I was thinking about what @spaetz said about having application for adult users too (specifically I was thinking for people with alzheimers and the term “geofencing”) and perhaps a program where you can set the phone to start screaching extremely and obnoxiously loudly should it leave designated “home positioning” (that you could password protect to set, at what time interval, etc. etc.)
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Yes, all of the above. All good things for people to choose to do - provided that it is designed from the ground up with privacy paramount - avoid leaking, avoid abuse.
It is possible that a conventional navigation app would also be helpful where some form of dementia is present i.e. to guide the person back.
If it is the phone of the person in question then no need for any fancy communication. The phone itself, without recourse to the internet, can geofence - and alert the person and guide the person back.
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I expect so provided the person knew why they had to go back. I dunno, I was thinking more like some sort of pedometer function that could also detect direction (i.e. 40 steps in pretty much a straight line from a predetermined point is roughly the front door… so if that were to be detected it would trigger the program and the caregiver would be alerted audibly)
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I luckily grew up in a time where children that were old enough to remember their address were not under constand surveillance.
I roamed the streets of my home town and sometimes i was not back at the time set by my mom, who had some harsh words for me in such cases.
But that was it.
And before you say “Yes, but it was much safer for kids in those times!” it wasn’t. Violent krime rates dropt nearly world wide since then.
If you make constant surveillance a normality for your children, why would they oppose it later in Life.
Before you ask: I don’t carry a smartphone and the 3310 i carry for emergencies is off by default.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVLrBJYGxk4 < “Model Citizen” | Dystopian Animated Short Film (2020)
Created by David James Armsby.
“What is a Model Citizen? A Model Citizen is a providing father. A Model Citizen is a caring mother, all in service of a scrappy, young boy or girl. A Model Child raised by a Model Family, to become a Model Citizen of their own!”
This brand-spanking-new installment of the Autodale series follows the lives of the Robinson family; Autodale’s perfect citizens.I’ve wanted to make an animated short film based around the life-cycle of an Autodale citizen/family for a very long time. We’ve only ever seen Autodale through the eyes of children. All of the other short films in the series focus on skeptical children being successfully brainwashed/indoctrinated into complacency with Autodale’s dystopian ways. This short film doesn’t have that arc. This short film is about the parents. These characters have NO DOUBTS about how this system works anymore…
it’s 5 mins long well worth the time … if only somebody posted a non-snoop-tube link …
There is a balance to be found between no surveillance (or more common for that time, parents checking in with each other and children not noticing) and constant surveillance with no accountability for the children. It doesn’t have to be either extreme.
As you note, it wasn’t significantly safer, though there is something to be said for the sooner you report a missing child the higher the probability of finding them. And as I pointed out earlier there is a significant difference between the ages and maturity of different children and in turn the level of surveillance/supervision that’s appropriate. I don’t think anyone here would think every 15year old child should be watched nearly every moment of the day like you would an infant…
The OP asked about a tool that can be used to provide increasing levels of freedom and responsibility over time. Sure it can also be used to take away freedom, but what tool can’t be used for undesirable purposes…
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I actually don’t have any small ones, and what @spaetz suggested is more in line with what I’d like this for. Just something for wife and I to see what’s up as a convenience, commute pickups and so on. I don’t have any strong opinions on whether the kid-tracking thing is good or bad (it has gone a little too far IMO). So far, mostly just common sense “respect user data” points. I’m all on board with that.
Since this doesn’t seem to be a complete non-starter, now what I’m interested in is how we’d actually build a product like this which allows for this type of L5 to L5 secure communications. If there’s some interest (assuming this is even feasible), it might be a fun project to develop.
So I don’t know how many technical folk are here for this type of thing, but architectural or design ideas would be welcome. Right now I’m just trying to determine level of effort and feasibility for building such a tool. Due to the need to have some type of centralized coordinator server, I’m not yet sure how you’d pull that off in a convenient and reliable way that can be trusted by the users.
It’s really a quite similar problem to plain old Linux PC to Linux PC secure communication, I guess. So maybe this is the area I should be looking into for solutions. Using a centralized server makes the IP discovery problem easy, but security, privacy, trust-ability get harder. Some type of peer-to-peer solution could mitigate that, but then reliability and convenience go to crap. It’s like we’d need some kind of DNS-over-HTTPS type of solution, except without using actual DNS… Anyway, if that sparks any interesting ideas for anyone here, I’ll be around.
If you host the server yourself then some of the privacy issues go away. However you then need a reliable internet connection (possibly primary with backup). I think I would do this as V1.0 since it is easier.
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Definitely yes, it’s just that we lose the convenience and reliability factor. That is probably what I’d end up doing though if I work on this, at least for a first run.
I already run a home server 24x7 and I suspect that @spaetz does too - so the incremental inconvenience is small.
If you don’t, think of it as an opportunity. 
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I was more thinking of the convenience of the average person who usually can’t even be bothered to think about Scroogle’s spyware, but then I guess that’s not part of the target “market” anyway, is it?
I thought you were the target market.
If this has to be done on a “public”, theoretically untrusted server then the design would have to be very careful indeed.
Hmmm… If we are talking about voluntary and intentional sharing of location via secure means, as in user can switch it off (there is always kill switch if nothing else)… I was thinking a “stupider” older systems, where messages were just SMS-text (it would still be a valid and useful method for some usecases, to be able to easily send location info to any phone, but I digress), which did not require servers as such. So, developing on that: could there be a way to send (once or automatically with selected interval), a similarly formatted location message (with formatted map link to openstreetmap and puremaps [and gmap too, just for those without alternative]) via Jami or any other distributed message system?
Would this be possible, usable and secure (enough, for the limited usecase)? (Geofence and other features would be later development.)
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I do and vservers capable of running nextcloud are available for 1€/$ / month (so you don’t even need a reliable home internet connection)If we are talking about less technically able average users there are always hosted services. Yes, you do need to trust them, but in the end one always has to trust someone.
I strongly suspect that setting this up in a p2p setting without the need to trust any 3rd party, would be way more difficult, complex and resource-intensive to achieve.
P.s. A nice way would be to just send xmpp messages with your location regularly to a defined address. This could be e2e encrypted so you don’t have to trust your xmpp provider.
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The other day, I learned the term “built-out” here on these very forums
Not being experienced in the tech or building industries, I needed to ask for clarification as I was unfamiliar and thus misunderstanding (nobody has ever said to me "I built-out your burger with mozzarella cheese and mushrooms, etc. etc.)
Likewise, I’m sure there are terms etc. I’ve been exposed to that many here are not familiar with. I think this diversity is one of the purism communities greatest strengths
Although it’s most likely to make me very unpopular here, I’d like to share a training video I’ve been previously exposed to in my industry (I’m not a LEO, btw). The reason why I’m sharing is because, while I’ve expressed my thoughts on the matter here casually, I don’t think casual banter is as impactful (and I do think there’s a need for that) than if I were to simply ask the question “Now that you’ve been exposed to the same information I have, who do you think could really benefit most from the proposed software ?” Uh, I’ll just apologise in advance for ruining some days …sorry:(
I am, but if I were to build something like this and it worked well, of course I’d want to let other L5 owners try it. One less thing to keep people tethered to Google/Apple.
For an initial version, yes I think it makes sense to keep the scope small and just worry about a privately hosted at-home solution.
Yep. What I’m hoping to find (just because it would be cool), is some kind of blockchain related service (Ethereum DAPP or something). Unfortunately that might not be a good match given that we wouldn’t want such data to be stored anywhere but our local phones.
How Jami claims to work (I’ve yet to look into it) is a good example though. Ideally I wouldn’t need to worry much about the L5 to L5 communication layers and I could use some other service/app. At some point I’ll dig into Jami’s design… maybe a new “location” feature there is all that’s needed?
Jami was a great suggestion. Exactly the kind of thing I’m thinking of.
Perhaps what’s needed is just a well polished location/tracking feature within this app. Of course, hard to know if the maintainers would be open to even allowing such a feature contribution.
Me, too. I tried to cut my kids the same slack (this was in the late 90’s/early 00’s). Having said that, I did install a web proxy and reviewed the logs so I could talk to them about their surfing habits.
By the time the youngest was in high school, she had a cell phone and if she left it laying around, I would briefly examine her text messages, just to see if her relationship with her boyfriend showed any signs of coercive or otherwise unhealthy behavior (it did not). What little I did read was all charming innocence blossoming into young womanhood – she really was the good girl she seemed to be, and they’re married now, just bought a house and both working as teachers. Makes a daddy proud!
Still… Trust, but verify!
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One could start developing a stand alone code/script that would do:
- Getting the location from sensors
- Changing raw info to appropriate format(s) to display (something readable as well as compatible with users preferred mapping system)
- Possibly include info on speed and direction, maybe accuracy estimate and/or a user selected “unaccuracy” level:
– change info to be less specific - remove some amount of digits form the end or round them up? as in: general area or town in stead of street/block; 10000m or 1000m accuracy in stead of 10m etc.
– identify a know location (“at Friend X’s place” or “close to Town centre”, “is within a few miles of home” etc.) and give out vagueish location via this text (only?) based on coordinates being within a certain distance of a selected spot (needs a list and some calculations to check proximity) - Creating the suggested links that open different maps/apps (PureMaps, Openstreetmap/web, GMaps/web), text or buttons, to go along with coordinates/info, and forming a nice text message from all of that.
- That could be stand alone and proof of concept: user can copypaste message manyally to any messaging service (SMS, XMPP, Jami, Riot, email, etc.).
- Then start looking into how to best add functionality to do that with a click of a button or automatically (timed intervals, callendar/time and/or geofence), to one or a group, in that separate app and API’s or how to transfer that to a feature of one of the messaging apps.
One step at a time.
(edit: maybe someone could do the first steps of this in the blog, “Easy Librem 5 App Development”? @Kyle_Rankin?)
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if one works at the police he could easily get a restraining-order ankle-bracelet and easily terrorize his close-ones …