I think there’s a line between “has the tracker loaded so they can check” versus “actually checks”. Amber having her friends phones traceable is one thing, actually accessing it is more of an invasion. And that may just be my personal limits, but I do think Amber is a bit over the line here purely because she actually uses the program.
She’s a vigilante and a hacker.
She hasn’t been behind the line since we’ve met her.
Or I should say, she’s not someone who generally respects the line.
Tbh, if I had such a program, I wouldn’t be able to resist checking.
Ironically, the way you make it easier to resist is to put red tape in front of the ability to check.
Savail
My husband did OTR trucking for a year, and during that time, he wanted to share his Google Maps location with me as both a trust thing and a safety thing. At first, I found it incredibly creepy and didn’t like checking up on him, but after he started working locally again, it became admittedly pretty helpful for timing when to start cooking supper so it would be ready right as he was getting home. I share my location data with him now, as well, because as a woman carting around a young toddler, having someone who can check my location if something happens is incredibly reassuring.
Rose by Any Other Name
Consent is, as always, a wonderful thing the impact of which should not be ignored.
Savail
Definitely. I’m pretty sure I also hit reply on the wrong person last night, which makes my comment look kind of weird, haha.
Plonker
Not creepy at all, since you’re both onboard with it.
There are levels of potential suck here, though: Being tracked without your knowledge is seriously messed up. Being tracked and being aware of it, but not having a say about it is not as bad, but still pretty bad in the great scheme of things. Being tracked with your consent is mostly ok, but I’d worry about how that consent was acquired.
When you’re the one taking the initiative to give someone else the ability to track your location, it’s on a different level altogether. It’s not just done with your consent, but on your initiative, and typically for your benefit.
Unfortunately, these days you have so much tracking of your location imposed on you, and made to seem like it’s done on your initiative, for your benefit.
Take most of these services in cars, like OnStar or the one VW uses. It’s a service, and you have to sign up to it to enable it, i.e., get the benefit. What you’re not told very clearly is that enabled or not, it will be tracking you and your location data will be used/sold to other entities.
It’s just that without signing up to it, you have no access nor benefit from it. What you enable by signing up is just your access to the location data that’s already being collected by the system. Which, although a tangent to your post, is something that bugs me to no end.
Savail
No, makes sense, and these sorts of caveats with these services are always important to be aware of, too! I have some friends who don’t even like the idea of using Google Maps for tracking. And I can’t say they’re in the wrong. Also, I think I totally responded to the wrong person when I made my post last night..
Also there’s a difference between tracking people in an emergency vs if you’re just wondering, and consentually vs secretly. But oh well, I don’t mind reading about characters who do sketchy things from time to time.
I dunno. I’m never sure about “it’s fine to have the thing as long as you never use it” arguments, because if you aren’t going to use it, why do you want it? Answer: You want it because you’re going to use it. Maybe you’ll tell yourself that this time doesn’t count because… but you’re going to use it.
thejeff
Well, in this case, she wants it for another potential kidnapping, which seems like a reasonable time to use it.
But of course once you have it, even if the original reason was a good one, it’s easy to use it for more trivial things.
Wizard
In the wise words of Sam Vimes, if you do it for a good reason, eventually you’ll do it for a bad reason.
thejeff
So obviously the solution is to never do things for good reasons.
I think Amazi-Girl would not check it unless it was necessary. Amber is not Amazi-Girl, though. She’s a garbage person, in her own words, and garbadge people would.
huesatlight
Amazi-girl knowing how Amber will use it, and not getting consent from the people being tracked, is Amazi-girl crossing the line.
It could be set up so that each time someone is pinged they also get sent a text containing an innocuous image that they’d recognize as a notification they just got pinged. Like Joyce gets sent a random capybara image. Sal gets “New phone, who’s this?” from a spoofed number. etc.
like even if Amber was the type of moral person to pull it off her phone, the moment Amazi-girl takes over and sees it missing she’s gonna put it right back on the phone
Yeah. There were a bunch of abductions around my school in my first year so my parents track my phone with Google maps. Afaik it only gets used when I get in a cab/Uber since, that’s how a lot of abductions happen here
I used to work as a customer service rep for a major cell phone carrier, and you have no idea how many people would call in asking us to tell them where their lost or stolen phone was because they were positive we could track – in real time – any phone on our network no matter where it might be. And then there were the people who wanted us to tell them how to turn on “the tracker app” so they could keep tabs on their child/spouse/boy or girlfriend without their knowing about it.
That’s NSA kinda stuff. And yes the government can track us at any time with or without a warrant, they back-doored the phone system. I wish that wasn’t me being paranoid, but I have seen too many instances of it happening. And I have also seen where they don’t use it when it would make things so much easier before I realize that the situation wasn’t that important.
Considering the entire point of “homo erectus” is that they started standing up straight, it’s hilarious to apply it to someone in the middle of a faceplant.
I say that so many times my brain had to process if I’ve been saying Mike’s last name wrong all these years and it took half a minute for the information that Joyce’s last name was slid in.
Streams of Final Fantasy! With some rather naughty mods enabled. There’s also a social battery recharge channel filled with Pokemon and Digimon nostalgia.
Taffy
I’m pretty sure streaming FF14 with naughty mods is a perma-ban on the usual sites.
Would her ‘extra curricular’ activities disqualify her from that? i imagine she doesn’t have the best opinion on authority/cop figures to rly join it , even if the nsa doesn’t have the same reputation as ACAB or whatever
Slightly better reputation than the other government intelligence agencies though! “Marginally less evil than the FBI and the CIA” is truly a ringing endorsement.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Depends. Gaiman and Pratchett’s Crowly would say the NSA is doing far more total evil by large volumes of little evils. Possibly we just haven’t yet seen the bit where the traffic jam on the information super-highway results in people being nastier to their loved ones. Then again, reddit *was* down yesterday…
Plonker
Possibly a reputation for not being as prone to putting their foot in it, i.e., competency, but for just sheer evil, they have them all beat.
I may resent being controlled by dumb evil, but I truly fear competent evil being in charge.
Wizard
I wouldn’t even be so sure about the competence part. This is an organization whose approach to finding a needle in a haystack is to pile up more hay. Their only true competence lies in the field of avoiding any kind of meaningful oversight or accountability.
CallynD
I think that’s more to do with being SigInt and not really having ground agents than anything to do with actual morality. It’s hard to run MK Ultra from behind a computer screen.
Wizard
I’m disinclined to give them a pass there. Even if they don’t have a whole lot of presence on the ground, they’re perfectly happy to provide information to other entities that do. That makes them accomplices before the fact, at best.
CallynD
Not giving them a pass, ACAB and the NSA are cops, just that being more SigInt lets the foist off blame.
174 thoughts on “Twice”
Ana Chronistic
Joe had to go beyond *spelling it out*
PLUS ULTRA
Pocky
I wonder if they’ll get it framed
Clif
We can hope.
Mollyscribbles
Tracking everyone’s phones would normally be sketchy but given there was an actual kidnapping it probably counts as reasonable paranoia.
Viktoria
I think there’s a line between “has the tracker loaded so they can check” versus “actually checks”. Amber having her friends phones traceable is one thing, actually accessing it is more of an invasion. And that may just be my personal limits, but I do think Amber is a bit over the line here purely because she actually uses the program.
cbwroses
She’s a vigilante and a hacker.
She hasn’t been behind the line since we’ve met her.
Or I should say, she’s not someone who generally respects the line.
PirateTawnee
The line is a dot to Amber.
Sajuuk-Khar
It’s like the whole Bat-Sonar plot thread from the Dark Knight if it was improved by having Superman in it showing off his ass for unrelated reasons
Clif
Does Joe’s ass count?
Jamie
Tbh, if I had such a program, I wouldn’t be able to resist checking.
Ironically, the way you make it easier to resist is to put red tape in front of the ability to check.
Savail
My husband did OTR trucking for a year, and during that time, he wanted to share his Google Maps location with me as both a trust thing and a safety thing. At first, I found it incredibly creepy and didn’t like checking up on him, but after he started working locally again, it became admittedly pretty helpful for timing when to start cooking supper so it would be ready right as he was getting home. I share my location data with him now, as well, because as a woman carting around a young toddler, having someone who can check my location if something happens is incredibly reassuring.
Rose by Any Other Name
Consent is, as always, a wonderful thing the impact of which should not be ignored.
Savail
Definitely. I’m pretty sure I also hit reply on the wrong person last night, which makes my comment look kind of weird, haha.
Plonker
Not creepy at all, since you’re both onboard with it.
There are levels of potential suck here, though: Being tracked without your knowledge is seriously messed up. Being tracked and being aware of it, but not having a say about it is not as bad, but still pretty bad in the great scheme of things. Being tracked with your consent is mostly ok, but I’d worry about how that consent was acquired.
When you’re the one taking the initiative to give someone else the ability to track your location, it’s on a different level altogether. It’s not just done with your consent, but on your initiative, and typically for your benefit.
Unfortunately, these days you have so much tracking of your location imposed on you, and made to seem like it’s done on your initiative, for your benefit.
Take most of these services in cars, like OnStar or the one VW uses. It’s a service, and you have to sign up to it to enable it, i.e., get the benefit. What you’re not told very clearly is that enabled or not, it will be tracking you and your location data will be used/sold to other entities.
It’s just that without signing up to it, you have no access nor benefit from it. What you enable by signing up is just your access to the location data that’s already being collected by the system. Which, although a tangent to your post, is something that bugs me to no end.
Savail
No, makes sense, and these sorts of caveats with these services are always important to be aware of, too! I have some friends who don’t even like the idea of using Google Maps for tracking. And I can’t say they’re in the wrong. Also, I think I totally responded to the wrong person when I made my post last night..
Leorale
Also there’s a difference between tracking people in an emergency vs if you’re just wondering, and consentually vs secretly. But oh well, I don’t mind reading about characters who do sketchy things from time to time.
ktbear
Youve come to the right place.
Daibhid C
I dunno. I’m never sure about “it’s fine to have the thing as long as you never use it” arguments, because if you aren’t going to use it, why do you want it? Answer: You want it because you’re going to use it. Maybe you’ll tell yourself that this time doesn’t count because… but you’re going to use it.
thejeff
Well, in this case, she wants it for another potential kidnapping, which seems like a reasonable time to use it.
But of course once you have it, even if the original reason was a good one, it’s easy to use it for more trivial things.
Wizard
In the wise words of Sam Vimes, if you do it for a good reason, eventually you’ll do it for a bad reason.
thejeff
So obviously the solution is to never do things for good reasons.
Matthew Davis
I think Amazi-Girl would not check it unless it was necessary. Amber is not Amazi-Girl, though. She’s a garbage person, in her own words, and garbadge people would.
huesatlight
Amazi-girl knowing how Amber will use it, and not getting consent from the people being tracked, is Amazi-girl crossing the line.
It could be set up so that each time someone is pinged they also get sent a text containing an innocuous image that they’d recognize as a notification they just got pinged. Like Joyce gets sent a random capybara image. Sal gets “New phone, who’s this?” from a spoofed number. etc.
Kazuma Taichi
the dissociative identity certainly doesn’t help
like even if Amber was the type of moral person to pull it off her phone, the moment Amazi-girl takes over and sees it missing she’s gonna put it right back on the phone
zee
Yeah. There were a bunch of abductions around my school in my first year so my parents track my phone with Google maps. Afaik it only gets used when I get in a cab/Uber since, that’s how a lot of abductions happen here
zee
Then again unlike here I gave permission and have to choose to share my location
Bicycle Bill
I used to work as a customer service rep for a major cell phone carrier, and you have no idea how many people would call in asking us to tell them where their lost or stolen phone was because they were positive we could track – in real time – any phone on our network no matter where it might be. And then there were the people who wanted us to tell them how to turn on “the tracker app” so they could keep tabs on their child/spouse/boy or girlfriend without their knowing about it.
Opus the Poet
That’s NSA kinda stuff. And yes the government can track us at any time with or without a warrant, they back-doored the phone system. I wish that wasn’t me being paranoid, but I have seen too many instances of it happening. And I have also seen where they don’t use it when it would make things so much easier before I realize that the situation wasn’t that important.
Doctor_Who
Like many species, the Common Joeus Erectus puts on a display to impress potential mates.
This specimen has opted to do The Worm. The female appears unimpressed.
Jamie
Considering the entire point of “homo erectus” is that they started standing up straight, it’s hilarious to apply it to someone in the middle of a faceplant.
Proxiehunter
Joe is an example of No Homo Erectus so named for a different part of their anatomy standing upright.
Plonker
I’m tempted to flag that comment, not because there’s anything wrong with it, but to ensure Willis doesn’t miss it. 🙂
Theluxland
It’s still a very rare sight to see Joe face down, ass up
Z
A considerably less rare sight once Joyce decides to try out that “strap on” that was suggested all that time ago.
Wizard
I think the snowflakes shooting out of his butt kind of undermine the effect.
RassilonTDavros
Amazi-Girl is always watching.
Schpoonman
“Aaalways watching, Wabrownski. Aaalways watching.”
Koname
I say that so many times my brain had to process if I’ve been saying Mike’s last name wrong all these years and it took half a minute for the information that Joyce’s last name was slid in.
Schpoonman
You’re welcome.
a/snow/mous/e
Don’t be silly, it’s always been Mike Warnerski.
Francoinblanco
Mordor/sauron theme in the background
Needfuldoer
Just like Ceiling Cat?
Steve
For a second I thought the snowflakes were stars coming up from his butt.
Doctor_Who
The Fart in Our Stars.
UrsulaDavina
Now that I see I really can’t unsee it but that’s okay cause it’s funny.
Keulen
Same.
Inboxninja
Eyes up here ladies
Nono
I mean in his position, there is no “up here”.
Guy Sensei
So glad Amazi-girl is active beyond Roller Derby
Dara
me too. i miss her.
Council
I’m sure the girls appreciate the attempt, Joey, but you gotta work on your reverse dogeza.
Taffy
I might need to log off more frequently. I read “dogeza” as a fourth-level Final Fantasy spell that summons doge memes.
The Wellerman
Would you still be open to watching streams of it tho?
On a server I made that just happens to be about Dumbing of Age…Taffy
Streams of Dogeza?
The Wellerman
Streams of Final Fantasy! With some rather naughty mods enabled. There’s also a social battery recharge channel filled with Pokemon and Digimon nostalgia.
Taffy
I’m pretty sure streaming FF14 with naughty mods is a perma-ban on the usual sites.
The Wellerman
not if you got your own Discord server 😉
Needfuldoer
Much incantation. Very mana. Wow.
Amelie Wikström
Something downward horndog something.
Sirksome
Joyce and Amber have a weirdly low key friendship dynamic. Amber might be the dark horse in the battle for Joyce’s soul.
Thag Simmons
Has Amazi-Girl considered a career at the NSA?
anon
Would her ‘extra curricular’ activities disqualify her from that? i imagine she doesn’t have the best opinion on authority/cop figures to rly join it , even if the nsa doesn’t have the same reputation as ACAB or whatever
Laura
I foresee Amazi-Girl as having a future as a private security contractor.
Proxiehunter
The NSA has a worse reputation than most cops.
Thag Simmons
Slightly better reputation than the other government intelligence agencies though! “Marginally less evil than the FBI and the CIA” is truly a ringing endorsement.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Depends. Gaiman and Pratchett’s Crowly would say the NSA is doing far more total evil by large volumes of little evils. Possibly we just haven’t yet seen the bit where the traffic jam on the information super-highway results in people being nastier to their loved ones. Then again, reddit *was* down yesterday…
Plonker
Possibly a reputation for not being as prone to putting their foot in it, i.e., competency, but for just sheer evil, they have them all beat.
I may resent being controlled by dumb evil, but I truly fear competent evil being in charge.
Wizard
I wouldn’t even be so sure about the competence part. This is an organization whose approach to finding a needle in a haystack is to pile up more hay. Their only true competence lies in the field of avoiding any kind of meaningful oversight or accountability.
CallynD
I think that’s more to do with being SigInt and not really having ground agents than anything to do with actual morality. It’s hard to run MK Ultra from behind a computer screen.
Wizard
I’m disinclined to give them a pass there. Even if they don’t have a whole lot of presence on the ground, they’re perfectly happy to provide information to other entities that do. That makes them accomplices before the fact, at best.
CallynD
Not giving them a pass, ACAB and the NSA are cops, just that being more SigInt lets the foist off blame.