Sunday, June 30, 2019

Something to Finish Off

Today's mailing was corrupted and incomplete, so I am sending the NY TImes link so that you might be able to read the whole Maureen Dowd article:


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Juan

I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia will do.
- W. C. Fields

Something to Know - 30 June


Maureen Dowd is reviewing a cooking show, which seems to suggest that the Old Smilin' Joe has had a fork stuck into him, and he's now done:


MAUREEN DOWD

Kamala Shotguns Joe Sixpack

Maureen Dowd

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist


ImageJoe Biden felt the sharp end of Kamala Harris's criticism when she put her foot down at a Democratic debate on Thursday.
Joe Biden felt the sharp end of Kamala Harris's criticism when she put her foot down at a Democratic debate on Thursday.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — In January, a reporter contacted the nascent Biden campaign to request an interview. She wanted to ask the former vice president about lingering criticisms that were bound to come up on the trail: how, as a senator, he failed Anita Hill; his lead role in the 1994 crime bill; his vote for the Iraq war; his mixed record on abortion rights; his handsy ways; the hot mess that is Hunter.

And that little girl was me.

I was promptly rejected for an on-the-record sit-down. Talking to some in the Biden circle, I sensed a myopia. They seemed to think they could blow past the past, walling off the candidate and ignoring the imbroglios that were obvious fodder for the pack of hungry Democrats and the rapacious president who would soon be in full cry after the front-runner.

Not deigning to talk to the press to explain bad decisions to voters seemed more like Queen Hillary than Uncle Joe. Even David Axelrod, who favored Biden as Barack Obama's running mate, has said that it is "not a tenable strategy" to meet the press only when you are rolled out to try to explain some embarrassing gaffe.

It was also a bad sign, after Biden got in trouble for bragging at a fund-raiser about working with segregationist senators, that the candidate's advisers trash-talked him to The Washington Post, saying they had warned him to use a less toxic example of bipartisanship.


In my experience, candidates with advisers who belittle them on background do not win elections.

The aloofness and arrogance of the Biden operation came spilling out for all to see under the bright lights of the debate stage.

The 76-year-old seemed irritated and unprepared to address inevitable jabs from his younger, more nimble rivals. What did he think would happen — that they would strew rose petals along his path to the podium and beg for selfies? In the 2008 race, he was a more vivid and genial debater than Obama. Now he seems simultaneously drained and entitled.

Kamala Harris, who had been trying to appease the progressives on Twitter who berate her for her law enforcement record, suddenly found her inner cop.

Rather than asking Biden to pass the torch, she took a blowtorch to him.

"I do not believe you are a racist," she allowed about the man who was the partner of the first black president, had a good civil rights record and claimed (unconvincingly) that he was inspired to run by his disgust at Charlottesville.

Harris snapped the cuffs on: "It was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me."


Harris was grinding her stiletto on a vulnerable part of Biden's record. The reason Hill was eviscerated and a lying Clarence Thomas ascended to the Supreme Court is that Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was bending over backward to appease uncompromising Republicans on the panel — the same men who were falsely accusing Hill of perversity, erotomania and perjury.

A Times story revealed how Biden went to Michigan before the midterms last year to reclaim the Midwest for Democrats but ended up praising Republican Fred Upton during a paid speech to a Republican-leaning audience. Apoplectic Democrats said Biden helped Upton win re-election to the House.

After Harris dressed down Biden, Michael Bennet snapped back at the front-runner. Biden was boasting that, when they were negotiating a deal in 2012 to end a government showdown, he got Mitch McConnell to allow the top individual income tax rate to rise, generating about $600 billion in revenue.

"The deal that he talked about with Mitch McConnell was a complete victory for the Tea Party," the Colorado senator said. "It extended the Bush tax cuts permanently. The Democratic Party had been running against that for 10 years."

Biden is selling himself as someone who can work with a Republican Party that everyone but Biden realizes doesn't exist anymore.

Adding injury to insult, his handlers overcoached him on his signature trait of runaway verbosity. It was weird watching Biden cutting himself off midsentence — "My time is up. I'm sorry" — while all the others were talking well over their allotment. It was like the sheriff in "Blazing Saddles" holding the gun to his own head.

Biden may have been trying to limit what he said — just as he limits press exposure — to keep out of trouble. But it looked as if he lacked confidence.

After his poor debate showing, Biden tried to recover Friday in Chicago but stepped in it again, saying during a labor luncheon, "We've got to recognize that kid wearing a hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate and not a gangbanger."

He argued that "the discussion in this race today shouldn't be about the past." But the problem at the moment is that Biden has too much past and not enough presence.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@MaureenDowd) and join me on Facebook.

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Juan

I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia will do.
- W. C. Fields


Saturday, June 29, 2019

Something to Know - 29 June

In the run-up to elections, we are often advised that voters gravitate to the economic issues of how one's wallet or purse is affected.   It seems as though now is the time to inject the decline of our stature in the world.  The current buffoon's red-light - green-light of playing his bullying games with sanctions and threats, plus his stupid antics that humiliate and demean allies, treaties, and long-standing friendships is causing us great harm.   

Opinion
President Trump with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Friday at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
President Trump with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Friday at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan.CreditCreditErin Schaff/The New York Times
By Roger Cohen
Roger Cohen

By Roger Cohen

Opinion Columnist





So Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has told The Financial Times, "The liberal idea has become obsolete." It has, he says, "outlived its purpose." President Trump finds him amusing. In Japan, at the G-20 summit meeting, he wags his finger at Putin and says, with a grin: "Don't meddle in the election, President."
It's a measure of American decline over the past three decades that Putin's claim, however objectionable, is no longer preposterous and Trump's frivolity no longer surprising. Thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. Two years later, the Soviet Union was gone. The liberal idea was triumphant, and American power virtually uncontested in "the unipolar moment."
That moment was heady. Liberalism posited the indivisibility of freedom and human dignity, as well as the idea that the rule of law and democracy offered the best chance for human advancement, peace and prosperity. Its spread appeared inevitable and irreversible. Its guiding spirit was the United States.

The road from that high-water mark of the American idea to Trump's autocrat-coddling indecency offers a story of squandered American opportunity and eroded American self-belief that Edward Gibbon would have qualified as "decline and fall." All Democratic candidates should be asked what they intend to do about it.



I can think of no better guide for reflection than William Burns's book, "The Back Channel," his wonderful memoir of a life in diplomacy. Burns, a former deputy secretary of state and ambassador to Moscow, was, by general consensus, one of the finest Foreign Service officers of recent decades, a man of unusual judgment and prescience. Suffice to say that back in 1993, in a memo to the incoming Clinton administration, he wrote:
"Democratic societies that fail to produce the fruits of economic reform quickly, or fail to accommodate pressures for ethnic self-expression, may slide back into other 'isms,' including nationalism."
Burns, now the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, attributes the loss of America's "unrivaled position of strength" in part to inevitable geopolitical trends, including the rise of China and India in the "Pacific century."
This was, however, compounded by what he calls "grievous missteps." They included the post-9/11 "inversion of force and diplomacy" that saw a disoriented United States lurch onto a "road to war in Iraq" that "was distinctive for its intensity and indiscipline."
In a debate on the legitimacy of going to war against Saddam Hussein, Burns listens to former Vice President Dick Cheney saying, "The only legitimacy we really need comes on the back of an M1A1 tank." He makes clear his own objections to the war — the "wrong time to shift our focus from Afghanistan" — but calls not making a "hard stand against war altogether" his "biggest professional regret." In a different context, I share that regret.
The unhappy sidelining and devaluation of diplomacy is a theme of the book. It has, for Burns, culminated in Trump's "savaging of American diplomacy" that has left "our friends confused, our adversaries emboldened, and the foundations of the international system we built and preserved for seven decades alarmingly fragile."




He writes of "unilateral diplomatic disarmament" under Trump, born of "equal parts ideological contempt and stubborn incompetence." The president's view of diplomacy is "narcissistic, not institutional," Burns observes, full of "muscular posturing and fact-free assertions" that insult allies and indulge autocrats.
Remember, all this comes from a supremely measured man who dedicated his life to the proposition that what diplomacy is all about is "not perfect solutions, but outcomes that cost far less than war and leave everyone better off than they would otherwise have been."
Among those imperfect but beneficial solutions was the Iran nuclear deal that Burns played a leading role in negotiating and that Trump called "the worst deal ever" before withdrawing from it. This, Burns writes, "was exactly the kind of risky, cocky, ill-considered bet that had shredded our influence before, and could easily do so again."
He notes: "Walking away from imperfect agreements, however, is rarely better than addressing their imperfections over time." Especially when that "walking away" leads the United States to the brink of an unnecessary war.
For Burns, the erosion of American power and influence long predates Trump. He regrets the loss of the extraordinary American cohesion that, at the end of the Cold War, secured the place of a united Germany in NATO. He notes the failure to perceive early enough how Russian "humiliation and wounded pride" would, under Putin, spur a Russian resurgence.
NATO expansion was, he suggests, "premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst" — a debatable point in my view, given the need to secure and stabilize the liberation of more than 100 million long subjugated people in Central Europe and the Baltic States.
He thinks President Obama made a mistake by not upholding his "red line" against the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons. The Obama administration "had blinked" and, Burns notes, "it would leave an enduring mark." Into that vacuum Putin strode.


Now the Russian president claims liberalism is obsolete. He is wrong. It is more necessary than ever even as Trump scoffs at it. But America's ability to promote liberal democracy cannot be served by what Burns calls "a State Department in which officers are bludgeoned into timidity, or censor themselves, or are simply ignored."

Related
Opinion | William J. Burns
How to Save the Power of DiplomacyMarch 8, 2019

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email:letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) andInstagram.

Roger Cohen has been a columnist for The Times since 2009. His columns appear Wednesday and Saturday. He joined The Times in 1990, and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. @NYTimesCohen


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Juan

I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia will do.
- W. C. Fields

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Something to Know - 23 June


There is more than one way to skin a cat:

WhySoConfused.jpg
Unworthy of a liquor license, worthy of impeachment

This is not from the Onion.   Seems D.C. gives citizens to the right to challenge the liquor licenses for the owners lack of good character and the board just refused a Trump request to dismiss a valid challenge.

The board on Wednesday issued an order denying the Trump International Hotel's motion to dismiss a "protest" from a group consisting of an attorney, two former judges and a handful of religious leaders who assert that Trump is not of "good character" and therefore should not be able to sell alcoholic beverages in Washington.

Snip.

In the documents, the group wrote that it is "focusing on certain lies (Trump) has told, his involvement in relevant fraudulent and other activity demonstrating his lack of integrity, and his refusal to abide by the law or to stop associating with known criminals."

Snip.

Joshua Levy, an attorney who is representing the group challenging the license renewal, told CNN on Friday that the board's order is "a solid victory for the rule of law."
    "Despite Trump's efforts to silence the public and hold himself above the law, the board correctly denied his motion to dismiss and found that the public can 'protest' the owner's character on renewal of their liquor license," Levy said.
    Stranger things have happened but based on the thousands of documented lies Trump has spewed I don't see how a D.C. board can rule he is a person "of good character". 

    ______
    Juan

    I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia will do.
    - W. C. Fields

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    ****

    Tuesday, June 18, 2019

    Something to Know - 18 June


    Many of you know that my son is often heard on radio and TV, as well as in print in several publications.   Well, this morning, this OP-ED piece was on page 11 of the Los Angeles Times, and mom and dad are proud of his work and what he is doing:


    L.A.'s slow buses aren't just shedding riders, they're becoming climate liabilities

    L.A.'s slow buses aren't just shedding riders, they're becoming climate liabilities
    Buses get stuck in traffic on Wilshire Boulevard even when its peak-hour bus-only lane is in effect. The bus-only lanes get choked with motorists who break the rules. (Los Angeles Times)

    In the movie "Speed," the inconceivable happens: Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves operate a bus during morning rush hour in Los Angeles maintaining a minimum speed of 50 mph. If this feat was implausible when the movie was released 25 years ago, it would be just about impossible today.

    Average bus speeds in the Los Angeles metropolitan area have declined by 13.4% since 1994 to a sluggish 12 mph. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation's DASH buses and Santa Monica's Big Blue bus have been especially hard hit by congestion over that time period, with speeds declining 34% and 28%, respectively.


    Ridership, not surprisingly, has plummeted along with speeds. The ripple effect of both is enormous: More traffic, of course, as people jettison Metro passes for cars; even slower traffic because of more congestion; taxpayer money wasted as transit drivers sit in all that traffic. Most concerning, however, is that slow buses with low occupancy rates are inefficient greenhouse gas emitters that could prevent Los Angeles from doing its part to fight climate change.

    Lower, slower ridership is costing us hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to improve the system instead of sustaining its inefficiencies.


    Share quote & link 

    Transportation is California's largest source of climate-changing emissions, accounting for 41% of total greenhouse gases in the state. Meeting the city of L.A.'s voluntary agreement to reduce emissions 50% below 1990 levels by 2025, or California's state law of 40% reduction in emissions from 2020 to 2030, demands that more people use low-emission mass transit.


    There are few means of transportation more energy efficient than a packed bus — and few more wasteful than an empty one. A 60-foot, natural gas-fueled bus needs to average more than eight riders to be more carbon-efficient than those riders driving alone in a car. (Transit agencies that fuel their buses with renewable natural gas captured from landfills and dairy farms instead of oil wells need to average just four passengers.)

    The occupancy of Los Angeles-area buses — roughly 4,000 run in L.A. and Orange counties each weekday — has declined from 14.8 passengers in 1994 to 12 passengers in 2017 (the latest complete data). And all signs show it's still dropping. One of our greatest assets in the fight against climate change is turning into a liability.

    Lower, slower ridership is also costing us hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to improve the system instead of sustaining its inefficiencies.

    Transit agencies have to pay drivers for all the time they spend sitting in traffic. Compared to 1994, L.A.-area transit agencies spent an extra $130 million in 2017 to bus drivers, or 7% of their operating budgets.

    Los Angeles has to get bus service right to meet climate goals. (Metro has a 40-year-plan to build out rail, but even then most of the county will still primarily be served by buses.) Unfortunately, solutions that would make bus service more rather than less attractive to riders — faster rather than slower — are politically fraught.

    Congestion pricing — charging by the car to drive on city streets during the busiest times of day — could alleviate traffic on major boulevards and would have the side-effect of getting buses back up to speed. This, however, is a decidedly unpopular idea. Research by UCLA urban planning professor Michael Manville found that even those who supported raising their sales tax (Measure M) to fund transit were unlikely to support congestion pricing, or even complementary policies like bike lanes.

    That leaves bus-only lanes as the best solution for the vicious cycle of declining speeds and ridership — an idea Mayor Eric Garcetti recently joked was only "slightly less controversial than congestion pricing." L.A.'s mobility plan calls for a 300-mile network of bus-only lanes on city streets by 2035. Garcetti hasn't backed down from that plan, but he didn't choose to accelerate the policy as part of his Green New Deal.

    In the face of such political inaction, research by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies suggests that transit agencies and cities can work together on "tactical" bus-only lanes that can be installed and reversed daily, if necessary.

    The first tactical transit lanes appeared in San Francisco in 2014 and have since been put in place in 17 cities across the country. The most effective of them have reduced peak congestion travel times by 20% to 28% , and up to 50% in one case. Such projects are also low-risk politically, as they can be reversed with only a few hours' notice.

    Bus-only lanes, however, even temporary ones, are only as effective as they are exclusive. L.A.'s current street infrastructure, including its peak-hour bus lane on Wilshire Boulevard, is choked with violators. Camera-based enforcement of bus-only lanes is permitted in California, but only in the San Francisco Bay Area; Los Angeles County transit agencies should demand the same authority.

    In "Speed," Reeves' character saves the day by getting people off the bus. Our task is exactly the opposite. Let's get it done.

    Juan Matute is deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.


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    Juan

    I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia will do.
    - W. C. Fields

    Saturday, June 15, 2019

    Something to Know - 15 June

    Jeff Danziger Comic Strip for June 13, 2019



    I you are one who is overwhelmed by the lack of privacy in this digital age, after reading this article, you may just want to turn your smart phone off in certain locations.   My college room mate has been unfairly labeled as an antiquated Luddite, but he has steadfastly refused to constantly change his watch every time there is a time change, and he regards his ancient Flip Phone as the ultimate, in that he can make calls and receive calls, and no need for anything other than those two features.   

    In Stores, Secret Surveillance Tracks Your Every MoveAs you shop, "beacons" are watching you, using hidden technology in your phone.
    Graphics by Tala Schlossberg
    Illustrations by Max Guther

    Imagine you are shopping in your favorite grocery store. As you approach the dairy aisle, you are sent a push notification in your phone: "10 percent off your favorite yogurt! Click here to redeem your coupon." You considered buying yogurt on your last trip to the store, but you decided against it. How did your phone know?

    Your smartphone was tracking you. The grocery store got your location data and paid a shadowy group of marketers to use that information to target you with ads. Recent reports have noted how companies use data gathered from cell towers, ambient Wi-Fi, and GPS. But the location data industry has a much more precise, and unobtrusive, tool: Bluetooth beacons.

    These beacons are small, inobtrusive electronic devices that are hidden throughout the grocery store; an app on your phone that communicates with them informed the company not only that you had entered the building, but that you had lingered for two minutes in front of the low-fat Chobanis.

    How Accurate Are Bluetooth Beacons?
    CELL TOWERSLow location accuracy 
    Widely used
    GPS LOCATORSAccurate to around 5 meters
    BLUETOOTH BEACONSAccurate within centimeters

    Most location services use cell towers and GPS, but these technologies have limitations. Cell towers have wide coverage, but low location accuracy: An advertiser can think you are in Walgreens, but you're actually in McDonald's next door. GPS, by contrast, can be accurate to a radius of around five meters (16 feet), but it does not work well indoors.

    Bluetooth beacons, however, can track your location accurately from a range of inches to about 50 meters. They use little energy, and they work well indoors. That has made them popular among companies that want precise tracking inside a store.

    1The beacons are like little lighthouses that emit one-way messages to nearby devices.
    2Those signals can be detected by apps on your phone, which can use your phone's operating system to scan for nearby beacons. If a beacon is detected, it can notify the app, even if the app is closed.
    3Once the app recognizes the beacon, it sends information (like the products you walked by or the departments you're lingering in) back to a company's server.
    4Foot traffic information can reveal personal details such as your income and exercise habits. When paired with other information about you, companies can build a rich profile of who you are, where you are, and what you buy — all without your knowledge.
    5The app can be prompted to display ads for products you seem likely to buy. It can send you a coupon after you leave, urging you to come back — a practice called "retargeting."

    Most people aren't aware they are being watched with beacons, but the "beacosystem" tracks millions of people every day. Beacons are placed at airportsmallssubwaysbusestaxissporting arenasgymshotelshospitalsmusic festivalscinemas and museums, and even on billboards.

    In order to track you or trigger an action like a coupon or message to your phone, companies need you to install an app on your phone that will recognize the beacon in the store. Retailers (like Target and Walmart) that use Bluetooth beacons typically build tracking into their own apps. But retailers want to make sure most of their customers can be tracked — not just the ones that download their own particular app.

    So a hidden industry of third-party location-marketing firms has proliferated in response. These companies take their beacon tracking code and bundle it into a toolkit developers can use.

    The makers of many popular apps, such as those for news or weather updates, insert these toolkits into their apps. They might be paid by the beacon companies or receive other benefits, like detailed reports on their users.

    Location data companies often collect additional data provided by apps. A location company called Pulsate, for example, encourages app developers to pass them customer email addresses and names.

    Companies like Reveal Mobile collect data from software development kits inside hundreds of frequently used apps. In the United States, another company, inMarket, covers 38 percent of millennial moms and about one-quarter of all smartphones, and tracks 50 million people each month. Other players have similar reach.

    Location data companies have other disturbing tricks up their sleeve. For example, inMarket developed "mindset targeting" techniques that predict when individuals are most receptive to ads. These techniques are based on statistical probabilities calculated through millions of observations of human behavior. Brands like Hellman'sHeineken and Hillshire Farms have used these technologies to drive product campaigns.

    What is an S.D.K.?A Software Development Kit is code that's inserted into an app and enables certain features, like activating your phone's Bluetooth sensor. Location data companies create S.D.K.s and developers insert them into their apps, creating a conduit for recording and storing your movement data.

    Location marketing aims to understand "online-offline attribution." If a Starbucks coffee ad is sent to your email, for example, marketers want to know if you actually went there and bought a coffee. The only way to know is to monitor your online and offline habits at all times.

    Beacons are also being used for smart cities initiatives. The location company Gimbal provided beacons for LinkNYC kiosks that provoked privacy concerns about tracking passers-by. Beacon initiatives have been started in other cities, including Amsterdam (in partnership with Google), London and Norwich.

    Familiar tech giants are also players in the beacosystem. In 2015, Facebook began shipping free Facebook Bluetooth beacons to businesses for location marketing inside the Facebook app. Leaked documents show that Facebook worried that users would "freak out" and spread "negative memes" about the program. The company recently removed the Facebook Bluetooth beacons section from their website.

    Not to be left out, in 2017, Google introduced Project Beacon and began sending beacons to businesses for use with Google Ads services. Google uses the beacons to send the businesses' visitors notificationsthat ask them to leave photos and reviews, among other features. And last year, investigators at Quartz found that Google Android can track you using Bluetooth beacons even when you turn Bluetooth off in your phone.

    For years, Apple and Google have allowed companies to bury surveillance features inside the apps offered in their app stores. And both companies conduct their own beacon surveillance through iOS and Android.

    It should not be lost on the public that Apple created the first Bluetooth system of commercial surveillance. Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, recently wagged his finger at the "data-industrial complex." Unlike other tech giants that monetize surveillance, Apple relies upon hardware sales, he said. But Mr. Cook knew what Apple was creating with iBeacon in 2013. Apple's own website explains to developers how they can use iBeacon to micro-target consumers in stores.

    Companies collecting micro-location data defend the practice by arguing that users can opt out of location services. They maintain that consumers embrace targeted ads because they're more relevant. Industry players further claim that data is anonymized through techniques that mask the identification of users. Your data may be stored as "ID-67aGb9ac72r" instead of "Jane Doe." Yet studies have shown that it is relatively easy to deanonymize mobility data. Moreover, the process of "informed consent" fails to protect user privacy. As The Times noted in an investigation into smartphone location tracking, "The explanations people see when prompted to give permission are often incomplete or misleading."

    For informed consent using beacons, you have to first know that the beacons exist. Then, you have to know which places use them, but venues and stores don't put up signs or inform their customers. You can download an app like Beacon Scanner and scan for beacons when you enter a store. But even if you detect the beacons, you don't know who is collecting the data. Let's say you visit Target; it might be collecting data from you, but it might rent its beacons out to other businesses, allowing them to monitor your location. Moreover, some beacons are not secured, so third parties can "piggyback" off public beacons and use them to collect your location. There is no way to know if a store has secured its beacons.

    Apple and Google could be tracking you through iOS and Android, but they don't make their Bluetooth beacon collection methods transparent. There is no easy way to determine which apps on your phone have the beacon location tracking built in.

    Even if you did know which companies have access to your beacon data, there's no way to know what kind of data is collected through the app. It could be your micro-location, dwell time or foot traffic, but it can also include data from the app, such as your name, and your app data can be combined with other data sets compiled about you by data brokers. There is simply no transparency.

    To protect yourself from beacons in the short term, you can delete any apps that may be spying on you — including apps from retailers — and shut off location services and Bluetooth where they are not needed. You can also follow The Times's guide on how to stop apps from tracking your location. For Android users, the F-Droid app store hosts free and open- source apps that do not spy on users with hidden trackers.

    Most of our concerns about privacy are tied to the online world, and can feel theoretical at times. But there is nothing theoretical about Bluetooth beacon technology that follows you into retail stores (and other venues) and tracks your movement down to the meter.

    Michael Kwet is a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, and host of the Tech Empire podcast.

    Follow The New York Times Opinion section on FacebookTwitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.


    ****
    Juan

    I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia will do.
    - W. C. Fields