Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • August 28, 2026 3:49 AM

@ Steve,

With regards,

“How did any of use achieve adulthood without this important information?”

It’s not the past but the future that concerns me.

That is “What will be” when idiots demand access to such information.

There used to be an employer who I had to deal with that discriminated by “star sign” and similar. Which ment prospective candidates had to make not just their “Date of Birth”, but their “Time of Birth” and near as possible precise Location of Birth” available to that employer to stick in their “system”.

Back last century Prior to the data black hole the Internet enabled such “odditty” was seen as “daft or “quaint”.

Now however such Time/location data is “data to far” as it in effect not just “beyond control” of the person[1] it is beyond constraint of legislators. And where known the more precise personal data is the more easily people can be in effect “stalked”. Not just by ex-partners but anyone including faux debt collectors etc. So the potential for harm is significant.

Thus I look on such monitoring systems as being like “Flock Systems in potentia” much as I do Amazon Ring and similar where databases of “social movement in any dimension” are put in what are “Third Party Records” for access by those with a ready buck in hand.

Which means “data brokers” will trade and sell such information “now” if it exists, to the “future harm” of any and all minors so monitored by helicopter and similar style parents.

And for those that think there is “no future harm” have a read of,

https://phys.org/news/2026-08-people-mobility-labor-discrimination.html

Which clearly shows that a majority of employers will or do cause harm to employees now in recognisably sociopathic behaviour toward them, where lack of legislation and regulation allow such employers to do so.

Collecting such “information” would be a further future way to discriminate against ordinary people thus it should be curtailed before it becomes an “accepted norm” by “force majeure” of those with all to easily seen aberrant intent.

[1] Employees should remember that a companies “personnel records” are just “another asset to be moneytized” by share holders or creditors limited at best by very weak legislation in many places.