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[Flying Dice]

Yeah, it's pretty weird, but honestly it is very nice usually. I think the only thing that I don't like is that the majority of posts are made by a small number of posters. Oddly enough it relates somewhat to the current discussion in that the pressure of the environment, not an actual forum guideline/law, is what dictates conduct

In a certain sense, politics is the topic which most frequently brushes forum guidelines. It's right on the crossroads between things that are central to GD and things that tend to make people flare up and violate rule one. And a solid chunk of that comes from people talking past each other, though slightly less on the side of deliberate misrepresentation of late. The GD crowd has always been a fairly small group, and most of the abrasive regulars have managed to get themselves banned atop that.

[Pancakes]

Yeah, while lurking I saw many a member get banned, which is really a shame

[Max™]

My little sister is a plumber, though I could probably perform any number of plumbing related tasks as I've yet to encounter something I can't take apart and put back together again properly, which is something like 90% of most maintenance tasks apparently once you get all the gunk out.

[JoshuaFH]

My little sister is a plumber, though I could probably perform any number of plumbing related tasks as I've yet to encounter something I can't take apart and put back together again properly, which is something like 90% of most maintenance tasks apparently once you get all the gunk out.

But are either of you the best value in town?

I'm sorry, the word 'plumber' can't be spoken without this replaying in my head.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

And a thousand corporals cried out in terror, and were silenced by the staff commander beginning the security powerpoint.

[smjjames]

I do love unintended consequences. "Let's make a fitness app that tracks location, so we can outline jogging paths that people take and make a neat heatmap of them." No one thought that US military personnel might use this app, or forget to turn their settings to "private", and offer up publicly a detailed map of every US military base in the world. Yet, here we are.

It's not just US military, it's every other military as well as places in Russia showed up apparently.

[Greiger]

All the more reason to never excorsize* ever.

_{^{*Good god it's not even in my list of known spellcheck words.   I suppose I could google how to spell it, but eh, it's funnier this way.}}

[Rolan7]

While this was a mistake on the part of the soldiers (assuming the "private" setting was reasonably obvious)...
Why did Strava release all this data publicly?

It's one thing to say they have the data, or even share parts with news organizations as evidence.  I guess they wanted to make a splash, and become relevant for as long as possible.

And so they willfully exposed American soldiers' locations to the world.  Make of that what you will, I guess.

[wierd]

Soldiers are people too.

When companies go out of their way to hide privacy settings (because they reduce the flow of that delicious marketable data), they dont get a free pass when things like this happen. Soldiers arent superior to other humans. They are just given more responsibilities.

[SalmonGod]

Soldiers arent superior to other humans.

Omg why don't you support our troops???   

[Rolan7]

Soldiers are people too.

When companies go out of their way to hide privacy settings (because they reduce the flow of that delicious marketable data), they dont get a free pass when things like this happen. Soldiers arent superior to other humans. They are just given more responsibilities.

The company released the data publicly, for some reason.  Deliberately, it would seem.

Soldiers are people, yes, you are correct?  Their deployment areas and specific locations are valuable intel.

[wierd]

Missing what I am saying, so I guess I will be blunt.

Companies want to collect this data because it is valuable to their marketing departments. Those same marketing departments want this data *all the time*, not 'some of the time', so they tell their software monkeys that they either cannot disable the tracking, or have to bury the disable feature deep under several layers of options dialog in a disused section of the UI with a sign that says "beware of the leopard" on it.

If these measures are effective at preventing end users from knowing about the tracking in general, the measures will likewise be effective at preventing soldiers (who are just consumers in uniforms) from also knowing about it.  This means that soldiers using the software will then be sending the data, which just so happens to also be a national security issue.

The issue here is not that soldiers need to be held more accountable; it is that these companies need to not bankroll on data collection as an essential part of their business model, and need to openly disclose that they collect the data, and that such data collection can be completely disabled, and how-- very openly.

[Rolan7]

Fair enough, we agree that soldiers are like other people when it comes to using apps.  Companies don't necessarily know, data is collected on everyone.

Except in this case they did know, and specifically released intel on active soldiers, for some reason.

[Culise]

Fair enough, we agree that soldiers are like other people when it comes to using apps.  Companies don't necessarily know, data is collected on everyone.

Except in this case they did know, and specifically released intel on active soldiers, for some reason.

I wonder; what they put out in response to queries was a pretty basic form letter shifting the blame onto the users.  I don't think they knew in the sense that they really thought this through and still decided to release this intel.  I think that they took all this aggregate data, ran it into a map, and dumped it into the world to drum up interest in their product.  I think they didn't even think about the ramifications of releasing this information.  Even in the military, how many of these soldiers considered the OPSEC ramifications of this, and I'm almost certain the people behind this app are civilians who wouldn't know OPSEC from OPFOR.  Now, you could argue that they *should* have thought about it and known, but that's a rather different thing than arguing that they *did* know and did it regardless.  I really think this was more incompetence than malice: to wit, that they didn't even think of this data as being intel of any sort.

[Rolan7]

Yeah, fair enough...  It was probably an accident, initially.
And like Wierd is saying, it's fundamentally on the soldiers for volunteering sensitive data.