Reading the conclusion really reinforces for me the difference in priorities. One group thinks it actually would be nice to have big datasets to serve useful aims like this. But also maybe even to track actual bad people down. Despite their frequent portrayal as evil Big Brother, they don't want to use it to do harm.
The other people are afraid of a totalitarian state having control of such data because obviously it would be super bad.
The first group might argue, "As this is in theory a democratic society, can we just not voluntarily elect awful people would would make a totalitarian government? And then in the meantime we can actually use this to do good, like catching actual dangerous criminals?"
The second group clearly believes the descent into totalitarianism is inevitable and just wants to hobble those future villains as much as possible (A noble idea if you believe this).
I think the first group could argue that if a truly evil dictator does come to power, they would have zero qualms about imposing the really scary surveillance stuff themselves anyway, so what we're doing now doesn't matter as much as we think.
I don't think either is automatically wrong, but I wish both sides would acknowledge that the other has a point.
The reason we have protections and limits on the power is to /prevent/ the totalitarian state. You'd have to be seriously daft to to think of the next 5 country leaders, similar types to the last 5, /none/ of them would hold onto their power if they could despite becoming unpopular. Maintaining the fight against that is the opposite of believing it is inevitable. Once it happens prior rules no longer matter at all.
Again we limit power because it will corrupt and that's how we avoid totalitarian states. "This power grab is fine because we're not a totalitarian state" is utterly and dangerously moronic.
I hate to say it, but recent history shows me that many of the people who are most afraid of the government are also the most enthusiastic about letting "their guy" do whatever he wants, "laws" be damned. They see the other side as a totalitarian threat, but see our democratic institutions as part of that totalitarian threat.
>The second group clearly believes the descent into totalitarianism is inevitable and just wants to hobble those future villains as much as possible (A noble idea if you believe this).
Historically this has generally been the case. E.g. Rome becoming more authoritarian as it collapsed, or the liberal Song dynasty degenerating into authoritarianism from which China still hasn't recovered.
This is a bit of a strawman. The most important concern isn’t that we’re going to end up with a Mussolini type running things one day (and even if we did, it’s unlikely the general public would even notice until it was far too late). The more pressing concern is that as soon as you grant the government any new powers, they immediately set about misusing it. It just won’t necessarily impact your life in particular. But every day people throughout supposedly democratic western countries have their lives ruined by some kafkaesque government tyranny. They’ll end up on a no-fly list, or get entirely locked out of the financial system for triggering some AML alert and never be told what happened, or have all of their devices confiscated for attending an pro-Palestine rally, or perhaps even end up in indefinite detention somewhere without any charges. All without any level of due process. When this happens to people, they immediately find out that nobody really cares, with many people holding views similar to your “I’m sure it’s never going to happen guys” or “if it did ever happen we’d surely do something to stop it”.
Proposing some sort of tangible benefit is only marginally less bad than “think of the children” as a justification. But the tyranny is here today, if you’re unlucky your government will gladly trample all over your life, and if they ever do it’s unlikely many people will even take any notice, let alone care.
Same here with the city's local transport system. Ironically, they've pretty much also forced everyone without a car or a bicycle to use their mobile [surveillance] app, so you are pretty much [presumably unlawfully] forced to disclose your personal data in order to go to work. The only alternative is an old-fashioned credit card -style thing, but even that requires you disclosing your real identity for who knows what reason.
Ironically, when you visit Central Europe, for instance, you can use similar transport services just fine with cash. Furthermore, the city's mobile app hasn't really done anything for the tax payers; in fact, the fees have only increased. But I'm sure someone somewhere benefits from the personal data collected.
You can use them with cash but why would you go through all those hoops? Better fix the personal data creep and illegal surveillance at the source, I'd say, then we can all benefit from good travel system planning and all those wins which big data promised us - while mostly delivering more ads instead.
> Ironically, they've pretty much also forced everyone without a car or a bicycle t
In many cities across the Western world, and even here in Eastern Europe, it has become impossible to "hide" your movements by car inside big cities because of the authorities forcing mobile parking apps down people's throats. In other words it has become almost impossible to pay for parking by cash, anonymously, to a machine installed at the side of street, you have to pay via those mobile apps (or through SMS, which is basically the same thing).
> The only alternative is an old-fashioned credit card -style thing, but even that requires you disclosing your real identity for who knows what reason.
Oh bullshit. You can buy and use an oyster card anonymously. I do. Stop spreading FUD.
> "...using this sort of data is increasingly routine for local authorities and others. To the extent that O2 even has a brand name for this line of its business – “O2 Motion”."
Oh, that's nice. How lovely that by being an O2 customer I'm able to contribute in so many different ways as a cash cow profit-making machine.
I'm sure they'll be sending me my cut of the extra profits any day now, perhaps as a discount off my bill?
What's that? They're increasing prices above inflation year-on-year? Well, I am shocked!
Not to worry - I'll show them! I'll just switch to one of their competitors! The free market in action!
What's that? Their competitors are all doing the same things? And many of their competitors actually use O2's network infrastructure?
I care about privacy quite a bit but there doesn't seem to be much controversy here.
Yes it's creepy that O2 has pretty tight demographic data and shares some of that information with TfL, and we have to assume they're doing that for other more nefarious customers with fewer privacy restrictions. But telecoms being involved in that kind of shady business is old news.
I'm all for improving the information (given it's private) that public transit service lines and scheduling planners have access to if it means smoother transit and especially less dependence on cars.
> I'm all for improving the information (given it's private) that public transit service lines and scheduling planners have access to if it means smoother transit and especially less dependence on cars.
My dream is a CityMapper style app used to offer "virtual public transit" as the means to both collect this kind of info and actively use it to make transit better.
That is, say TFL were to offer up "virtual bus routes" that may or may not coincide with the real ones, and that feed other transit hubs.
Where they coincide with regular routes, the selling point would be that they'd hire cars to handle excess demand or gaps in service so you can guarantee pickup from any bus stop within x minutes as long as you plan a journey in the app. What's great about the tube is knowing you can just show up and there's "always" a train soon. Getting something like that for busses would be fantastic, and you can offset some of the cost of guaranteeing more frequent service by actually cutting the frequency of full-size scheduled buses on less used stretches as long as you guarantee on average shorter waits when people need it.
Maybe with some limitations - e.g. if not a "real" bus you might be shunted onto regular services at the nearest transit hub.
Where they don't coincide with regular routes, you use first/last mile data from the planning to try to guess at new routes to offer, and so when people book, they might get offered to go to a nearer pickup point that isn't a bus stop but where you're guaranteed to be picked up. There are some services sort-of like this, but usually as a separate thing, and it'd be great if it's fully integrated as a means to plug holes in service and test route changes.
I think there's a lot of chicken and egg going on with transit where likely viable routes aren't available because testing them out is difficult and expensive and gathering data on which routes might be useful likewise. If you can fill them with smaller, cheaper cars and dynamically test, I think it'd have the potential to get a lot more people to try to stick with public transport. Especially if it also offer "fallback" or combined options involving booking a taxi for all or part of it when even the virtual routes can cut it.
CityMapper is great for the planning in London, but that ability to offer "virtual routes" at scale is what would really change things.
The title is misleading, the emotional "It's crazy how much Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data" becomes "TFL can extrapolate from an anonymised & time-limited subset of third-party data aggregations of the gender, age and travel-type of a sum of people.
> The title is misleading, the emotional "It's crazy how much Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data"
The title: What Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data
I don't see what about the title is so emotionally charged. It only asks the question what London transport can learn from mobile data and the article answers precisely that.
"Anonymization". Two reasons: either they de-anonymize the data, which is a good exercise for them but still approximate, or the demographic data is merely registered beforehand. Here, I think they for instance need the age (and not its category) because of discounts to young and old people.
This is a great piece of investigative journalism and a great write up. Like the author says what they’re doing is not illegal and it’s GDPR compliant.
It definitely makes me think though that GCHQ certainly have the deanonymised stream of data from all cellular providers - only for use in “matters of national security” of course
The question is how Transport for London is such an inexcusable dumpster fire. I'm sorry London, but your public transit is the most expensive I've ever encountered and the least efficient public transit system I've encountered outside of the United States.
It generally gets you where you need to go, but often via roundabout routes. Both buses and trains are often delayed and sometimes don't arrive at all, so you best not be in a hurry. Trains are so expensive that a car ride is usually more cost effective, even with the congestion fees.
Interesting to hear this perspective, usually I just hear people fawning over TfL.
FWIW, TfL has been dealing with funding crises for years. I believe it is far less subsidised than public transit systems in other major cities. There was talk a while ago about TfL officially going into a state of "managed decline", where the priority would be attempting to mitigate the impact of funding shortfalls on service levels. Like, that was a phrase used publicly at the highest levels. I don't know if they ever technically activated that scenario but they have been on the brink financially at least since Covid.
As for the specific criticisms, I mostly use the tube which is probably the best of the TfL services. I am on the Northern line which is super frequent and reliable so I can't complain. The hub and spoke model does mean it's a pain getting from one non-central area to another non-central area. Buses are better for that but they do have issues with delays in my experience.
I moved here from a city with notoriously awful public transit so to me it's great, but I guess there are probably cities in continental Europe with far superior systems. Honestly though, it's 2023 and I still need to buy paper tickets for the Paris metro...
>The question is how Transport for London is such an inexcusable dumpster fire. I'm sorry London, but your public transit is the most expensive I've ever encountered and the least efficient public transit system I've encountered outside of the United States.
Definitely don't try and use public transport anywhere else in England then!
It is expensive because it pays for itself through fares, as I understand it this is quite rare at a global level, recovering the most of all of Europe, and much more than anywhere in NA.(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio)
The maximum daily cap for an adult from zone 1 - 9 is around £21. It will categorically not be cheaper than using a car to use TFL transport within London. I think you may be confusing TFL services with national rail services.
Eh? How? 15 quid for the congestion charge, (and potentially £12.50 for ULEZ if you don’t meet the requirements).
And that’ll get you infinite journeys from zone 1-6, (£14.90 daily cap for that distance with oyster).
That same journey by car, if we count fuel (average of 52mpg and 162p per litre of diesel) - it’ll cost you ~£5 each way from Epping to Tottenham Court Road.
So £25/potentially £37.50 with ULEZ vs £14.90. And then I hope you have parking space paid for you in zone 1…
[+] [-] xp84|2 years ago|reply
The other people are afraid of a totalitarian state having control of such data because obviously it would be super bad.
The first group might argue, "As this is in theory a democratic society, can we just not voluntarily elect awful people would would make a totalitarian government? And then in the meantime we can actually use this to do good, like catching actual dangerous criminals?"
The second group clearly believes the descent into totalitarianism is inevitable and just wants to hobble those future villains as much as possible (A noble idea if you believe this).
I think the first group could argue that if a truly evil dictator does come to power, they would have zero qualms about imposing the really scary surveillance stuff themselves anyway, so what we're doing now doesn't matter as much as we think.
I don't think either is automatically wrong, but I wish both sides would acknowledge that the other has a point.
[+] [-] harry8|2 years ago|reply
Again we limit power because it will corrupt and that's how we avoid totalitarian states. "This power grab is fine because we're not a totalitarian state" is utterly and dangerously moronic.
[+] [-] jewayne|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] logicchains|2 years ago|reply
Historically this has generally been the case. E.g. Rome becoming more authoritarian as it collapsed, or the liberal Song dynasty degenerating into authoritarianism from which China still hasn't recovered.
[+] [-] barrysteve|2 years ago|reply
Specific "tasks" are bounded by their requirements, we've seen none of that in the take-all and leave no stone unturned approach to electronics.
There is a false calm in not taking this seriously enough. The default reaction of many is to avoid hurting feelings, at the cost of western liberty.
Your choice.
[+] [-] AmericanChopper|2 years ago|reply
Proposing some sort of tangible benefit is only marginally less bad than “think of the children” as a justification. But the tyranny is here today, if you’re unlucky your government will gladly trample all over your life, and if they ever do it’s unlikely many people will even take any notice, let alone care.
[+] [-] jruohonen|2 years ago|reply
Ironically, when you visit Central Europe, for instance, you can use similar transport services just fine with cash. Furthermore, the city's mobile app hasn't really done anything for the tax payers; in fact, the fees have only increased. But I'm sure someone somewhere benefits from the personal data collected.
A cross-reference:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38013750
[+] [-] soco|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paganel|2 years ago|reply
In many cities across the Western world, and even here in Eastern Europe, it has become impossible to "hide" your movements by car inside big cities because of the authorities forcing mobile parking apps down people's throats. In other words it has become almost impossible to pay for parking by cash, anonymously, to a machine installed at the side of street, you have to pay via those mobile apps (or through SMS, which is basically the same thing).
[+] [-] mikrl|2 years ago|reply
They got Oysters, they’re not just seafood
So the boy-dem can follow and see you
[+] [-] _a_a_a_|2 years ago|reply
Oh bullshit. You can buy and use an oyster card anonymously. I do. Stop spreading FUD.
[+] [-] wackget|2 years ago|reply
Oh, that's nice. How lovely that by being an O2 customer I'm able to contribute in so many different ways as a cash cow profit-making machine.
I'm sure they'll be sending me my cut of the extra profits any day now, perhaps as a discount off my bill?
What's that? They're increasing prices above inflation year-on-year? Well, I am shocked!
Not to worry - I'll show them! I'll just switch to one of their competitors! The free market in action!
What's that? Their competitors are all doing the same things? And many of their competitors actually use O2's network infrastructure?
Well, guess I'm fucked.
[+] [-] switch007|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uoaei|2 years ago|reply
Yes it's creepy that O2 has pretty tight demographic data and shares some of that information with TfL, and we have to assume they're doing that for other more nefarious customers with fewer privacy restrictions. But telecoms being involved in that kind of shady business is old news.
I'm all for improving the information (given it's private) that public transit service lines and scheduling planners have access to if it means smoother transit and especially less dependence on cars.
[+] [-] vidarh|2 years ago|reply
My dream is a CityMapper style app used to offer "virtual public transit" as the means to both collect this kind of info and actively use it to make transit better.
That is, say TFL were to offer up "virtual bus routes" that may or may not coincide with the real ones, and that feed other transit hubs.
Where they coincide with regular routes, the selling point would be that they'd hire cars to handle excess demand or gaps in service so you can guarantee pickup from any bus stop within x minutes as long as you plan a journey in the app. What's great about the tube is knowing you can just show up and there's "always" a train soon. Getting something like that for busses would be fantastic, and you can offset some of the cost of guaranteeing more frequent service by actually cutting the frequency of full-size scheduled buses on less used stretches as long as you guarantee on average shorter waits when people need it.
Maybe with some limitations - e.g. if not a "real" bus you might be shunted onto regular services at the nearest transit hub.
Where they don't coincide with regular routes, you use first/last mile data from the planning to try to guess at new routes to offer, and so when people book, they might get offered to go to a nearer pickup point that isn't a bus stop but where you're guaranteed to be picked up. There are some services sort-of like this, but usually as a separate thing, and it'd be great if it's fully integrated as a means to plug holes in service and test route changes.
I think there's a lot of chicken and egg going on with transit where likely viable routes aren't available because testing them out is difficult and expensive and gathering data on which routes might be useful likewise. If you can fill them with smaller, cheaper cars and dynamically test, I think it'd have the potential to get a lot more people to try to stick with public transport. Especially if it also offer "fallback" or combined options involving booking a taxi for all or part of it when even the virtual routes can cut it.
CityMapper is great for the planning in London, but that ability to offer "virtual routes" at scale is what would really change things.
[+] [-] moritonal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whent|2 years ago|reply
The title: What Transport for London can learn about us from our mobile data
I don't see what about the title is so emotionally charged. It only asks the question what London transport can learn from mobile data and the article answers precisely that.
[+] [-] jruohonen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bazmattaz|2 years ago|reply
It definitely makes me think though that GCHQ certainly have the deanonymised stream of data from all cellular providers - only for use in “matters of national security” of course
[+] [-] whent|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unregistereddev|2 years ago|reply
It generally gets you where you need to go, but often via roundabout routes. Both buses and trains are often delayed and sometimes don't arrive at all, so you best not be in a hurry. Trains are so expensive that a car ride is usually more cost effective, even with the congestion fees.
[+] [-] NoboruWataya|2 years ago|reply
FWIW, TfL has been dealing with funding crises for years. I believe it is far less subsidised than public transit systems in other major cities. There was talk a while ago about TfL officially going into a state of "managed decline", where the priority would be attempting to mitigate the impact of funding shortfalls on service levels. Like, that was a phrase used publicly at the highest levels. I don't know if they ever technically activated that scenario but they have been on the brink financially at least since Covid.
As for the specific criticisms, I mostly use the tube which is probably the best of the TfL services. I am on the Northern line which is super frequent and reliable so I can't complain. The hub and spoke model does mean it's a pain getting from one non-central area to another non-central area. Buses are better for that but they do have issues with delays in my experience.
I moved here from a city with notoriously awful public transit so to me it's great, but I guess there are probably cities in continental Europe with far superior systems. Honestly though, it's 2023 and I still need to buy paper tickets for the Paris metro...
[+] [-] M2Ys4U|2 years ago|reply
Definitely don't try and use public transport anywhere else in England then!
[+] [-] reedf1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tablloyd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambdas|2 years ago|reply
And that’ll get you infinite journeys from zone 1-6, (£14.90 daily cap for that distance with oyster).
That same journey by car, if we count fuel (average of 52mpg and 162p per litre of diesel) - it’ll cost you ~£5 each way from Epping to Tottenham Court Road.
So £25/potentially £37.50 with ULEZ vs £14.90. And then I hope you have parking space paid for you in zone 1…
[+] [-] dukeyukey|2 years ago|reply
* Paris
* Amsterdam
* Brussels
* Berlin
* Vienna
* Budapest
And probably some others I'm missing. TfL isn't as special as some people think, but it's still pretty damn good.
[+] [-] barrysteve|2 years ago|reply
At some point, it will be trivial to force people to act against their conscience, en masse, with electronic precision.
Computers don't take no for an answer. They are the horrifying interface to tyranny.