Submitted 1 year ago by otter@lemmy.ca 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.
Article link not requiring you to sign up: archive.ph/Th1Sq
ty 🙏🙏🙏
…Or just not taking a phone and taking public transport instead of a car.
how does one change your imei number using a pixel 6a, with a rooted phone with magisk.
This is not new and it has previously been used against anti-abortion activists, tracking locations and even being used to record religious confessions. People on both sides of the abortion issue can oppose this type of monitoring.
Time for an alternative means of communication
Holy shit.
How is this not a warrantless search?
Because a carrier’s data on you is not your person or belongings. The companies holding this data are selling access to it, so it’s not being searched, it’s being offered.
In other words, the same reason as why they don’t need a search warrant if there’s a breaking and the business across the street volunteers their security camera footage, even if you’re on that footage.
Courts have actually said that looking back at someone’s location data counts as a search and requires a warrant. There’s currently a lawsuit recently filed by the institute for justice aledging that the use of flock safety license plate readers is unconstitutional because it’s a warrantless search.
It is, but the USA hasn’t cared since Snowden.
UNDERTALE???!?!?!??11
Hard to connect these dots for most “normal” folks without feeling like a conspiracy nut. Appreciate this journalism.
a device that constantly connects to antennas all over the place, is used to track your location.
who would have thought?
if you dont wanna get tracked - dont bring your phone.
Or, you know, let the gov work for you, not against you, & exist people to get jailed if they thank you.
It’s a matter of perspective what the minimum standard should be.
Especially when a personal device like a phone is basically necessary for a normal life and even public services.
Meanwhile when I turn off Bluetooth on my iPhone it says “for the next y hours” and there’s no option to turn it off permanently.
Maybe you need arch btw
and there’s no option to turn it off permanently.
Did you actually try looking this up. Turn it off in settings and it’s off forever until you turn it back on.
Don’t buy Apple?
Wouldn’t just keeping your phone in a metal box prevent it from communicating with anything? Keep your phone in a metal box and only take it out when you need it. Only take it out in a location that isn’t sensitive. Or hell, just make a little sleeve out of aluminum foil. Literally just wrapping your phone in aluminum foil should prevent it from connecting to anything. A tinfoil hat won’t serve as an effective Faraday cage for your brain, but fully wrapping your phone in aluminum foil should do the job. Even better, as it’s a phone, such a foil sleeve should be quite testable. Build it, put your phone in it, and try texting and calling it. If surrounded fully by a conductive material, the phone should be completely incapable of sending or receiving signals.
A Faraday cage is supposed to be grounded, so aluminum foil isn’t the same thing. Maybe you could turn the phone off, wrap it in foil, and then place it upon a conductive metal surface that is grounded, such as a 240v kitchen appliance
Or we could get rights protecting us from this. Especially considering that that’s a reasonable interpretation of the fourth amendment and the ninth amendment.
We already have rights protecting us from this. They aren’t being enforced.
There has to be some way that we could have created the architecture to do everything a phone does without letting a user be triangulated easily.
I know there is no incentive to do that, but it amazes me how far ahead the security of the web is compared to phone tech.
Like maybe if phones could authenticate without broadcasting a unique identifier. And maybe they could open a vpn style encrypted tunnel and perform their auth over that tunnel.
Idk, I know nothing about phones, but it has to be possible.
there’s the ole www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/
kitschy name, but when it was established it was not even planning anything like what it is doing now.
If you don’t want to be tracked illegally, don’t bring your phone.
If you don’t want any to be tracked legally, write/call/tweet/visit your representatives.
Also just write your Supreme Court and ask them how this isn’t a flagrant violation of the intent of the fourth amendment. Seriously the founding fathers would be asking what the fuck about this. They weren’t good people but they would’ve been privacy nuts.
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.
Start tracking politician phones. Oh look who paid a visit to the lobbyist house this week! That shit will get shut down real quick.
All politicians meet with lobbyists. It’s hard to get a handle on the needs of the nation (or state, or so on), and lobbying is how people inform their representatives of that need. Now whether those lobbyists are scumbags or saints, that’s a different question.
If you don’t want to be tracked illegally, don’t bring your phone.
If you don’t want any to be tracked legally, write/call/tweet/visit your representatives.
If you don’t want any to be tracked legally, write/call/tweet/visit your representatives.
And donate to the EFF if you have the means because they can and have and will likely continue to lobby on average internet users behalf!
Ah yes, democracy is a healthy and fully functioning institution.
You just got confused who’s sponsoring it, that’s understandable.
Lol next story over is this infosec.pub/post/19174603
Whatever happened to that Edward Snowden loser?
Became a Russian house cat
Obama should have droned him when he had a chance.
loser hero
This is nothing new. Did we already forget about the Snowden leaks?
The leaks that 2% of the population got very excited about for a while, but try not to think much about? The leaks judged by many on the reputation of an obscure man living in Russia? Those leaks?
I trust my government and not things only nerds understand. Also they sound weird and made up and very scary ( said most of the people)
Maybe, I think people still “know” its going on, but they forget by the allure of our smart phones, so this is a good reminder.
this combined with the whole “your pager/phone is now a bomb” texture that the IDF decided to add into the mix should make for good times.
That required special assembly. It was not a hack blowing up commercial batteries. That’s not a possible thing. They gave Hezbollah pagers and radios with explosives built in.
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.
Archive: archive.ph/bSrZR
Thank you for this, I had to scroll down so far to find a subscription-wall free link. Makes me wonder if anyone actually checked the article…
🤯imagine how much they spent only to to terrorise women
“I got nothing to hide. I’m a Boring person” dumbass mfers
I’ve heard this exact same thing from a former colleague that left my company to go work at a place selling “smart” security systems 🤦🏻♂️
“why don’t you take your clothes off, then? You said you ‘have nothing to hide’, didn’t you?”
“Got nothing to hide” - Man wearing pants
I got nothing to hide.
I’m willing to bet that they have curtains on their bedroom window…
all because they’re afraid someone will laugh at their micro dick.
they not wrong tho, I be laughin at them regardless.
I’m willing to be they lock their doors
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.
airplane mode is on record not trustworthy.
it will not communicate outward, but it will scan for WiFi and BT APs, then report home once you’re back online.
even turning your phone off won’t help.
you need to remove the battery to be sure.
when I commit my “crimes” against “society” I just leave my phone at home.
“where were you on x night?” - at home “what were you doing?” - jerking off to the thought of your intelligence guys listening to me beating off “…”
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 didn’t read the article, but wouldn’t the site see the phone as soon as it’s taken out of the bag? Unless the plan is to leave the phone in the bag the whole time, at which point it seems easier to just leave it behind.
Pretty much. Can’t see the rest of the article, but most likely it’s just tower data, which only gives a general location. But as soon as you pull your phone out and get messages you would be traceable. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone
Don’t bring your phone.
Get a burner and set up call forwarding.
burner goes from your house, to abortion clinic, to your office, back to your house
Hmm, must be someone else, I don’t recognize this number
-The Government
You really can’t think of a solution to this?
Then how you gonna take a selfie in the bed?
Seriously tho, people need phones for everything, including their calendar and map and communication with their partner.
Not bringing a phone isn’t an option
If you want maximum privacy, you gotta nix that partner and, really, the communication. Shit, I’ve already said too much.
Not bringing a phone definitely is an option.
But I suggested a burner with forwarding so that handles comms to partner.
If you can’t function without your main device for special circumstances such as this, I guess you just can’t be helped.
Believe it or not, digital cameras exist as standalone devices.
You can also buy an rf blocking bag for your phone.
I can assure you that people don’t need instant access to calendars and maps. Smart phones are a convenience, not a necessity.
(Source - lived through the 80’s. Still alive to tell the tale)
There are alternatives to all of that. If you’re going to do potentially illegal acts, and you don’t want to rot in jail for the next however many decades until a scotus exists to set you free, take basic operational security into account and don’t bring the corporate tracking device that cops can freely tap into.
Mapquest is still around, so that solves one problem. The rest can be alleviated by communicating in person with your partner and aligning on a plan to not get tracked (like partner driving you and leaving their phone at home).
In the absence of that help, friends or family you trust. A cab? The clinic probably has a phone to hail a cab.
Disclaimer: I’m just providing work arounds, I’m not saying they’re ideal.
The EFF have more information about location data brokers. Well worth a read.
God I hate data brokers. Rats! All of them, vermin contributing nothing of value to society.
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.
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.
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?
So why abortion clinics in the title if it can track people anywhere? Do they think abortion clinics are the most popular destination for the majority of people? Why not put pizza joint im the title? Or sex club? Bath house? Dairy farm?
Time to start casually walking by clinics en masse.
bitchkat@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Who else are they selling this too?
MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Whoever has money I suppose. Makes me wonder if there are laws regulating this sort or tech.