reality is that Android is designed for one thing and one thing only: Data collection.

But do you appreciate the dozens of honest reviews that were provided by other patrons?

It does seem to be usable for purposes that are a bit chilling. Pinpointing the house where you think dissidents are meeting weekly. Identifying tenants that are breaking the lease by having too many overnight guests. Probably more scenarios I'm not thinking of now.

Edit: Less chilling, but maybe interesting that this opens up a free tool for competitive analysis. Using this to pick a location for a new business would give an edge that didn't exist before.

I don't mean to gloss over any privacy implications this feature might have, but if we're talking about dissidents, doesn't the state already have a bunch of tools available to them for finding out were dissidents are gathering? Could something like cellular triangulation work almost as well?

On the other hand couldn't this feature allow for dissidents to find popular venues were they could gather to avoid suspicion?

It does significantly lower the bar for anyone that wants to identify cluster spots where people gather.

See https://github.com/m-wrzr/populartimes for an implementation that lets you scrape Google's data by lat/long/radius and create heat maps.

You know what else works?

Just checking cell phone tower usage.

The only thing this would give you over that is finer grain data, but it is already pretty fine to start with.

And the solution to both of those is the same: Turn your phone off (actually, leave it at home) when you are going to go meet with your friends to overthrow the government. You know, revolution 101.

>Just checking cell phone tower usage.

Right, available to state actors, but not available to questionable organizations that are not (yet) state actors.

Edit: No, wasn't thinking Google. Thinking more along the lines of political parties not yet in control of their respective governments, vigilante groups, etc.

So the concern is less the government acting against "dissidents" and more google? Because once they upgrade to state, they definitely have access.

Well, I guess you have a point there? Not really sure what it is, but that is a distinction... Assuming google don't have cell tower access as a function of Google Fi.

That is pretty cool. Did you test if it really works? Would be a great pool of data to play around with. And at this level really anonymous (as google doesn't share anything that could reveal users).

EDIT: It's not part of the Google API, would be surprised if they didn't block it.

I do enjoy my android phone, and when planning trips, I use gmail for reservations and I enable location while travelling. Great services.

For all other times (I.e., most of the time) I try to use my private email on my domain and leave location on my phone turned off. I also like to put my phone in airplane mode during the day when I don't want to be disturbed while working, or out with friends and family.

It would be useful if you could enter a list of places you need to go in a given day and it works out the optimum route based on usual road traffic, place activity etc.

That would be useful, especially for someone like a traveling salesman.

;)

This reads like it is straight out of a dystopian novel. "Sure, we track the GPS position of everysingle person in the city, 24 hours a day but it is for your own good. You can now know if you are going to have to wait in a line before you go to the coffee shop!"

Sure makes it easier to quash dissent, and find potential dissent as its gathering.

So, on a "completely" different topic, does anyone know of reasonably priced Linux phones (not Android)?

Get an old Nokia N9, it runs on Meego and an unbastardized Linux stack, X11, Alsa, QT etc

Supposedly you can get fbdev on a lot of Nexus phones working with just the kernels from Google, I don't know about all the radio and audio stuff though.

Keep in mind that the wireless operators are also trying to monetize this sort of information.

The question for paranoids is if there is a pocket communicator with a physical radio switch and an information hiding protocol for authorizing access to the network (rather than using a fixed serial number like all the phone companies do).

And I'd just like to actually have control over my own phone. Right now, it's Google, Apple, or MS. Google is the "free-est", but exacts their cost with your data.

What I'd like, is something like a cut and dry Linux. The cell phone would be its own group, and you could add users to different groups and hardware, just like Debian or CentOS.

I would also like to be able to create comprehensive dialer programs, that could route calls depending on incoming data, record audio, pipe audio via PulseAudio and things I can normally do with Linux right now.

But in the best of situations, I'm forced to choose 3 of "Crap"... And hope I chose right so I can at least jailbreak (in reality, owning my device- it's not Apple's or Microsoft's).

http://avoidhumans.com/ has been doing this for a while. Don't know how well it works though, never used it myself.

Hmm... I can avoid humans by just staying home :)

This is very useful. I've been able to time some purchases and administrative tasks using Popular Times.

The amount of stuff Google and other services know about me can be a bit shocking - although, as most people, I'm really predictable (and I use Android a lot), so I shouldn't be shocked if Uber suggests "to work" at 9 a.m. and Google reports (accurately) about the traffic conditions and suggests walking, saying I'm going to take 40 minutes and I end up taking 39 (incredibly accurate).

I really appreciate the Google feature that tells you how busy a restaurant will be at different times of day, and how long people typically spend there. It is like road traffic but for everything else in life:

http://i.imgur.com/JGlcIQ8.png

And coming into the Black Friday/Christmas season it may be useful for other types of businesses too. But restaurants are where it really shines.

Is anyone else seeing something other than Liberty State Park listings in the promo of this page? I am curious whether Google is targeting me. LSP is an old stomping ground for me.

I'm seeing it and I'm not even on the same continent as you.

I think under the guise of proving some nebulous value Google has persistently embraced a pattern of actions to legitimize surveillance and get people used to be surveilled.

Why does Google search need your location. Any value from that accrues to Google and not the user and yet every Google search has your location at the bottom of the page.

Thas just phychologically serves to get users accustomed to surveillance. And this is one more in a line of creepy behavior that need to be called out for what it is.

For some reason the title sounded ominous to me.

Wouldn't it be better to link to the Google blog post directly? https://blog.google/products/search/know-you-go-google/

Isn't this just telling terrorists where and when to strike targets?

Yeah, because terrorists need help knowing when JFK, LAX or LHR airports are busy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

There are, to a first approximation, hardly any terrorists in the West, compared to all the other usual causes of premature death (car accidents, suicide, and in the US police shootings & gun accidents).

Of the organized terrorists, choice of target isn't going to be influenced by an app; it will be driven by symbolism (Twin Towers), political significance (Charlie Hebdo), availability, and the general fact that large areas of big cities are full of people (7/7 London bombings). There's no complex optimization going on here. Bataclan also appears to have been a vendetta: https://www.ft.com/content/d322a2d8-8df6-11e5-8be4-3506bf20c...

Of the unorganized terrorists, the mass shooters: these seem to be extensions of personal grudges where the person goes to their school or workplace and opens fire. Even when the target is a nightclub (Orlando), the choice of target is political (in that case, driven by homophobia).

I'm not sure there are many terrorists anywhere else, at least by the normal definition. How many people in Iraq have been killed by civilians with car bombs versus all other causes of death? The point of terrorism isn't to be a likely killer, but to cause irrational terror, thus the name.

One less death doesn't mean anything to you? Wouldn't you prevent a death if you could?

Of course I'd prevent it, and of course it means everything. I'm just saying that it's incredibly easy for terrorists to identify, without the help of Google at all, specific areas where humans congregate in greater numbers in order to increase the casualty count when their aim to to do so. Hence many terrorist atrocities that have already occurred have done so in places like airports, train stations, music/sports venues etc.

Moreover, these are venues with serious capacity and are unlikely to be the kind of places where users of Google's new service will look for. They're more likely to want to know, "Is my favourite downtown bar busy?" which might represent a few hundred people at most, whereas the average sports stadium is always busy when a game is on, and holds significantly larger numbers of people.

Surely the opportunity costs of attacking an unsecured crowded bar over a secured sports stadium are favored toward an unsecured bar.

Recently there were posts here concerning unethical practices in software development.

https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-code-im-still-ashamed-of...

Google somehow gets a pass on these practices for some reason. They have a lot of power and influence over the things they decide to do with the information they are volunteered. I think they should be cautious with releasing real time data on where people are congregating.

Might as well close down all bars, airports, concert venues and any public transportation. Just imagine how many deaths we could prevent.

In an absolute sense you're not going to prevent any deaths unless you're preventing lives. Everybody alive is going to die.

One less death relative to what?

You do know you could be on your way to a poor country to help sick people there right now? Don't you care about sick people dying? You could have prevented several death of loving fathers and mothers by now, and - let's not forget - their children! Instead, you decided to post this. Are you a terrorist?

Reminds me of that joke about U2 singer Bono. At a U2 concert in Glasgow, Scotland, Bono asked the audience for total quiet. Then, in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands, once every few seconds. Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone, "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies." From the front of the crowd a voice with a broad Scottish accent pierced the quiet … "Well, fuckin stop doin it then, ya evil bastard!"

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13013699 and marked it off-topic.

i hate to say this but, is google aware of the fact that this would easily turn into an act of terrorism tool for increasing casualities?

As [1] points out, anywhere with sufficient volume of people to be an attractive target would not need this tool to identify busy periods.

(I work for Google, but not on anything remotely related to this, so this is just my own $0.01, pointing at someone else's $0.02.)

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13013741

But it could be a useful tool to statistically determine the spot that is most reliably busy at a given time. Just another $0.01.

As could a pen and paper and a week of taking notes.

I'm in no way defending the terrorism concerns, but there's absolutely no valid comparison between digital aggregation and availability of data and what someone could do with pen and paper.

I've read it "Know before you go with Google", skipping the comma. Then read "blog.google" and thought Google had gone honest, talking about how much data do they have from me and that I should not use it...

Then I woke up.

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