Monday, August 15, 2016

Red Herring

The "red herring" is a distraction, meant to divert your attention from what is really happening to you.

Are you playing Pokémon Go?
Do you recognize what it is in addition to a game?

If you were intent on determining just what boundaries are defended, AND you wanted to see how far you can distort those boundaries by applying social pressure, you could not come up with a better solution than this game.

Consider: the game gets otherwise harmless people, with spare time, to chase icons placed at geographic locations. If some of these icons are placed within private boundaries, the consequences of trespassing 50 feet or so will be trivial to most players, who are typically very low on the socioeconomic scale and who have little to lose; there is also not much incentive to prosecute them.
With private property, a significant burden is placed on the property owner, in that he must not harm a trespasser for the simple act of being present on his property. This is true whether the trespasser is alone or in a group. Government assumes the power to deal deadly force for itself, but denies it to you in this case.

The program maps the progress of people seeking rewards playing the game, and in the process determines just which icons/characters are effectively out of reach due to defensive measures, like fences, "No Trespassing" signs or armed security. It returns this info and near-real-time photos of those locations to the server.

And all of this is accomplished with the unwitting cooperation of enthusiastic players with absolutely nothing else on their minds.
I have no idea who you are, Anonymous Criminal Mastermind, but you are a genius!