Will be interested to see if this behavior changes.
It's still a nice change though, and I like that they allow users to still send encrypted backups of their location history to the cloud.
If they remove history but sell real time data, customers that require location history will be forced to be buy real-time data at scale in perpetuity.
Should I leave my phone at home whenever I get a spidy sense that a criminal will be crime-ing within a 100 yards of me?
The solution is legal not tech. 5G and wifi6 may allow the government to listen in and watch everything we do but it is the law that can prevent them from doing that. Even in public, there is an expectation of privacy. If you look up a woman's skirt, you can't use "she was in public" as an excuse, it's still a crime because there was an expectation of privacy.
Anyone should be allowed to view and record public activities but not in a way that unveils information explicitly hidden from the public. If you have x-ray vision like superman for example, it would be illegal to see under people's cloths or to read information in the journal in their pocket. Now replace x-ray vision with 5G/wifi6 radio.
I don't recall my mom shipping jobs to China or debasing the currency...
Like the crime of wanting to save your own life? [1]
Edit: forgot to add how abortion is related to location data: after the "Christian" Talibans made abortion illegal, location data became subpeonable to see if someone visited an abortion clinic, if you tracked your periods on an app, this data too, because if you stopped having periods and a few months later it resumed, is that enough proof for a criminal conviction?
Funny to think how the tech companies are slowly realizing, maybe even their 50 domestic markets have regimes that are not liberal democracies, and can abuse laws...
For a more elaborate answer, watch this video: [2], TL;DW your democracy might not last and despots could take over and actually abuse the data they have on you. MAGA 2024, anyone? I mean the whole red states/Taliban-esque "we own women's body" laws is already plenty of steps in that direction...
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/texas-woman-sought-c...
Above and beyond that, thinking ahead to people traveling for healthcare, Missouri and a few other states are or already have enacted a crime of "conspiracy to commit abortion", which means as little as booking flights or hotel.
In the US and most of the west, governments derive their power from the governed, which means their ability to investigate crime is at the consent of the governed as well. It is due to the law not catching up to technology that google has been allowed to share that information.
If cops need information to catch criminals they should get warrants. No company can refuse such a request so long as a magistrate reviews it as being a lawful pursuit of justice.
Tragically, it's not only in this area that governments are woefully behind. Smart operators and Big Tech are so far ahead in the IT/communications game that dismantling many of the most egregious aspects of it will be nigh on impossible. Users are now addicted to so-called free services etc. to such an extent that weening them off them just isn't practical.
Even if governments were now 100% committed to fixing the problems—which they aren't by a long shot—then it'd still take many decades to fix.
The convincing part to me is the bad guys increasingly sophisticated use of technology. They know exactly where the victims are 24/7 (if they want to)
