If you're in Walnut Creek for 2 hours, the city is tracking you | Hacker News Reader

If you're in Walnut Creek for 2 hours, the city is tracking you

mercurynews.com

27 pointsgnabgib13 comments

Boy, did the headline writer get that one wrong. It isn’t the city tracking you, it’s “local business leaders”. I’m still undecided on which is more sinister, but let’s get the details right.

Isn't that the defacto owners of the city usually?

Even if you can vote a politician usually both parties are financed by the same local businesses?

Business owners are not called "The City."

Right that does make sense, but "the city" is a generic enough entity which shouldn't translate to its politicians/govt necessarily automatically either?

There are many contexts where that translates automatically

The city sends me a letter telling me to mow my lawn when I let it grow wild all Summer

"The city" as an entity refers to local governance and city legislation

When you tell the story about how you went to New York City for vacation nobody pictures you hanging out with the Mayor or meeting the City Council or whatever.

In the US most corporations/businesses are allowed to sell the government data that the government itself is not allowed to collect.

When it comes to any data anywhere the problem isn't generally the government having it then, it's that the government can request it one way or another at almost any time.

> usually both parties are financed by the same local businesses?

Most municipal elections aren’t two part. In large single-party cities, the action happens at the primary. In small towns they’re usually nonpartisan. In neither case do local business leaders usually have command.

https://archive.ph/vQd9j

Speaking of Walnut Creek in the context of funny tracking ...

https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gawk.git/commit/?id=c...

Crazy how even after 25 years or whatever "Walnut Creek" instantly made me think of platypuses and Slackware CDs!

A better headline would be “Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce purchases location tracking data of visitors”. What this article misses is that any cities’ business community could buy the same data if they wanted.

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