I think there needs to be a delineation between anti-theft devices and anti-loss devices.
The sticking point now is that you want to let innocent people know if they're being tracked, but you don't want to let thieves know that they're being tracked. It seems an intractable problem, because there's no way that I can think of for a device to tell the difference between the two.
Anti-loss devices should be portable and detachable, but required to be able to be easily found via some kind of standard tooling. Maybe like the Bluetooth equivalent of pinging the broadcast IP. They should also make an audible noise when the owner tracks them.
Anti-theft devices should be silent, but required to be semi-permanently installed into the device to be tracked. Something annoying to remove, but not impossible. The ownership of the tracker should also be required to be registered with someone; logically the police, since that's who you would call anyways if your stuff was stolen. Anyone who finds an anti-theft device on their person or property that they didn't place there should automatically qualify for a restraining order against the device's owner (that they could opt not to pursue if they wanted). The restraining order should also prevent the device's owner from owning or registering any other anti-theft devices for the duration of the restraining order.
There would also need to be some kind of penalties for unregistered anti-theft devices, and for anti-loss devices that have been tampered with to not make noise or respond to the standard signal.
Also likely some kind of contract two people can enter into that says "I acknowledge that person X has tracker Y in thing Z, and I absolve my right to pursue a restraining order for it" for people who share a car or bike or whatever.
I haven't fully fleshed out the ideas, but I think something like the above reinforces that it's okay to track your own stuff but that's it not OK to track other people.
I agree completely. No mater what Apple and Tile can only do so much to prevent these kinds of things - at some point it is really down to criminals being criminals. We are perfectly fine with selling anyone with a license a motor vehicle but as we have seen many times in the wrong hands they can easily be dangerous killing machines.
I like that Apple is making changes to how they work to discourage Air Tags used for this but to fully stop it would just mean not selling the product at all. And even though I am DEFINITELY not an Apple fan I think that is a poor solution to the problem.
Instead of making anti-theft devices semi permanent I think it makes much more sense to just discourage using them for stalking in the first place at the time of purchase. If you make a device that is semi permanent people will just find a way to hack it and repackage it into something else. And realistically people may want smaller anti theft devices for small but very valuable items.
What I think would probably be the best solution is to do something along the lines of what you said about registering with the police. Instead of manually having to do that though it would probably be easier if at the time of sale you had to sign a terms of service and the vendor automatically registered the serial number to your name in some kind of semi-public registry that law enforcement and others have access to. Even if would be thieves find ways around this it is going to discourage a ton of stalking in the first place.
I am hoping we get a fully open airtag platform out of this with Android apps, devices, windows, linux, etc. In addition I think a setting on your phone that you could manually activate that told any airtags within a close vicinity to NOT track you could also be interesting - there may be many false positives but someone explicitly worried about someone stalking them could activate this feature for at least some piece of mind.
All your proposals ignore the fact that someone with electronic design skills can whip up a GPS tracker that is outside of this system.
You would have to regulate this at the integrated circuit supplier level.
Oops, China; good luck.
Note that a tracking device does not have to transmit any information in real time. Suppose someone wants to find out where you live. If they know that they will run into you again somewhere they could stick a device onto you that just records your movements into flash storage. Then next time they run into you, they retrieve it somehow over some close range wireless or maybe physically. Such a device won't be detected by the presence of signals: it doesn't connect to any mobile network or Wi-Fi or anything.
Or, such a device could just sporadically connect to a network to send a small packet of information, e.g. once every few days.
> All your proposals ignore the fact that someone with electronic design skills can whip up a GPS tracker that is outside of this system.
I don't know. Why AirTag work for a year by a CR2032 is because usually it only uses BLE to connect near Apple devices. GPS+LTE tracker drains much battery so it can't be practically run on CR2032. Only Apple (or Google) make it very usable this kind of device.
I totally acknowledge that. They're not designed to stop electronic stalking at all costs; I can't really find a way to do that without extremely authoritarian measures.
I don't even think you have to go to China. Any sufficiently motivated person can strap a GPS hat on a Raspberry Pi and make their own tracker, or do the same out of pedestrian electronic parts.
My goal is merely to try to drastically cut down on the more casual "I'd pay $20 to track my wife/SO/friend/whatever" style stalking that AirTags and the like enable, as well as giving victims an easier recourse in the event that a more knowledgeable or motivated adversary targets them. Tracking someone without their knowledge would give a restraining order, and tracking them after that would violate the restraining order which is a crime in all states afaik, and a felony in some of them. It won't outright stop people, but it at least gives victims some teeth to fight back with.
> They're not designed to stop electronic stalking at all costs; I can't really find a way to do that without extremely authoritarian measures.
It boils down to the age old question about why make regulations that only ever effect people who are law abiding to begin with. Which isn't an argument against all regulation, but more of a question about what regulation actually hits the desired goal.
Right now any actually nefarious stalker will just get the $25 GPS tracker, put a decent battery on it, and stick it to the bottom of the car. They're not going to use an AirTag that is easily traced back to them and stands a good chance of notifying their target of the tracking. The kinds of stalkers who use AirTags are the low effort losers.
> Instead of making anti-theft devices semi permanent I think it makes much more sense to just discourage using them for stalking in the first place at the time of purchase. If you make a device that is semi permanent people will just find a way to hack it and repackage it into something else. And realistically people may want smaller anti theft devices for small but very valuable items.
My thought process was discouraging some kind of "sure, we'll sell you a piece of paper with a tracker stapled to it. Don't take out the staples, wink wink nudge nudge". It's a tradeoff between making sure that people can swap them out if their provider goes out of business, but also deterring people from casually trying to repurpose them. I was thinking something like rivets. They're totally removable, but not something you'd do without motivation.
> Instead of manually having to do that though it would probably be easier if at the time of sale you had to sign a terms of service and the vendor automatically registered the serial number to your name in some kind of semi-public registry that law enforcement and others have access to. Even if would be thieves find ways around this it is going to discourage a ton of stalking in the first place.
Yeah, this is exactly what I was thinking! It should absolutely be point of sale based. Both to prevent casual stalking, but also to protect normal people that just forget to register them. I'm a scatterbrain; I could totally see myself forgetting that I need to register it if they leave that up to me.
> In addition I think a setting on your phone that you could manually activate that told any airtags within a close vicinity to NOT track you could also be interesting - there may be many false positives but someone explicitly worried about someone stalking them could activate this feature for at least some piece of mind.
Currently, I believe you can tell your phone to not report the AirTag (or similar for the other similar devices). That works well, but it doesn't stop other people's devices from reporting your location. So your phone would have to be able to broadcast a message that stops everyone else's phones from reporting the location of the tracker. Even if only 10% of the population enables it, I spend a lot of time in Bluetooth range of at least 10 other people. It seems like a platform killer to allow that.
I want such a thing to exist, but I can't find a technical way for people to stop a random tracker in their vicinity without just killing trackers as a whole. I'm not an expert on the topic, and I'm a little buzzed as it is, so there might be a solution I'm not seeing here.
Ideally you want the tracker deeply embedded in the thing being stolen. So for an ebike the tracker is on the main chip of the control board. And the thief gets a message saying "the bike is tracking you" and their only option is to dump the bike rather than rip the tracker off.
The sticking point now is that you want to let innocent people know if they're being tracked, but you don't want to let thieves know that they're being tracked. It seems an intractable problem, because there's no way that I can think of for a device to tell the difference between the two.
Anti-loss devices should be portable and detachable, but required to be able to be easily found via some kind of standard tooling. Maybe like the Bluetooth equivalent of pinging the broadcast IP. They should also make an audible noise when the owner tracks them.
Anti-theft devices should be silent, but required to be semi-permanently installed into the device to be tracked. Something annoying to remove, but not impossible. The ownership of the tracker should also be required to be registered with someone; logically the police, since that's who you would call anyways if your stuff was stolen. Anyone who finds an anti-theft device on their person or property that they didn't place there should automatically qualify for a restraining order against the device's owner (that they could opt not to pursue if they wanted). The restraining order should also prevent the device's owner from owning or registering any other anti-theft devices for the duration of the restraining order.
There would also need to be some kind of penalties for unregistered anti-theft devices, and for anti-loss devices that have been tampered with to not make noise or respond to the standard signal.
Also likely some kind of contract two people can enter into that says "I acknowledge that person X has tracker Y in thing Z, and I absolve my right to pursue a restraining order for it" for people who share a car or bike or whatever.
I haven't fully fleshed out the ideas, but I think something like the above reinforces that it's okay to track your own stuff but that's it not OK to track other people.