HawaiiSailor

Good to hear they made it back! When they call to see if she's home, they're calling her mobile phone I assume? Do they just ask "are you at home," basically?

COSPILOT

Yes, and she has to make sure location services is turned on. We don’t have a landline.

HawaiiSailor

So they're actually tracking her phone's location somehow? Even with location services turned on, how do they see its location?

COSPILOT

No idea, but they seem to know that she is staying home. It was a pleasant call and the lady asked how she is doing Physically and mentally. She also mentioned that on the morning of the 31st my wife and kids are free to roam at that point.

Mentioned that if anyone else on my wife’s flight reports poor health she will let my wife know.

HawaiiSailor

Based on what we know it would be surprising if they were actually monitoring her phones location unless she opted into something or got a court order. Great if so, just seems unlikely they’d have that sorted out this quickly especially if she didn’t actively agree to it in an app or something.

Even if they could it’s not bulletproof as you can just leave your phone at home, use call forwarding, location spoofing, be “asleep” when they call... but it would be relatively effective.

Section 107

It is done easily and in real time because it is integral to the process of how cell phones work; it does not require the phone's location services to be turned on. It is done by triangulating the phone as it communicates with various cell towers as the system figures out which tower is best. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking

Govt can get the data realtime from the cell companies; there are lots of products on the market for non-govt actors to get the same data. Google and Apple are (ini)famously teaming up as we speak with a new COVID tracing project.

HawaiiSailor

Yes sure that’s how it works I’d just be pretty surprised if Hawaii sorted out all the legal and privacy and technical and procedural issues to “just do that” for all quarantined arrivals. And if they did why they’re not catching oodles of violators that way. Usually use of such stuff requires opt in or a court order not just a “hey let’s turn that on and not tell anyone” decision by a public health authority at the state level.

More interesting is why not use that to locate known violators like the woman in Maui they’re looking for. Unless she turned her phone off. Just saying I don’t think it’s super trivial to get permission to use phone location to find someone you’re interested in investigating or arresting.

if they told Mrs Cospilot to keep her location on it was probably just a misunderstanding, or less likely a scare tactic.

COSPILOT

Everytime my wife calls in the automated system asks to make sure location services is turned on so that it can ping the phone. Obviously could be a scare tactic.

HawaiiSailor

Very interesting .. possible I suppose, just interesting it hasn’t been reported on previously.

LIH Prem

Surely you watch and read the same local news here.

Arriving visitors have to agree to this, if not, they are free to return to the mainland.

The Maui woman and her sister talked with KITV. Look for it. Last I read, she was voluntarily returning to the mainland.

-David

HawaiiSailor

I guess it’s more of an Apple question than a FlyerTalk question, but I wonder what mechanism that would require “location services being on” would allow the government to ping your cell phone when you make an outbound call to them.

COSPILOT

Well, don’t come then.

Section 107

no "mechanism" is really necessary. There are tremendous differences in what permissions state/local gubmints give themselves in civil matters versus what they allow themselves to do in a criminal matter. In a declared state of emergency there are altogether entirely different thresholds for what restrictions the gubmint places upon its capabilities. in general both federal and local law enforcement have had longstanding agreements with cell phone companies to provide location and other information without a warrant. The ACLU indicates Hawaii doesn't care about citizen location privacy at all. In most localities government can obtain location data immediately on essentially a "promise" to the phone company that there is an "emergency need" - the phone companies each have entire units devoted to providing this information.

In addition, as late as 2019 all of the phone companies were selling individual user real-time location data to 3rd party "location aggregators" who in turn were selling it to law enforcement... see this Feb story from Hawaii Star Advertiser

slippahs

Wow - this is very different than the experience I am hearing of quarantining on Oahu, where there are roughly 300 returning residents every day, which would mean roughly 4,200 returning residents to keep track of subject to a 14-day quarantine at any given time. I understand some have gotten one or two calls during the 14-day quarantine. Imagine that HiDOT doesn't have the resources to make a daily call to all 4,200 folks to talk story about health.

I had read somewhere else that KPD may actually pay you a visit on Kauai to make sure you're abiding by quarantine. Guess when you have on average zero to one or two returning residents on average, you can be subjected to some pretty special treatment. Full visitor arrival details are posted here: https://www.hawaiitourismauthority.org/news/

Finkface

I read it as she had to call in to them every day. Their calls to her were random, not daily. Am I wrong about that?