[HN Gopher] Charter boat captains don't have to share location w...
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Charter boat captains don't have to share location with government,
court rules
Author : mhb
Score : 51 points
Date : 2023-03-06 19:31 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reason.com)
| lokar wrote:
| Amateur hour. Simply say you will restrict coastguard emergency
| services if you voluntarily comply. They won't be able to get
| insurance. The market at work.
| mansion7 wrote:
| Much like politicians openly threatening internet sites to
| censor their own users, or the government will do it for them.
|
| Wonder what such a tactic should be called; perhaps
| "constitutional rights laundering".
| nashashmi wrote:
| I saw a documentary on YouTube about boats leaking into
| industrial oil into oceans far from land instead of disposing
| them properly via hazmat. And this was done in bulk intentionally
| to avoid the cost of disposal. For the longest time a non profit
| was finding this on satellite images. But could not trace it
| until transponder data started appearing publicly.
|
| Came across the video through some random recommendation engine
| when I was not logged in. wont find it now.
| gumby wrote:
| > Boat-tracking regulation is a warrantless search, court says.
|
| Ah, but ubiquitous ALPR is OK. Got it!
| lucb1e wrote:
| The first thing that pops into your head when reading "private
| vehicle's location need not be streamed to government" is: why
| would it? What did I miss? These are the relevant sentences from
| the article:
|
| > It seems preposterous, but the Department of Commerce and the
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) this
| privacy-infringing protocol in 2020. [Yes, the verb is missing
| here, but okay it's some law.... but why?]
|
| > What benefits does the Government point to in response? Next to
| nothing. [great, lots of detail there]
|
| > The regulation--issued pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery
| Conservation and Management Act of 1976--was proposed by NOAA.
| [okay we got a headline of a potential reason behind it now, but
| are rental boats really the culprit in overfishing? Wouldn't it
| be fishing companies? Why only in 2023? Sounds fishy]
|
| And that's all we get. After 518 words on the topic, the page
| "goes on" to report on decriminalizing pscyhedelic [sic] plants
| in some cities.
|
| So.... asking as someone out of the loop... what's this all about
| in the first place?
| solarpunk wrote:
| Here's what NOAA has to say about things:
| https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/noaas-office-la...
| melony wrote:
| > _The first thing that pops into your head when reading
| "private vehicle's location need not be streamed to government"
| is: why would it?_
|
| Wait till you hear about "airplanes".
| cjensen wrote:
| AIS[1] is basically an airplane transponder, but for vessels
| and I think it broadcasts position along with identification.
| For safety alone, seems to me that any commercial vessel
| carrying paid passengers should have one.
|
| But the Reason article is so vague I literally can't tell if
| they are talking about AIS, or some other bespoke system.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_sy
| ste...
| jaywalk wrote:
| Well with airplanes, there is a real justification for it:
| safety. They're moving fast and have to make sure they don't
| collide.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| But you don't _have_ to broadcast your tail number to
| prevent a collision. It makes tracking by ATC easier since
| the tail number can be traced back to a flight plan, but if
| the sole reason is to prevent in-air collision, a radio
| beacon without tail number could achieve that.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| A tail number also makes it easier for ATC to know who to
| give runway landing clearance to, doesn't it? They can't
| just say "you airplane over there, yes you, you're clear
| to land".
| Johnny555 wrote:
| "Randomized identifier XYZZY, you are cleared to land"
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Not when it is mandatory for small and slow planes where
| the system cost is a big problem.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| At least for airplanes you don't have to transmit the
| position when the plane does not fly. The article says the
| boats must do it 24x7.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Since this involves agencies regulating fisheries I suspect
| that they are trying to get accurate data about aquatic life
| taken during fishing activities so that they can make accurate
| estimates of a species ability to thrive in an area and perhaps
| to drive legislation that would protect areas from over-
| fishing.
|
| I don't think they give a shit about knowing which boat was
| where unless that boat is engaged in illegal activities.
| Smuggling in the states that are mentioned is still a thing
| since that is on a direct path from the Caribbean and northern
| parts of South America where illegal drugs originate.
|
| Knowing which boat was where allows them to determine who might
| be meeting the smugglers. Once you shut down the airspace to
| traffickers it is a natural extension to try to limit their
| ability to shift to maritime assets to ship their products into
| the country through small ports or marinas in backwater
| locations.
|
| I don't see this monitoring as an invasion of anyone's privacy.
| I see it more as an extension of border enforcement mechanisms
| to domains which have historically been difficult to control.
| catiopatio wrote:
| > I don't see this monitoring as an invasion of anyone's
| privacy.
|
| _Why_ is persistent mandatory reporting of your location not
| something you view as an invasion of privacy?
| F00Fbug wrote:
| Your first point is really the issue. NOAA extrapolates catch
| information into overall health of the species and uses that
| to issue permits, set quotas, and adjust fishing seasons. Not
| only did I help build some of the ship-board systems, I built
| a ton of data analysis tools on the back-end for NOAA.
|
| Red Snapper in the Gulf of Mexico is a good example. NOAA
| will tell you we're devastating the species (boat captains
| would not agree!) and they adjust quotas and season
| start/stop dates based on catch info to help balance the
| business of fishing and the health of the species. It's a
| tough job because the captains are often at odds with the
| scientists.
|
| It could be possible to sanitize the data and remove the
| position information, but they kind of need some general
| location to do some of the science.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Thanks for your work on this.
|
| This is important as fisheries globally are over-fished.
| The scale of the problem is not even known right now.
| Chinese fishing boats roam the globe taking fish for
| consumption in China and depleting stocks everywhere they
| sail including by fishing in marine sanctuaries.
|
| Fish as healthy food has become a big deal in the last few
| decades and demand grows so the fish have to come from
| somewhere. If you don't protect your fisheries then
| collapse of global fish stocks will only be one more domino
| in the collapse of entire ecosystems.
| MikeKusold wrote:
| This potentially opens up boat location tracking to FOIA
| requests, which would betray what boat captains believe are
| trade secrets (where they fish).
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Control access to the information so that it is less likely
| to escape to their competitors. They are in competition
| with each other and no one wants the other to know where
| they are making their best money.
|
| The real problem is that when a fishery is in decline due
| to over-fishing, we have no effective way of detecting that
| condition until there is a serious problem and local
| stocks, which may be migratory species anyway that are only
| available seasonally, are near the point where they can't
| recover.
|
| Each captain sees a small part of the elephant and to him,
| that elephant is there, it is healthy, and it is available
| for exploitation. When they go back to harbor they compare
| notes and it could take a lot of time for any of them to
| acknowledge that catch levels of some species are down and
| that they are having to go farther out or to locate new
| areas that have not been hit as hard.
|
| I don't see a problem with a government agency with the
| responsibility of safeguarding the health of offshore
| assets like fish stocks and habitat having precise tools to
| allow them to determine where the fish are being taken. If
| this agency did not exist then over-fishing would be the
| norm as each charter boat did the best to maximize the fun
| for the clients until they had fished themselves out of a
| job as the fisheries collapse. In the absence of effective
| regulation, everyone does their own thing with no regard
| for anything except maximizing their own profitability.
| This is the way (of the world).
| patja wrote:
| The costs seem inflated. There are no monthly charges for
| operating an AIS transponder, which costs about $1000 and is
| simple to install.
|
| The Coast Guard collects all AIS track data, and publishes it on
| a 6 month delay via the NOAA Marine Cadastre program.
|
| Maybe the requirement was for some other technology rather than
| AIS.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I'm not sure what the requirements were but the article claimed
| in an attempt to bolster the argument that the government was
| imposing unreasonable costs on charter boat operators that
| charter boat income was only $26000/year and that seems
| suspect. Sounds like a lot of unreported income for those
| charter boats.
|
| If I were an auditor I would definitely be booking random
| fishing trips with the busiest charter boats in these states
| and double-checking the package cost. Fuel, food, and other
| things provided on the trip should be easy to cost out so one
| could determine just how badly these guys are screwing Uncle
| Sam.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| It is a seasonal thing to take vacationers fishing. Charge
| $1000 a trip, maybe fish 80 days a year accounting for
| weather. After expenses there isn't much left over. It is a
| labor of love. How much do you think people who guide people
| on backpacking camping trips earn?
|
| I have been a mate on charter boats. My pay was $100 plus
| $100 expected tip. The workday was 14 hours long. Any fish
| caught couldn't be sold commercially.
|
| Taking people out fishing is not a lucrative career but it
| does provide work for people who lost their jobs commercial
| fishing.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Using a website where ordinary Joes like myself can book
| charter boats [0] at various ports from Texas around The
| GoM to the Atlantic seashore, where the article was
| focused, doesn't support the article's contention that they
| do all this work and only make $26000/year. In fact it is a
| bit preposterous.
|
| As a mate onboard you may not get the big bucks but someone
| is making bank here.
|
| As far as backpacking camping trips go if you book through
| a normal site like through REI [1] they can be pretty
| expensive depending on duration, destination, etc since
| there is a lot of logistical stuff that has to be handled.
| It is not cheap, in the thousands per person for multi-day
| operations. I have not personally booked a trip like that
| since I lived in a tent in Nat'l Parks, motel parking lots,
| KOA or similar campgrounds off and on for several years. I
| can do my own thing and don't need assistance.
|
| Same thing goes for whitewater rafting trips. The costs
| range from really low for half-day trips to thousands for
| multi-day trips. A good friend of mine has been river
| guiding in Idaho since the late 1970's. I would think that
| if he had been in danger of failing in that business that
| he would have fallen back on his college degree in the
| sciences years ago. I have rafted several of the great
| rivers in the western US and it is fantastic fun. [2]
|
| [0] https://fishingbooker.com/
|
| [1] https://www.rei.com/adventures/a/backpacking
|
| [2] https://www.iwuraft.com/
|
| I don't see that $26000 annual income is relevant for
| anyone except the lowest paid seasonal guide. That has to
| be a low number.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| you would be surprised how cheap some employers get to be
| .. when you get into other international jurisdictions..
| well it appears here regularly that on-board fishing and
| some cargo ship practices are a modern holdout for actual
| slavery.
|
| Indentured or forced labor has been the norm not the
| exception, for a very long time in many parts of the
| world.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| It doesn't say "annual income", or "annual revenue". It
| is "net income" which is not always well defined for
| small businesses. It is roughly defined as the amount of
| money you would expect to make running this operation
| after paying employees. What is the "net income" of
| owning a subway sandwich franchise? It is not the same
| concept as employee pay or revenue.
| dieselgate wrote:
| The article specifically mentions GPS and not AIS.
|
| But yeah my questions are around AIS - it's such an important
| safety technology (to at least have a receiver) I'd assume the
| boats would already be equipped with AIS. And if the boats had
| a transmitter it would all be seemingly public information
| anyway (which is the whole point of AIS if I'm not mistaken).
|
| But I am glad the charters are not Required to maintain GPS
| tracking specifically for government monitoring - but in
| practicality it seems to me it wouldn't make that big of a
| difference due to overlapping positional monitoring technology.
| F00Fbug wrote:
| Yeah... not AIS, but NOAA defined VMS (Vessel Monitoring
| Systems). Not only does it report position, but allows captains
| to send in their reporting data while at sea, in an electronic
| format that they could ingest directly into their systems. They
| also allow "email" and some weather reporting.
|
| I led the development of one of these systems from a software
| standpoint: https://thoriumvms.com/
|
| They're not cheap -- $2K or $3K depending on options and
| $40ish/month for service. We were reselling Iridium service as
| the underlying transport.
|
| Looks like the bottom just fell out of this business -- glad
| I'm not relying that for my paycheck anymore!
| getcrunk wrote:
| in our coming future of things like star shield the government
| won't need gps or phones to track us. Enough satellites in space
| to have high res images of all high population areas and real
| time ai tracking of all objects. Lol crying emoji
| F00Fbug wrote:
| It's not necessarily about tracking the boats - that's just a
| byproduct of collecting all this data. NOAA is mainly
| interested in near-realtime fish harvest stats so they can
| regulate fishing permits and quotas. You can't see that with a
| camera!
| doodlebugging wrote:
| If you don't build the technology then it can't be used against
| you. If you do build it then you need to build in effective
| controls so that you can limit or minimize these types of
| undesirable impacts.
|
| None of these things - AI, software to remotely track users,
| etc needs to exist. We were doing fine without it and the
| potential for abuse is so high that there should be a pause on
| adoption until stakeholders, including ordinary citizens, have
| an opportunity to legislate concrete protections for privacy.
| vkou wrote:
| > None of these things - AI, software to remotely track
| users, etc needs to exist.
|
| Overfishing doesn't need to exist either, but unfortunately
| we live in a world where it does.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| This is true and we have to have processes in place to
| understand who is responsible for the fishery destruction
| and to prohibit their activities, levying penalties and
| jail time for the most egregious violators.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Amazing. Private businesses have been tracking everyone for
| decades, but when it's gov trying to solve life-threatening
| problems - it suddenly becomes privacy issue.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| First synthetic aperture satellite was launched in 1978 and was
| able to image things day and night. Sentinel-1's data isn't
| real time but it is publicly accessible and has been up for
| nearly a decade.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Satellite imagery can't achieve resolutions needed to identify
| people. It is physically impossible. Especially so when slewed
| at an angle necessary to see faces.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Sure, but it's still enough to uniquely track them. You can
| math identities separately.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> The court concluded that the GPS requirement "violates the
| Administrative Procedure Act because it is arbitrary and
| capricious, in turn because the Government failed to address
| Fourth Amendment issues when considering it and failed to
| rationally consider the associated costs and benefits."_
|
| Would similar reasoning apply to cars?
| kube-system wrote:
| The government does need a warrant to put a GPS tracker on a
| car.
|
| Although, these days, your car already has one or more GPS
| devices in it sending that data to third parties. And there are
| many organizations that run plate readers on public streets.
| mhb wrote:
| > And there are many organizations that run plate readers on
| public streets.
|
| Yes. Like Flock Safety (YC S17)
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Listen to a podcast about them, it's quite amazing what
| they able to achieve:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/lt/podcast/garrett-langley-
| standi...
|
| TLDL: licence plates can be stolen, but they still can
| identify cars by unique features like scratches, dents,
| mods, tyres, etc.
| gabereiser wrote:
| IANAL but I believe it would set a precedent so that one could
| argue the legality of gps tracking on cars. Especially without
| your consent.
| vuln wrote:
| It would set a precedent that the government could not force
| you to install a gps tracker on your car at your own expense.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It does according to _US v Katzin_...
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