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Comment on Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics

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.

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homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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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- bobs_monkey@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I’m convinced that a good number of legislators understand the implications of this stuff on a cursory level, but are convinced (read: bribed) to not care on the “condition” that it doesn’t apply to them or their families. They are beholden to their constituents, and their constituents aren’t you and me, as we can’t afford them.
  
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JustZ@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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- Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - JustZ@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    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, 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.
    
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    Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    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.
    
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WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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- dohpaz42@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    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.
    
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    skulblaka@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yep. Spin up your own website and throw a couple YouTube ads out into the world. We’ll have legislation drafted making this illegal before your first server bill comes due.
    
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- T156@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - ArchRecord@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Just like how the moment their videotape rental history was exposed, that was when privacy became an absolute must in the case of video rental services.
    
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- JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  When supreme court justice kavanaugh was followed by protesters he had a hissy fit and said they couldnt do that. But it’s totally fine to spy on everyone with a phone and expose their medical data.
  
  These hypocritical fuckheads deserve exactly what you are proposing and I’d fucking love to see it happen.
  
  We could even say it’s to protect the children… make sure certain politicians who have expressed interest in legalizing child marriage aren’t left alone with any.
  
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ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Get this in front of the Supreme Court ASAP!

…oh…

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Gigasser@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Time for faraday cage phone covers/bags to become popular in these states.

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