- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Privacy advocates got access to Locate X, a phone tracking tool which multiple U.S. agencies have bought access to, and showed me and other journalists exactly what it was capable of. Tracking a phone from one state to another to an abortion clinic. Multiple places of worship. A school. Following a likely juror to a residence. And all of this tracking is possible without a warrant, and instead just a few clicks of a mouse.
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This should be illegal. There is absolutely no good reason this should be available to anybody. It should also be considered unconstitutional; if one of those dots is a person, whether you directly know who the person is or not, it should violate the right to privacy and the right of illegal search and seizure — no questions asked.
You are right. And you’re fighting against the credit reporting agencies and google, facebook, apple, and all car manufacturers for privacy rights.
This is the result of jurists and legislators who don’t understand a single goddamned thing about computers in 2024. For fuck’s sake it’s been thirty goddamned years since this was obviously going to happen. Take a class, you bastards! Those of you who aren’t Heritage Foundation fascists.
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Search and seizure, the Fourth Amendment, only applies to State actors. The only exception is when a private entity is acting as an agent of the government, such as in the case of private prisons.
Congress needs to pass consumer protection laws aimed at privacy in the digital age. They haven’t updated this sort of thing I believe since 1996. It used to be legal for adult video stores to disclose the tapes people rented, but Congress passed a privacy law forbidding it when some journalists disclosed some of their rentals. The scandal had some cool name. I forgot what.
The government cannot access the information without a warrant. It does not matter if SPYco lays it all out on a public website. If they needed a warrant to track you before, they need a warrant to check for you on the public website.
Saying the government is allowed to obliterate the 4th amendment because a private company did the hard part is just asking for government aligned corporations to gather it all up and hand it over whenever the government gives them a dollar.
Edit to add- This is the way it should work. Instead the government really is just buying data they’d need a warrant for previously.
This is not an area of law I stay up to date on, but that did not used to be the case. Is that a rather new development?
Last I knew most courts were holding that since customers are sharing this information with third parties (sharing with their phone companies, Apple and Google, Facebook, etc.), giving everything away anyway, most individuals have waived any claim to an expectation of privacy. The right to privacy is founded upon reasonable expectations. I did hear about some pushback on that, more recently, but not from the Court of Appeals from DC, which has jurisdiction over appeals taken from federal agencies, prior to the Supreme Court. I’d be grateful to be shown otherwise. About time, if true.
Yeah I should have been more clear. That’s the way it should work. Instead the courts interpret the 4th amendment as narrowly as possible. Making it effectively non-existent in many cases.
The solution is to subscribe to these services. Then create a website that offers real-time tracking information, freely to the public, of the most wealthy and powerful people in the country. Every Congressperson should have their location shown freely available to all in real time. You could call it “wheresmyrep.org” or similar. Literally all of them tracked like animals in real time, freely shown for any and all to see. Let them live in the fish bowl they’ve created for us all.
We’re kind of seeing that with those private jet trackers. But that’s not changing anything except getting those accounts banned from social media.
I think those just need to move to have their own independent sites instead of basing their operations on social media. Ultimately what they’re doing is entirely legal, but it’s way too easy for some asshat billionaire to pull some strings to get them pulled from a platform.
Although we already know what would likely happen if someone did that. It would just be made illegal to track the locations of congresspeople (and only congresspeople), like it was made illegal to do so during the BLM protests.
Time for faraday cage phone covers/bags to become popular in these states.
Get this in front of the Supreme Court ASAP!
…oh…
Start tracking politician phones. Oh look who paid a visit to the lobbyist house this week! That shit will get shut down real quick.
Lol next story over is this https://infosec.pub/post/19174603
How is this not a warrantless search?
The EFF have a bit more general information about location data brokers. Well worth a read.
Don’t bring your phone.
Get a burner and set up call forwarding.
As people get ready to vote here in the US, one issue I haven’t even heard brought up is the lack of privacy regulations in the US. Do most people not care if the person they’re voting for is fine with every corporation selling and sharing personal data?
Privacy regulations are to the left of the Overton window. The idea that corporations don’t have some divinely ordained ownership of our personal data is unthinkably radical.
improving the healthcare system is not even a topic of discussion this time around let alone something most people would see as abstract
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how does one change your imei number using a pixel 6a, with a rooted phone with magisk.
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Still can’t escape cell tower triangulation
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Apple and Google can fix the problem. Apps are required to ask for permission to access location information. Most of the time, it’s for tracking and analytics, not anything related to the app’s functionality. That’s the data that is leaking to these data brokers.
In those cases, if asked, user can say no, but apps keep haranguing you until you capitulate.
Instead, the OS could add a button that says: “Yes, but randomize.” After that, location data is returned as normal, but from totally random locations nearby. They could even spoof the data clustering algorithms and just pick some rando location and keep showing returns to them, or just trade the data from one random phone for another every N days.
You do this enough and the data will become polluted enough to become useless.
Apple and Google want to sell that data, they’re not going to help you obscure it.
Some additional info based on their published material (screenshot below). The software gets its data from “publicly available sources” which includes tracking information from many different online advertisers, public social media posts, etc. As we know, the advertising data can sometimes have your personal info attached - sometimes not. Babel Street claims to anonymize the data, but let’s assume there is a $$ amount at which they won’t.
So, theoretically, if you can successfully avoid ad trackers, and you don’t post on social media platforms except where you want to be “seen”, you can avoid this tracking (granted that seems quite impossible these days).
If that’s true then a simple VPN and some social media opsec will work.
Article link not requiring you to sign up: https://archive.ph/Th1Sq
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Who else are they selling this too?
Whoever has money I suppose. Makes me wonder if there are laws regulating this sort or tech.
Hard to connect these dots for most “normal” folks without feeling like a conspiracy nut. Appreciate this journalism.
Looks like everyone should be getting these bags
Or just hit airplane mode / power off. Or just leave the phone at home, the procedure takes only 5-10 minutes.
People are way to attached to their phones. The world will not collapse in that hour, it is a survivable event, or so I hear from reputable sources.
Can you really trust airplane mode to ensure there is nothing going out. I agree people should just leave them at home, but these bags are like putting tape over your laptop camera. Just an extra peace of mind when going to the Dr.
I probably wouldn’t trust airplane mode, but I do believe power off is safe. There is no transmit capability in off correct?
But yeah, leaving phone at home is best knowing tracking sites like these exist.
It has been know for at least a decade, I think, that the GSM chip could still contact cell towers while the phone was powered off. I’m sure its successor hasn’t lost that capability.
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Better to leave your phone at home (or better, in the pocket of someone who lives in your house and takes the same daily path as you do) if you are doing something that’s currently illegal. Or in any situation where you are doing something legal that the cops are likely to break up.
The juror going home thing is terrifying but I don’t think the government would be after you for fulfilling your civic duty.
