First let me be clear, searches authorized by a local, state, or federal courts are essential to capturing crooks. This commentary addresses data mining for commercial purposes and government searches without benefit of a search warrant from the court.
With today’s electronic technology, folks can “spy” on you anywhere you go without you knowing about it. Cameras are everywhere, you can be recorded and not even know it, and now when you are using your cellphone, credit card, and car GPS map system, the “government” knows where you’re going every day.
Not only that, but they don’t even have to ask for permission to snoop on your daily activities. How do we know this? Because as Noozhawk recently reported, “In a first for Santa Barbara County, smartphone, GPS, and credit card data are being used to learn how people travel, where they travel, and why they travel,” (“Santa Barbara County Agency Using Electronic Smartphone Data for Transportation, Housing Plans,” Jan. 21).
The article claims that “the data is not trackable to individuals and only used to determine overall trends.” If that’s the case, how did they acquire this information; well, they used tracking data from individual devices, and if that’s the case, then they could certainly identify who owned the equipment.
Give this some thought. When you use a search engine on your browser to find a product or your credit card to buy it, you are suddenly bombarded with sales pitches for similar items. And how about all those robo calls we keep getting from political candidates, surveys, or sales pitches for warranty extensions for out-of-date appliances?
The article says, “The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, a powerful, yet low-key regional agency driven by staff members who make decisions about housing, transportation, and overall long-term planning, spent $92,000 on a contract with Lakewood, Kansas-based Replica to learn about travel trends throughout the county.”
The Replica website says that “Replica provides customers with detailed information on who owns EVs, where they are driving, and why.” So if the “data is not trackable to individuals,” how come they collect the data on who is driving the EVs and why?
And if Replica only collects data on EVs, how could this provide travel information on how many people are traveling long distances to work in fossil fuel-powered vehicles? “The cellphone data are combined with credit card data and Caltrans data, such as those strips on the road you drive over that count cars,” the Newshawk article says.
If I am reading the above statement correctly, it looks like the data from all these sources is combined to get a total; that means that there could be numerous duplications because a person traveling in an EV, with a cellphone with tracing capability could trip a Caltrans counter, thus the total would register three trips for one vehicle. And if they use a credit card to charge the EV or purchase fuel, they could be counted again.
“Total vehicle miles traveled are down everywhere in the county except Lompoc and Guadalupe, which [Director of Planning for the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments Michael] Becker said is likely because of the population that works in the farm fields.”
While it’s true that many local farmworkers travel to and from work in their cars, it’s also true that many locals carpool, and seasonal workers travel in labor contractor-provided buses from the contractor-provided group housing to the worksite each day. Many other workers travel to and from Lompoc to service industry jobs to support the Santa Barbara tourist industry.
One of the charts provided by the association of governments is titled “where workers come from” to work in Santa Barbara. While the city of Santa Maria is listed, the cities of Lompoc, Buellton, and Solvang are lumped into the heading “North County.”
UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law says, “The U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court recognize and protect the right to interstate travel. The travel right entails privacy and free domestic movement without governmental abridgement.”
The most troubling part of this revelation is that local government and private data mining companies are aggressively snooping on our everyday travel activities. In this era of political conflict, it’s entirely possible that this intrusion could result in misinterpreted, abused, or misused data to produce poor public policy.
It’s bad enough that the government seems to feel it’s necessary to track ordinary citizens’ daily movements, but what’s worse is what they can do with the information once they get it. And, if our own government has access to this information, who else does and what do they do with it?
Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send a letter for publication to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 8-18, 2024.