I disagree. It crosses a line and it is one step closer to the rcmp just tracking everyone regardless of legality. Most Canadians are not aware their cell phone providers are selling their location as you say. We are unhappy about that too and would be just as unhappy it was used by anyone for any reason. It is very easy to deannonymise someone given that it would be trivial to see the home location a person is at most times then see where they go to. If they were doing this there should be a mechanism to opt out to avoid abuse of the system. With the Snowden leaks we already saw abuses happening. Workers tracking their lovers. It would be very trivial for someone to look at their girlfriends location simply by watching that location in which she lives and then following her signal even if it is anonymize. We were never told about this or how it would be safeguarded from abuse. This is bullshit despite what you and others here on HN are fighting against our disdain.

First of all, the reason people view the government using the data as different is that the government has coercive powers (and a monopoly on Violence) that other actors don’t.

Secondly, the government making use of an unethical or nefarious practice only serves to legitimize it, and make it harder to roll back.

Lastly, if everything was above board, why be forthright about the use the employment of such data sets?

> Surveillance was already happening at scale and being put to use for whatever nefarious purpose. As long as it wasn't public, very few people cared. Now that the data is used for public good

Why do multiple person believe the issue is that it's the public sector that use it? I didn't know the data was available. The issue is definitely not who use it.