[HN Gopher] New documents reveal scale of US Government's cell p...
___________________________________________________________________
New documents reveal scale of US Government's cell phone location
data tracking
Author : DamnInteresting
Score : 594 points
Date : 2022-07-18 20:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aclu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aclu.org)
| lrvick wrote:
| Among the many reasons I choose not to own a cell phone.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Which just means you are tracked differently. You are an
| Outlier instead of Average Joe making Average Data.
| vaylian wrote:
| how?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Credit card usage tied to a non-cell phone user. There are
| layers of patterns to watch and the best invisibility you
| can have is to blend in, which is scary, worrying, and
| terrifying because the powers that be would prefer to have
| a citizenry of crabs in a bucket rather than half a billion
| free-roaming cats to corral.
|
| It makes their job a little bit easier and that's all that
| matters to them.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| There are DOZENS of us!
|
| ----
|
| As a fellow non-mobile phone user, my life has drastically
| improved. There are many (MANY!) acquaintances whom this
| frustrates immensely (for they cannot instantaneously speak
| with me), but my inner circle all know how to reach me by pager
| a/o physically visiting.
|
| As for my outer circle... good riddance (FWIW I am retired)!
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| No one cares. This kind of surveillance and massive overreach by
| intelligence agencies has been reported dozens of times for at
| least 20 years now.
|
| The most recent example i remember was of facial recognition in
| airports. Media reported it, some people whined about it, oh
| maybe the people will demand privacy? lol. Now its standard
| procedure. Delta even does boarding based on facial ID by
| default.
|
| "Raising awareness" does nothing. Commenting on online forums
| does nothing. The government is in control in every way, of the
| markets and hence jobs/unemployment, of privacy and surveillance.
| We've all become excellent at reporting and following bad news
| even while being completely incapable of effecting any change.
| The median person is too poor or dumb or disempowered for this to
| even crack the top 10 issues. They're complaining about gas
| prices and rent instead. We choose between 2 geriatric clowns who
| can't possibly keep up with what 100,0000 government employees
| are doing every 4 years and a congress that can't pass a law to
| save its life. Democracy is working super well lol.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Fifteen years before Snowden, people were writing books about
| the NSA, GCHQ and the ECHELON system and apparently nobody gave
| a fuck, except some niche of politically interested or infosec
| people.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Please don't speak for everyone. I care. Many people care.
|
| You may feel as though the median person is too poor or dumb or
| disempowered, and that may disempower you, but there are many
| other people who tirelessly work against these types of
| overreaches, whether its' FOIA requests, campaigns, articles,
| or otherwise.
|
| I see no point in such a post, it drifted into some sort of
| anti-democracy rant.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I feel that the entire machinery of the government at the
| state and Federal levels is so thoroughly captured and
| corrupt that its levers can now never be used to cleanse
| itself.
|
| The American people have/had rights they didn't have to
| sacrifice to get, but which are valuable to a very determined
| and well-organized group of people, and so they are and will
| evaporate. The average American has never even heard of
| Snowden.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Sorry about the drift into a rant.
|
| My point is to say that the standard playbook for creating
| social or policy change is broken. The playbook is roughly -
|
| 1. build awareness via a nice article like the link
|
| 2. people read it?
|
| 3. people do something about it?
|
| But very few people read. The actual issues in broad public
| awareness are whatever crap is on Fox news. Beyond that, even
| if people get mad they have no structured way to demand a
| change and it rarely happens.
|
| The rant is tangentially related because we still haven't
| seen any action on the Uvalde PD, abortion laws just got
| revoked, there is a war in Ukraine, we might soon be in a
| recession, the climate might kill us all, etc etc. These are
| issues where the public actually cares, but nothing seems to
| change. Surveillance is not even on the list with all the
| other fires burning.
|
| I guess I'm just saying "caring" about an issue is
| meaningless in the absence of the power to effect any change.
| We dont even have the basic ability to ask a government
| official a question and get a straight answer. We don't seem
| to have any common knowledge or consensus on how to demand
| accountability from the government. These are much deeper
| issues that have to somehow be addressed before anything
| happens.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Most of those issues either are caused by the usual people
| that have been in power in congress, or aren't issues that
| Americans should even care about but have convinced to be
| (Ukraine) as to keep money spigots flowing.
|
| Vote out the establishment in the senate and the house if
| you really want change.
|
| Rule of thumb if they've been there for 50 years they're
| okay with the status quo, regardless of party.
| bradgessler wrote:
| Anybody want to take a shot at how all of this will unwind?
| fsflover wrote:
| Good technology can be developed to fight surveillance in a
| reasonably convenient way. With time, it can attract enough
| people to make a change. See: https://qubes-os.org.
|
| In addition, turning surveillance against the government
| could also be beneficial:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance.
| rsyring wrote:
| It won't. Technology brings too much power with relative
| ease, governments and corporations are and will use it to
| their own advantage. Most people want convenience above all
| things and, even if they don't, are relatively powerless to
| do anything about it anyway.
|
| New governments may rise and current ones fall. Ditto large
| corporations. Any progress made in the pursuit of privacy
| will be mostly smoke and mirrors. The incentives are just too
| misaligned.
| bradgessler wrote:
| I have this half-baked thought that fighting surveillance
| to get rid of it probably isn't the answer. Like most
| technologies, it can be used for good and bad.
|
| What probably needs to happen are laws and regulations for
| how that data can be used against you, particularly by
| organizations that have a monopoly on violence.
|
| Sadly that would upend the way most institutions work with
| information, so I'm not optimistic it would actually work
| in practice.
| tomohawk wrote:
| When it came out that government was looking at all of the data
| on the internet, there was a massive effort to move to https.
| Everyone got involved.
|
| Why can't these same companies and organizations push for phones
| to be anonymous?
|
| Why should a 'phone' be primarily a person tracker that happens
| to have voice communications built in?
| salawat wrote:
| In order for info to get from _here_ to _there_ :
|
| The phone network requires a geophysical route/medium across
| which to shluff a packet. Said packet is destined for an
| endpoint. Said endpoint is associated with a payer. Said payer,
| in order to pay, is virtually guaranteed to have had to do KYC
| at some point.
|
| Ergo, if you can call, you can be tracked with only knowledge
| of the endpoint, and the topology of the networking medium.
|
| Nature of the beast I'm afraid. Your forebearers wanted this.
| Are you not pleased? Does this mot make you feel safe? They
| worked very hard on it... For your safety, you see!
| gruez wrote:
| It's literally not possible because the mobile network needs to
| know where your phone is so it can route packets to the tower
| that you're connected.
| tomohawk wrote:
| But it doesn't need to know who you are.
|
| The whole problem is that a person's identity is more and
| more entangled with a tracking device.
| gruez wrote:
| In that case you can just get a burner phone + data SIM,
| and route all your calls/texts via VOIP provider.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I saw a post a few months ago where an actual mobile
| security expert publicly said they did not have very high
| confidence in their own ability to cleanly buy and use a
| burner if the stakes were high eg government actively
| trying to build a case against them.
|
| Since then I've been very skeptical of all claims of what
| you can "just" do to avoid being tracked. This problem
| can't be solved by individual action or paranoia it's too
| big and complex now.
| gruez wrote:
| >an actual mobile security expert publicly said they did
| not have very high confidence in their own ability to
| cleanly buy and use a burner if the stakes were high eg
| government actively trying to build a case against them.
|
| I'm not sure what the threat model here is. If the
| "government actively trying to build a case against them"
| involves government agents following you in unmarked
| vans, then the government being able to track you through
| your SIM should be the least of your worries. If you're
| merely on some government watchlist (ie. there aren't
| agents following you), I don't see how it would be hard
| to cleanly buy a burner phone/sim, especially in the post
| pandemic age where face masks are socially acceptable.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I think "you want to do a communication that can't be
| later printed out and used against you publicly" is the
| threat model.
|
| You can't really protect yourself from the US government
| in any meaningful sense if they decide to end or ruin
| your life, but what I described above seems like a
| reasonable thing that people would want to do for reasons
| both legal and not.
| convivialdingo wrote:
| Agreed...
|
| Pure conjecture on my part, and I haven't worked in this
| area but I had lots of friends in gov security and mobile
| standards groups.
|
| Nobody I've talked to thinks it's possible to stay
| anonymous on any commercial cellular network.
|
| You might be able to push a few anonymous phone calls or
| surf a few hours but soon your typical browsing habits,
| app usage and contacts will match you up with similar
| existing profiles based purely on the metadata.
|
| Honestly just narrowing it down to a few dozen people is
| good enough to get unmasked.
| slackfan wrote:
| The Federal Government purges data that was non-encrypted after
| a number of years.
|
| The Federal Government retains a copy of all https-encrypted
| communications indefinitely on the understanding that the
| encryption may be broken at some point.
|
| The push to HTTPS was gleefully supported by the US federal
| government. HTTPS is not a panacea, and is generally useless
| for most non-sales applications.
| sneak wrote:
| This is not accurate.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| All encrypted communications are treated as foreign origin
| regardless of its true origin. The US government uses this
| twist of illogic to justify their domestic collection.
| WebbWeaver wrote:
| Sorry, do you know where I can find information about
| this?
| Xorlev wrote:
| You're neglecting to consider the most important aspect of
| HTTPS, even if you don't care about privacy or believe the
| encryption will eventually be broken: integrity.
|
| HTTPS significantly raises the bar on MITM attacks, such as
| ISPs adding or replacing ads with their own.
|
| It also prevents folks sitting in the same coffeeshop as you
| from snooping.
|
| Calling "generally useless" is incredibly uncharitable.
| j-james wrote:
| Do correct me if I'm wrong: but the push to HTTPS was mostly
| for its resistance to MITM attacks from bad-behaving ISPs and
| public WiFi, no? I really struggle to believe that the most
| powerful nation-state in the world would not be able to get
| certificates from certificate authorities _overwhelmingly_ also
| hosted in the States. And besides, most information relevant to
| the government is just who 's connecting to what, which is
| necessarily done unencrypted (via DNS or otherwise).
|
| Directly answering your question: because phone companies are
| natural monopolies, and have strong incentives to prevent any
| public-access provider that wouldn't need unique identifiers
| tied to billing information from coming in. Location tracking
| is a direct consequence of cell towers only having a limited
| range: and because telcos have no real competitors, there's no
| way a privacy-centered carrier that sells itself on _not_ doing
| anything with that data can pop up.
|
| I do wish public access LTE existed in a similar form to free
| WiFi or municipal broadband. Or even just more municipal
| broadband.
|
| This article is about individual apps siphoning location data
| to the US government a la Tim Hortons, though, not phone
| providers themselves tracking users, although that also does
| happen.
| mjparrott wrote:
| A large portion of the market for anonymous phones are for
| illegal purposes. For any company doing this at scale, they are
| inevitably confronted with this fact and can get in a lot of
| trouble if they are proven to be knowingly supporting crime
| groups/individuals.
| pnw wrote:
| How does Apple's removal of IDFA affect this? The ad companies no
| longer have a cross-app identifier that would be of any use in
| correlating data from a specific phone/person?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Note that this is just records of some of the federal agencies,
| not all of them, according to the linked ACLU report:
|
| > "Although the litigation is ongoing, we are now making public
| the records that CBP, ICE, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S.
| Coast Guard, and several offices within DHS Headquarters have
| provided us to date."
|
| The NSA is still vacuuming up all the metadata and a good
| fraction of the content from the main nodes where it put those
| fiber-optic cable splitters on the main trunk lines what, 20
| years ago or so? Under the Patriot Act provisions, pushed through
| Congress in late October 2001 wasn't it? Just a few days after
| the Senate got shut down by those anthrax letter attacks sent to
| Daschle and Leahy (no, it wasn't Bruce Ivins).
|
| Then you've got the backdoors into Google and Apple, the whole
| PRISM thing... I doubt they've shut any of that down. See Yasha
| Levine's "Surveillance Valley" for more on that.
|
| https://yashalevine.com/surveillance-valley
|
| It's not quite China yet, but I'm pretty sure that when our
| politicians and bureaucrats and their corporate masters look at
| China's system, their main emotion is one of envy.
| tremon wrote:
| _It 's not quite China yet_
|
| What do you mean with this, specifically? Do you mean that
| China has a more comprehensive data collection apparatus, that
| the Chinese government has easier access to commercially
| collected data, or maybe that they exert their control more
| overtly than the US?
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Yes.
| trasz wrote:
| [citation needed]
| candiddevmike wrote:
| And yet, even with all of this surveillance, we still have mass
| shootings every five days.
| shrubble wrote:
| Only "nobodies" get shot. Funny how they never target any
| politicians, huh?
| seneca wrote:
| > Funny how they never target any politicians, huh?
|
| They do. Here are a couple recent examples:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting https:
| //en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shoot...
| ta988 wrote:
| Judging by what is done (and what is not done) to remedy
| them, they sound more like a feature than a bug of our
| society unfortunately. People are able to storm political
| institutions when they are angry about an election, but just
| buy more weapons when their kids get killed. Go figure.
| jjav wrote:
| According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shoot
| ings_in_the_... there have been 337 mass shootings in the US
| so far in 2022, way more than one per day. One every five
| days would at this point be a big improvement.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| My understanding is that in the vast majority of these mass
| shooting cases, authorities are well aware of the danger but
| there's no enforcement mechanism for "probably going to do a
| mass shooting".
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Yeah there is.
|
| It's called not paying to bombard them with great
| replacement conspiracy theories all for a decade and
| instead paying twice as many teachers as well as getting
| dedicated mental health staff.
| Tr3nton wrote:
| >replacement conspiracy theories
|
| https://europhobia.blog
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Yes. exactly like that one.
| denkmoon wrote:
| Resolving mass shootings isn't the purpose of the
| surveillance.
| plugger wrote:
| surveillance doesn't seem to do much to deter crimes, it just
| makes investigation easier
| landemva wrote:
| Comprehensive surveillance makes blackmailing and
| controlling politicians easier.
| specialist wrote:
| I could almost support the panopticon if that actually
| happened.
|
| Adjacently, to make the point: we warehouse 1000s or rape
| kits but don't bother to process them. Like, wtf?
|
| Big Data completely flips the problem of investigation.
| Instead of identifying suspects, chasing leads, gathering
| evidence, and verifying alibis, with Big Data you just rule
| out everyone who does have an alibi. Leaving only those who
| don't have an alibi, thereby revealing the perpetrators.
|
| It's been a while since I've actively cared about
| protecting privacy. So I don't know if any one's talking
| about how Big Data impacts legal concepts (balances of
| concerns) hammered out over the centuries. Like what is
| reasonable doubt and presumption of innocence when
| prosecutors can prove that every one else has an alibi?
|
| When I tried to talk about this stuff with other privacy
| advocates, presumably savvy about policy and whatnot,
| they'd look at me like I'm paranoid schizophrenic. So if
| the experts are still coming up to speed, it'll take that
| much longer for the policy maker, much less the general
| public, to become aware.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Funny thing is, they started the surveillance in late-2001 to
| suck all the records up. Where did they get the computers and
| storage devices to do that all at once? They must have been
| installing equipment for months or years, especially since I am
| pretty sure they even built a new data center on Fort Mead for
| it around that time. Now, this is 2001, when building a
| datacenter didn't just involve spinning up 1000 AWS EC2's and
| opening the spigot to S3, so this type of thing would have
| taken some time.
|
| So the question is: did they pass a law to allow data
| collection because of 9/11 and other attacks, or did they pass
| a law because they wanted the NSA to be able to collect this
| data using computer systems they had been planning for years,
| and used those attacks as a pretext?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Funny thing is, they started the surveillance in late-2001
| to suck all the records up.
|
| It started long, long before 2001. Here is a 2000 press
| release from the ACLU about global surveillance done by
| Echelon, which had already been ongoing for years (back when
| the ACLU cared about privacy issues):
|
| https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/privacy-advocates-
| concer...
|
| By 1999 privacy advocates at already gotten together for an
| official "jam Echelon day".
|
| >It was the latest in a long line of apparently futile online
| protest movements. On Thursday October 21 1999, internet
| users were urged to drop trigger words into their email so as
| to overwhelm Echelon, the massive surveillance project which
| is said to keep track of all electronic communications into
| and out of the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New
| Zealand.
|
| https://techmonitor.ai/technology/did_jam_echelon_day_do_mor.
| ..
| amatecha wrote:
| Ah right, I remember when Echelon Watch[0] was launched,
| and made the rounds in chat rooms I frequented at the
| time... Of course most people dismissed it as conspiracy
| theory stuff :)
|
| [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20001018103147/http://www.e
| chelo...
| lstodd wrote:
| Remember the Clipper chip from 1993? It's not like they
| suddenly started it in 2001.
| colordrops wrote:
| I recall some natural disaster in Thailand being blamed for a
| hard drive shortage at the time, when it ended up being the
| NSA buying them all up for their Utah data center.
|
| Edit: anyone downvoting want to comment on why this is
| implausible or not noteworthy to mention? It was a topic of
| discussion at the time.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Source? Would love to hear about this.
|
| I searched for "thailand hard drive shortage nsa" and only
| got...
|
| 2013 Nov, Backblaze's annual hard drive report still only
| blamed the flooding:
| https://www.backblaze.com/blog/farming-hard-
| drives-2-years-a...
|
| 2015, Tech Power-Up has a story about NSA malware hidden in
| hard drive firmware:
| https://www.techpowerup.com/209925/nsa-hides-spying-
| backdoor...
| colordrops wrote:
| I don't recall where I heard it but found this in a quick
| search:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/li1pep/a_glo
| bal...
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I legit don't believe they can store all that data. Youtube
| alone creates too much data for them to process and handle.
|
| They must be storing either a subset or only partial
| metadata.
| perrylaj wrote:
| I'm on the other side of the fence - I believe they can
| store all they need to. Backdoors into Google, AWS, and
| others were strongly hinted at if not fully exposed with
| all the leaks back in the Snowden days, so US Agencies may
| not even need to store some of the bulky stuff. But given
| the vast size and number of datacenters operated by US
| agencies, it seems likely they have a LOT of storage
| capacity. http://worldstopdatacenters.com/government-data-
| centers/
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| The NSA has an unlimited budget to store all the data they
| want. They have massive, billion-dollar data centers around
| the country (and the world?). The one in Utah is perhaps
| the best known.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Nothing is unlimited. If it cut into our tank budget, or
| anything old retirees care about, something would happen.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Nothing is unlimited. If it cut into our tank budget, or
| anything old retirees care about, something would happen.
|
| Nothing is unlimited, especially inflation. The idea of a
| "budget" when the FED can (and does) create trillions of
| dollars out of thin air with a few keystrokes is
| antiquated. They can - and do - devote whatever resources
| they desire for "national security".
|
| https://www.usdebtclock.org/
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| If I was them, I would not back up YouTube, but I might
| carefully scrape and discard.
|
| Hell, if I was a _benevolent_ surveillance program, I'd
| probably run routine searches for illegal stuff on YouTube,
| both to find it myself, and to make sure YouTube's
| tripwires are working.
|
| There is so much low-hanging fruit in terms of "interesting
| secrets per byte"
|
| Like, I could believe all SMS messages are stored for a
| year or so.
|
| Some random source says, "Over 6 billion texts are sent
| every day".
|
| If a text is about 140 characters, and you use a dumb image
| classifier to transcribe photos as "Nude woman", "nude
| man", "dick pic", "image macro", "guns", etc., that's only
| about 1 TB per day, right?
|
| 365 TB to keep all US text messages for a year? Maybe my
| source is wrong. That sounds low. But, it's just text.
| Maybe it's right.
|
| In fact, the upper bound for all US keyboard input for a
| year must be below 4.6 petabytes.
|
| (350 million people typing 365 days a year, 16 hours a day,
| 40 words per minute, 1 bit of entropy per character after
| compression, 8 bits per word)
| specto wrote:
| likely netflow data.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| with large datasets like bioinformatics you often compress
| the data by extracting features and building matrixes, then
| only keeping things that score above a threshold
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Sounds right. I like to say we're all on a list and it
| just matters where you rank on it. And the precision is
| only good when you rank high on it.
|
| No different than google search results. The accuracy of
| the 7th page of results just doesn't matter.
| eointierney wrote:
| I legit believe they store everything they can because
| they've been doing exactly this for longer than anyone
| else. They are _the_ experts in metadata management.
| getcrunk wrote:
| I mean more than a few x00 someones have to actually know
| the answer to that question. Shocked it hasn't been leaked.
| carapace wrote:
| > While the actual capacity is classified for NATIONAL
| SECURITY REASONS, we can say this: The Utah Data Center was
| built with future expansion in mind and the ultimate
| capacity will definitely be "alottabytes"!
|
| https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/
| bombcar wrote:
| I would suspect it was already being done (in part, or in
| whole who knows) and the attacks were an excuse to
| "legitimize" it going forward.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It was definitely being done before 9/11. I know of one
| data broker who was under contract with a certain TLA in
| the 90's to perform hardware assisted rapid data scanning.
| landemva wrote:
| Insider Bill Binney tried to do responsible data collection.
| He got harassed. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JvAflFcpJFQ
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| There are no "backdoors into Google and Apple." The government
| has to request specific accounts' data with a court order.
|
| The NSA isn't "vacuuming up all the metadata and a good
| fraction of the content from the main nodes." It does full take
| in some countries with national security interest and collects
| data to or from some endpoints outside the US known to belong
| to foreigners with a court order.
|
| We know all of this from the documents Snowden leaked and the
| documents the government declassified.
| VistaBrokeMyPC wrote:
| That "court order" is from the FISA court, which may as well
| be a monkey with a rubber stamp. We learned that from the
| Snowden documents too.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| They only call it a court for marketing reasons. It's
| basically just an internal review process.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| > It's not quite China yet,
|
| I'd call it a decentrailized surveillance system --- very
| robust against any attempt to dismantle it.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| >It's not quite China yet, but I'm pretty sure that when our
| politicians and bureaucrats and their corporate masters look at
| China's system, their main emotion is one of envy.
|
| The US has a much wider intellegence reach and surveillance,
| not only on our own citizens but on the worlds.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nicksiscoe wrote:
| I swear I've seen this article title a dozen times over the last
| dozen years
| flerchin wrote:
| If I have no choice about the ubiquitous surveillance, I'd at
| least like some positives like stopping the school shootings.
|
| As it is, they're watching, but clearly not doing anything
| useful.
| [deleted]
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Let's avoid giving them an acceptable reason to lock up anyone
| they want because they claim they're going to commit a crime.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Minority Report was supposed to be fictional, not a
| documentary.
| spongechameleon wrote:
| I'm more concerned that this data is available for sale in the
| first place. There should be a limit on the length of location
| history a telecom can collect for individual phone numbers and
| that data should never leave the telecom. We need stronger laws.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Surveillance state.
| locallost wrote:
| I have nothing to hide from our Beloved Leader.
| [deleted]
| tho23u4o23i4 wrote:
| atlas_shrugged wrote:
| I wish the apple privacy team would address this, otherwise what
| good are their privacy claims
| souplesse wrote:
| Sincere question: what new steps would you recommend they take?
|
| The iOS location request prompt uses very clear language while
| allowing for granular access, and the granted permissions are
| easily reviewed in Settings.
|
| The App Store requires data usage disclosures, which are
| presented about as succinctly as possible.
|
| They could mandate that apps share absolutely no location data
| with any third party, but that would break all sorts of things
| (external mapping APIs, for example), and it'd basically be
| impossible to police.
|
| Are there mitigations they could provide that I'm missing?
| NavinF wrote:
| One feature they could provide (but never will) is fake
| location data for apps that refuse to work without it.
|
| I remember way back when CyanogenMod was a thing even they
| refused to implement this.
| benjymo wrote:
| AFAIK iOs Apps have to work without additional permissions,
| otherwise they get rejected.
| NavinF wrote:
| A lot of apps "need" it. Consider AR games for example
| Aaronn wrote:
| Any app can get a general sense of your location from your IP
| address (unless you are using a VPN) since Apple's Private
| Relay feature only works in Safari and Mail, not in third
| party apps.
|
| I would love the ability require apps to ask permission to
| access the internet, or even better, a way to limit
| connections to specific domains like Little Snitch can do on
| macOS.
|
| Many apps don't have a legitimate need to access the internet
| such as a photo editing app or a single player game.
|
| iOS shouldn't ask for internet permission by default but it
| would be great to have as part of Lockdown Mode or another
| higher security mode.
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/07/apple-expands-
| commitm...
| orlp wrote:
| > Are there mitigations they could provide that I'm missing?
|
| Apple could start by stopping their constant tracking and
| uploading of MAC addresses around Apple devices.
|
| That's right, even if your device has no telemetry whatsoever
| but has active WiFi / Bluetooth network scanning, Apple is
| _still_ tracking you if someone close to you has an Apple
| device.
|
| https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
|
| > We investigate what data iOS on an iPhone shares with Apple
| and what data Google Android on a Pixel phone shares with
| Google. We find that even when minimally configured and the
| handset is idle both iOS and Google Android share data with
| Apple/Google on average every 4.5 mins. The phone IMEI,
| hardware serial number, SIM serial number and IMSI, handset
| phone number etc are shared with Apple and Google. Both iOS
| and Google Android transmit telemetry, despite the user
| explicitly opting out of this. When a SIM is inserted both
| iOS and Google Android send details to Apple/Google. iOS
| sends the MAC addresses of nearby devices, e.g. other
| handsets and the home gateway, to Apple together with their
| GPS location. Users have no opt out from this and currently
| there are few, if any, realistic options for preventing this
| data sharing.
| cj wrote:
| Apple launched Private Relay in beta which is essentially a VPN
| (I believe).
| pretext-1 wrote:
| Unfortunately only works in Safari and Mail. I wish they
| would make it work system-wide (like a real VPN).
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Depends on your threat model. I don't include state actors in
| mine, they can employ $5 hammers just as easily as crypto
| breakers
| fulafel wrote:
| This is a common false dichotomy. Border agents and random
| highway stops are done by state actors. Vanishingly small
| slice of them are james bond-esque high stakes games.
| arwhatever wrote:
| Govt can't use $5 hammers on 330 million people at once as
| they can with data collection.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| you're fine with state actors being able to precisely target
| propaganda / inciting calls to violence based on
| psychological profiles etc, including your neighbors
| sodality2 wrote:
| Not that they are fine, probably they just have no avenue
| to defend against that. It would be like an ant declaring
| war on the elephant.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Or maybe like a nest of hornets declaring war on a person
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| individual vs collective action
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| state actors are much more prescient than that. From every
| tail light ticket to rain water collection law, the state
| bears every law on the threat of murder. That's the price
| for the social contract.
| culi wrote:
| Sooo tl:dr; what IS the scale?
| trasz wrote:
| This is of course different from China, because in US you can
| vote against it.
|
| (People seriously believe this, lol.)
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/18/homeland-
| security-cell-pho..., which points to this.
| matrix12 wrote:
| Or just go after the data brokers. It's a pot of honey that the
| USG and others will get. Secret executive order or otherwise.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| It's safe to say we're all being tracked 24/7.
|
| Can you believe millions of people are wearing biometric scanners
| connected to the internet on their body all day and night!
|
| To the people who remember, we've lost our way.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Not having any trust your government will somewhat do the right
| thing for its people must be such mental burden.
|
| The world before cell phones was also one where people movement
| was incredibly easy to anticipate, a vast amount of people
| would have never traveled farther than a few gours by car from
| their birth place, buying online was an outlier and news
| sources could all be fully controled.
|
| That wasn't some eden where a government had no idea what the
| average people would be doing or thinking or had a hard time
| controling.
| [deleted]
| ed-209 wrote:
| What's the name of the phenomena wherein people who once mocked
| the idea of this occuring now act as if it's obvious and
| unremarkable?
| [deleted]
| claytongulick wrote:
| I'm starting to think that it's time to make an open source and
| open-data platform for this.
|
| Similar in scope to OSM, but for all people.
|
| The goal of the project would be to reveal to the average person
| how much data is being collected about them, and how easy it is -
| with the end goal being to influence legislation to curb these
| practices.
|
| As long as it remains in the shadows, it doesn't really affect
| the average person, and the convenience of digital devices will
| outweigh the privacy concerns.
| badreg wrote:
| I may be interested in helping with this, if needed.
| kornhole wrote:
| Many of these harvesters offer data dumps to their
| products/users as required by California and other laws. They
| are quite eye opening. However few people ask for it. It may be
| willful ignorance. So even if you create this, many people
| won't want to see it and prefer to go on using their coveted
| brand of phone and apps. You would need to force them to look
| at it. See the fight scene in They Live.
| salawat wrote:
| ...Sounds like chucking TNT into a bonfire tbqh, and
| unfortunately, you can't unring that bell.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Let's assume you make a platform like that.
|
| What prevents it from becoming just another surveillance
| platform?
| marklockettau wrote:
| You should do this
| claytongulick wrote:
| I very well may.
| quantum_state wrote:
| This should not be surprising at all ... hope we still remember
| the Snowden revelation ....
| [deleted]
| g8oz wrote:
| I'm wondering when citizen vigilante groups will start buying
| location data from these brokers to solve crimes.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| More like malicious criminal organizations that want to ensure
| you pay off your gambling debts
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has bought location data for prominent
| Congresspersons and used it to embarrass them into writing up
| laws around this.
| ccvannorman wrote:
| They have.
|
| John Oliver did it this year, and it was f*king great!
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/last-
| we...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| krsrhe wrote:
| corrral wrote:
| Or foreign governments or corporations (think: taking down a
| competitor or extorting business favors) for blackmail
| purposes.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Who says they don't?
| kfrzcode wrote:
| > new
|
| Best OPSEC assumes that Five+4Eyes have had all of the data,
| deanonymized, since 2013. Thanks NSA!
| [deleted]
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Fellow humans, there are alternatives to being tracked via cell
| phone! Your neck need not be under anyone's boot! You don't even
| need to give up any functionality:
|
| Data service:
|
| The simplest thing is to buy a prepaid SIM and top it off with
| cash. The lovely people over at /r/nocontract maintain a big
| spreadsheet so you can filter by various properties of the
| available contracts.
|
| Another way to go is to pay for a postpaid plan with a virtual
| credit card (e.g., privacy.com). It won't be linked to your name
| at the telco, but of course privacy.com knows who you are.
|
| Yet a third way to go, which is nascent, is buy an eSIM with
| crypto.
|
| All these methods make you /pseudo/nymous, but obviously you're
| still identifiable by subscriber number and possibly IMEI, to put
| aside correlational things like your traffic profile. You can
| help this problem by routing everything through a VPN. Then
| you're pseudonymous but the cell carrier knows nothing about you
| other than that you use a VPN. Pay for the VPN with crypto. Of
| course now the VPN provider knows your traffic, but you're much
| more anonymous to them than you are to a telco. You make your
| choices. Defense in depth. Etc.
|
| OS:
|
| CalyxOS: https://calyxos.org/ Privacy-respecting Android
| distribution that replaces Google spyware with MicroG, so you can
| have your cake and eat it too. Most everything will work as
| you're used to, but it does still talk to Google to make that
| happen.
|
| GrapheneOS: https://grapheneos.org/ Very much like Calyx, but
| extra-hardened and with no MicroG. No involvement with Google at
| all by default. You can use the work profile thinger in Android
| to set up an environment where you can run unprivileged Play
| services + whatever crapware you need that requires them.
|
| LineageOS: https://lineageos.org/ The successor to CyanogenMod,
| will work with many different phones. More privacy and control
| than stock Android.
|
| There are also many others: Sailfish, Replicant, e
|
| Hardware:
|
| CalyxOS and GrapheneOS run best on Pixel 3, 3a, 3XL, 4, 4a, 4XL,
| 5, 6, 6a. The path of least resistance is to get one of these
| phones and run CalyxOS (if there is an app you need to use that
| needs Google services like Firebase Cloud Messaging...note that
| many that can use FCM will run fine without), otherwise run
| GrapheneOS.
|
| You can also buy a Librem 5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ If
| privacy and security and hacking are really important to you.
|
| Or a pinephone: https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
| gscott wrote:
| AT&T is able to tell when you activate your prepaid phone what
| other phones are nearby. Drug dealers have been unmasked using
| this. They thought they did everything right but someone had a
| normal phone plan near their phone as it was activated and then
| the pre-paid phones were around those with regular plan phones.
| Unmasking the whole group.
|
| The best way is buy the prepaid phone from a 7/11 type store.
| Wait 6 months, go to the mountains in an old non-trackable car,
| leave your normal cellphone behind. Activate the prepaid phone.
| Put the pre-paid phone in a chip bag. Hand off the phone to the
| person who is going to use it but they put their phone in a
| chip bag before using the pre-paid one. Always protect your
| normal phone so it doesn't unmask your "secure" phone.
| lettergram wrote:
| The level of effort to do that is insane lol
|
| Then the first time you talk, your voice unmasks you.
|
| I'd you have a phone near by or any microphone or camera you
| can theoretically be identified.
| kornhole wrote:
| Never make voice calls with the SIM phone number. Only use
| the SIM for data when needed and away from your house.
| Always use VOIP, Signal, Jitsi, Jami..
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That sounds like "the Wire". The cops figured it out on the
| show, cops watch the show, and I'm sure that's probably a
| well-worn path.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Do you have a cite or know the specific technology? If they
| do this using 4G it wouldn't be too accurate. Are they
| somehow turning on Bluetooth or something?
| kfrzcode wrote:
| There's clearly a market for the ExpressVPN types to market a
| packet sniffer that identifies who's getting what data, and
| potentially shut it down. Allow lists. etc. The tech isn't new,
| but it's not accessible to your average data-well a.k.a. end
| user, and risks breaking functionality....
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| So long as you have deep control of inbound and outbound peers
| you can deanonymize traffic by throttling one end and finding
| streams that are affected. The service providers selling faux
| security don't have to be involved.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were
| paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our
| lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I
| should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a
| surveillance state
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| time_to_smile wrote:
| I've worked for the Federal Government and for a variety of ad-
| tech companies. I am still _much_ more terrified of "big tech"
| (and small tech) than "big government".
|
| When I worked for the government I wanted to scrape some
| publicly available data from the web. Because the data involved
| information about people I had to write up a document
| explaining exactly what I was using the data for, exactly what
| information I would be collecting and why it was necessary,
| explain where the data was to be stored, and most importantly
| specify exactly how long I needed the data and when and how it
| would be safely removed. This had to be approved by a privacy
| officer.
|
| I was shocked, because this is data that I, as a private
| citizen, could easily scrape. I asked why I had to do something
| so involved for a project I could easily do in my spare time.
| The answer I got was this: Because the government has extra
| authority they also have extra responsibility. As government
| employees we have more power to impact people's lives so it is
| our responsibility to be very explicit is what we do and why we
| are doing in.
|
| In ad-tech there are oceans of data that are _not_ publicly
| available, and in the US virtually zero restriction who looks
| at that data and what they can do with it. I 've watched people
| move around town via trackers when the use they web, seen where
| they got coffee and seen which doctor they go to. I used this
| information to demonstrate to the legal team at previous
| company to care about user privacy. They were shocked but in
| the end made no real policy decision. Some of the big players
| likely have tighter security but only for business/PR reasons.
| I can assure you that a random data engineer at a mid-sized
| tech company has far more access to your personal secrets than
| an FBI agent.
|
| Don't get me wrong, there are agencies in the government that
| have more surveillance power than they should and it is ripe
| for abuse. But don't think "it's not big tech", especially
| since there is a ultimately a thin line between big tech and
| big govt.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| The government is humongous. It would be naive to think all
| of government worked that way. There are certainly parts of
| the government that essentially answer to no one. There are
| trillion dollar black holes that still can't be explained.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > Because the data involved information about people I had to
| write up a document explaining exactly what I was using the
| data for, exactly what information I would be collecting and
| why it was necessary, explain where the data was to be
| stored, and most importantly specify exactly how long I
| needed the data and when and how it would be safely removed.
|
| This just sounds like a design doc, which I do regardless of
| if it has to get reviewed by a privacy team or I'm doing
| anything sensitive. Maybe it's because I've worked for mostly
| google & ex-googler run companies, but this is just standard
| practice for me.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| I'll agree with you that big tech is largely just an
| extension of big government. But I fear the government more
| than a large corporation because the government is the only
| agency with the authority to use lethal force.
|
| That being said my understanding is that there were
| organizations that have ties back to 3 letter agencies that
| helped put up capital for several of the big tech companies
| back in the day.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| They're the same people.
| slackfan wrote:
| To quote the late Steve Jobs: "Government is the biggest
| monopoly of them all".
|
| Considering most data collection firms will happily sell to the
| feds, it's really not that much of a difference in the end.
| freeAgent wrote:
| I think it's becoming increasingly apparent that there's not
| much difference between "Big Tech" and "Big Government." As
| this article makes clear, they have a symbiotic relationship
| with each other. Big Tech makes money from Big Government,
| which uses Big Tech to get around restrictions on what it's
| allowed to do on its own.
| Smoosh wrote:
| The trouble with big-everything is that they are indeed the
| big players, and therefore heavily invested in the status
| quo, and are the ones with power and influence. They don't
| want to fix things we see as problems, because they're doing
| just fine thank you.
|
| Another instance of "Fuck you, I've got mine".
| _moof wrote:
| por que no los dos dot gif, my friend.
| api wrote:
| One thing I'd love to know is whether there is an upside and if
| so how much.
|
| How many kidnapping victims get found or violent plots foiled
| by this tech vs old school police work?
|
| Of course I suspect this info would be hard to get. Authorities
| would likely cook the books to make these things look more
| valuable than they really are.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Using it for kidnappings would draw attention to it, and
| remove the pretext for expanding it.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes
| [deleted]
| 01100011 wrote:
| We are a surveillance state. We(geeks) all made a fuss over it
| about 20 years ago and no one seemed to care so here we are.
| Every so often someone new realizes it, freaks out, and not
| much changes. I wish I weren't so cynical but at some point I
| just got tired of losing sleep over it.
| _jal wrote:
| It is a sad kind of funny, watching people realize what
| happened.
|
| I saw someone I know ranting elsewhere recently about how
| "nobody saw this coming" and "nobody warned us". I called him
| out on this, because I vividly remembered a conversation with
| him when he was telling me what a paranoid weirdo I was, and
| how self-important I was being, to assume anyone cared enough
| about what I had to say.
|
| He claimed to not remember it. I found the email thread,
| mostly to make sure I wasn't wrong, but chose to stop
| responding instead.
| neilalexander wrote:
| Making a fuss just isn't enough when the majority of people
| still want the devices that are being used to spy on them.
| Retric wrote:
| The difference is surveillance states have historically
| leveraged people rather than passive tracking. It's wildly
| different knowing your friends, family, even children are
| being indoctrinated to report you for things that may or may
| not have happened at which point you just disappear like many
| people you never heard from again.
|
| It's actively stressful in a way that cellphones just don't
| evoke.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| Like rabies. Rabies has no symptoms until it's too late.
| The cellphones and ALPRs and PRISM have no symptoms until
| they're used.
|
| Stress would be nice. If we felt stressed, we might vote
| for treatment.
| asdff wrote:
| People with a bag of weed in their pocket in middle america
| probably feel the same way
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| asdff wrote:
| White or not if you are only middle class in middle
| america that ticket for the weed and steeper
| paraphernalia charge are going to hurt. Good luck getting
| the dumb things you've done as a teenager expunged unless
| you are actually upper class in middle america and
| therefore have access to legal council that your parents
| bankroll.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I guess the definition of middle class has changed quite
| a bit.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| We also built it. You, I, practically anyone who has touched
| tech built this society.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Without a doubt. Especially all of us in the deep learning
| stack.
| Mo3 wrote:
| Damn, even most of what we know is already a decade old
| information. I wouldn't be surprised if the intelligence
| agencies had much more crazy new projects going on the last few
| years.
|
| I also suspect there will be a point in the future where
| they'll break encryption and we won't find out until years
| later.. they already started looking into building a quantum
| computer in 2014, and I'd bet it's not necessarily for morally
| acceptable research.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect the intelligence agencies are still in absolute
| surprise that all their hard work was for _nothing_ and
| everyone will happily tell Facebook, Google, et al
| _everything_ with no prodding at all, and all they have to do
| is slurp it up.
| gruez wrote:
| >I wouldn't be surprised if the intelligence agencies had
| much more crazy new projects going on the last few years.
|
| except this isn't even from "the intelligence agencies", it's
| from data brokers:
|
| >The bulk of the data that CBP obtained came from its
| contract with Venntel, a location data broker that aggregates
| and sells information quietly siphoned from smartphone apps
| Mo3 wrote:
| What I meant is, I wouldn't be surprised if the actual
| intelligence agencies themselves had much more crazy
| projects going on.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if the intelligence agencies had
| much more crazy new projects going on the last few years.
|
| You mean like flying surveillance helicopters with really,
| really nice gear in them over major cities for days/weeks?
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| s/helicopters/planes
| nr2x wrote:
| The Feds have been buying consumer data for decades, this is far
| from new. This goes back to "junk mail", pre internet.
|
| As usual the US congress sat by and did nothing, and in all
| likelihood, will continue to do nothing.
| jdp23 wrote:
| Agreed that this has been going on for years and Congress has
| done nothing to date. But ...
|
| The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, sponsored by Senators
| Wyden and Paul, has a hearing tomorrow morning -- and may
| actually have decent chance to pass Congress this session.
|
| If you're in the US, EFF's "Tell Congress: The Fourth Amendment
| Is Not For Sale" page has a web form to encourage your
| representatives to support the bill.
| https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-the-fourth-amendmen...
| nr2x wrote:
| I've just given up on the federal government. It stopped
| working for common people in any meaningful way a long time
| ago.
|
| State and local, sure, but federal? Why bother.
| 616c wrote:
| It is what you put into it? I won't get into detail but it
| is hard and thankless. Writing off all the public sector in
| the US is writing off the private sector BC of bad actors
| like the data marketers. Should we write them off entirely?
| nr2x wrote:
| Yes.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| State is a longshot, depending on where you live and if
| your interests align with those in power. Being queer in a
| conservative area isn't going to get you results that keep
| you safe, and it is worse if your particular brand of queer
| is being trans. Transfolks aren't getting treated well from
| some state governments.
|
| Local? There is a serious lack of power that local
| politicians wield and most won't be able to help you with
| your issues.
| AinderS wrote:
| But I don't want private companies having this data either
| (on me, or others). Since we're barrelling full-speed towards
| corporate feudalism, I see this act as deflating the
| motivation to fix the root cause of the issue, and ultimately
| doing more harm than good.
|
| In this case (and many others), "the perfect is the enemy of
| the good" is inverted. Such as algorithmic suppression
| instead of censorship. Outright censorship would alert us
| that there is something wrong, mere suppression fools us into
| thinking the problem is minor.
| mushbino wrote:
| Buying? The NSA has backdoors in nearly everything through
| PRISM and they directly monitor internet traffic. Zero chance
| congress would/could put a stop to that.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| If you're a non intelligence agency trying to do opioid
| surveillance, easier to buy insurance and marketing data than
| to break the law.
| brigandish wrote:
| Ability is separate from legality. Make it illegal and it
| will doubtless continue, but it will be a risk for those
| doing it and they can be punished if uncovered. If it could
| be tied to politicians they might again tighten the rules.
|
| Far more satisfying than finding out your data is being
| siphoned and your complaints are met with a shrug and a
| chuckle.
| devmor wrote:
| Just because the NSA can see it doesn't mean we should allow
| the local PD, DA or even state legislature to see it.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| You still need to be able to decrypt which is what makes
| these data sets way more valuable
| sva_ wrote:
| I wonder why are we so complacent with these kind of things? Is
| it really just the fact that we got our bellies full, and live in
| climate-controlled homes? Or has there been some degeneration of
| the human body brought upon us with all kinds of new artificial
| materials we use, that might affect our bodies in ways we can't
| yet comprehend; or is it a psychological thing based on the
| results of technological achievements we consume?
|
| Looking back at some of the European revolutions, it doesn't seem
| like so much is missing to cause an urge to revolt in people. So
| what is different? Why do we repeatedly allow this to happen?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| People have no intuition for what is technically possible or
| its implications in cases like this, including most people in
| tech. So they fallback to mentally modeling these cases in
| terms of things they are familiar with, without any sense of
| the inadequacies of the model. You can tell people these facts
| all day but they don't grok it, really, and it would be hard
| work to _try_ to grok it, which few people have either time or
| inclination for. They may feel uneasy about it in some abstract
| sense but as far as they are concerned it doesn 't affect them
| in a material way.
|
| Humans make decisions based things they can imagine and
| effectively reason about. Humans struggle to incorporate
| elementary probability theory into their reasoning; anything
| that requires complex systems thinking, which these kinds of
| topics do, is only going to be practically accessible to a
| small percentage of the population.
| bwestergard wrote:
| "Is it really just the fact that we got our bellies full"
|
| Among sociologists and political theorists, this is known as an
| "embourgeoisement thesis".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embourgeoisement
| lioeters wrote:
| Today I learned, thanks for a new word. And its opposite:
| "proletarianization".
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > I wonder why are we so complacent with these kind of things?
|
| There are many reasons for this. It's partly due to the
| illusion that the current internet culture has created that
| expressing one's voice on a social media platform is an
| effective form of protest. It is not. How many change.org
| petitions are people going to sign until they realize that it
| means absolutely nothing?
|
| I think this one of the biggest and least-discussed erosions of
| public discourse and assembly. By fostering an online
| conversation at the expense of an in-person one, we wind up
| shouting into the abyss instead of at the people who deserve to
| feel the pressure.
| [deleted]
| conception wrote:
| >we got our bellies full, and live in climate-controlled homes
|
| I think it's this plus we have no time and the time we have is
| preyed upon. So, you're fed and more or less comfy, but you're
| also stressed and tired about that next paycheck. And if you
| don't get that next paycheck, then you will no longer be fed
| and more or less comfy.
| rglover wrote:
| > So what is different? Why do we repeatedly allow this to
| happen?
|
| It's not so much an "allow" as it is a "what's the
| alternative?" The problem at this point is so deeply rooted (in
| the form of life-long politicians and bureaucrats), the only
| solution is a full-blown reset. Unfortunately, there's no way
| to do that without violent revolution. Considering the scale
| and diversity of thought in the U.S., doing that effectively
| with the least amount of damage is next to impossible (too many
| loose cannons with mental issues). It also requires violence,
| which, if you take a non-aggression stance on problem solving
| (my own POV) then it's a stalemate.
|
| At this point, the only "fix" seems to be atrophy and
| circumvention. Atrophy in the sense that you just let it all
| run its course and meet its eventual demise (anticipating pain
| and suffering as the system collapses) and circumvention in the
| sense that you look for ways to excuse yourself from it.
|
| Earlier revolutions happened as part of much smaller
| civilizations (exactly why the American Revolution was possible
| --far less variables and far more homogenous thinking among the
| dissenting class). In a country of 300M+ people, any
| "revolution" is likely to dissolve into chaos no matter how
| well-organized or how principled its ideology.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Is it really just the fact that we got our bellies full, and
| live in climate-controlled homes?
|
| Why would it need to be more? People feel no need to fear their
| government when they are content.
| asdff wrote:
| I think the problems affecting the system are just too
| widespread and bespoke for the individual to resolve. To
| actually understand fully the scope of tracking etc, you
| probably need to be qualified to be a computer engineer or
| someone with a similar resume. That limits the amount of the
| population that is even capable of comprehending the news to a
| small sliver. Extend that to any field: biology, law, physics,
| economics, etc. Popular science reporting is terrible because
| the writers and the readers both lack sufficient debth to put
| things in context. Earnest law reporting is going to take a law
| degree as well as a stack of books to put things in their
| actual context. Economics is even worse; they say a grand
| unifying theory of economics is impossible because of the time
| it takes to study all its various schools of economic theory
| means it cannot be done in a single human lifetime.
|
| The great danger of having the knowledge of all things in our
| society be limited to a handful of siloed specialists is that
| it leaves a lot of room for placing opinion, biased, or slanted
| reporting to the same weight as the actual facts, since no one
| is qualified to see what is true and what isn't. It allows
| people who have no experience on a given issue to be in control
| of its outcomes, which invites graft sooner than learned
| experience.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| > To actually understand fully the scope of tracking etc, you
| probably need to be qualified to be a computer engineer or
| someone with a similar resume.
|
| I think it is much more severe than that. To understand the
| full scope you'd be labeled a conspiracy theorist.
| [deleted]
| thereare5lights wrote:
| People would rather point at other countries and virtue signal
| about how bad they are rather than care about what's happening
| in their own country.
|
| Couple that with brain dead nationalism about how the US is the
| best despite the fact that we're very much behind in many areas
| and it's not surprising that so many Americans blindly allow
| their own government to do so many outrageous things.
| uoaei wrote:
| https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/2011/lagi2011a...
|
| See Fig 2. Note how tight the correspondence is between FAO
| Food Price Index >= 190 per "constant prices", i.e. cost of
| food adjusted for inflation, and the emergence of civil unrest.
|
| There is a certain level of desperation necessary to spark
| revolution. Food prices seem to predict unrest remarkably well
| in MENA countries per the study linked above. Maybe our
| experience in "developed" nations is so well-padded with
| infrastructure and consistent resupply that we are simply not
| enough in want. The hungry can usually find enough food to
| survive, because there's so much accessible excess, whether by
| theft or charity.
|
| A writer at Statista provides an update for 2022 since the
| invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent effect on food prices
| around the world: https://www.statista.com/chart/27110/food-
| prices-political-i...
| newsclues wrote:
| Identity politics is a distraction from class struggle.
|
| Marxist theory acknowledges that capitalism provides too much
| to the proletariat to desire revolution, thus the focus on
| destroying capitalism and society.
| openfuture wrote:
| To answer your question you only need to investigate under
| which conditions coercion succeeds in changing behaviour.
|
| I believe that we can dismantle the current world order by
| providing a more persuasive alternative. Legitimacy is not
| absolute, but rather relative, and currently the things built
| on coercion are more legitimate, that is not a law of physics
| (thankfully it seems to be the other way around actually).
| agilob wrote:
| Funny how this is right below:
|
| >FCC: TikTok is unacceptable security risk and should be removed
| from app stores
| omginternets wrote:
| Both can simultaneously be true.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| There's a cliff between America spying on their citizens (to
| see trends and to catch criminals that make themselves
| statistically relevant) and China spying on Americans (to
| commit ideological subterfuge).
|
| Not that either are good, but given that some of the Chinese
| powers that be consider America to be an enemy the potential
| consequences are terrifying.
| crikeyjoe wrote:
| dogman144 wrote:
| These are the engineers and PM types that have know this for
| years: - security engineering - privacy engineering - digital
| marketing - data science
|
| Maybe the first two did a vocal but bad job raising the flag due
| to how antagonistic some of that dialogue goes.
|
| But to this whole post acting surprised - look around at what you
| work on and who with, and what you're paid for doing it. Be the
| change you want to see, but people in tech acting surprised about
| this seems extremely disingenuous.
| asjdflakjsdf wrote:
| I absolutely hate when people respond to these kind of articles
| with "Why are people surprised". The truth is that no one is
| surprised. People are more disappointed, and frustrated, that
| this is allowed to happen, not just from a legal sense, but in
| a technical sense also.
| dogman144 wrote:
| People are surprised in this thread. The truth is I run into
| engineers who are oblivious to this, perhaps deliberately so.
| Accountability for this starts with the teams building these
| products and choosing what to/to not include as data.
|
| Or; what I absolutely hate is engineers outside of
| privacy/security acting frustrated, while collecting checks
| on the back of this data. Like that group of ex-Facebook
| Trust and Safety that founded that ludicrous and smug user
| protection group in Boston based on their experiences at
| Facebook.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| I don't think we can avoid the surveillance Era
| consumer451 wrote:
| Not with that attitude!
|
| But seriously, at this point the best bet is to strive for
| accountability in governance both public and private.
| lettergram wrote:
| When Google and apple came out during the pandemic and showed the
| anonymous data on every city... it was pretty obvious they were
| prepared for that way too quickly.
|
| It's safe to assume, you're tracked 24/7 and everything's
| recorded imo.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Given that Apple and Google are both tech companies it was
| probably just a (say) python script to get that kind of thing
| going. For google especially the data and being able to iterate
| is how they keep their edge.
| xnacly wrote:
| Thats a really bad justification, if their edge depends on
| spying they shouldn't exist
| mhh__ wrote:
| I'm not justifying but rather indicating that the above
| comment is misunderstanding the situation
| [deleted]
| nl wrote:
| The specifics around this matter hugely.
|
| Neither Google nor Apple sell your location data. Other ad
| providers will.
|
| This matters a lot but is ignored by comments like this.
| lettergram wrote:
| Lol if you believe them...
|
| Burr regardless, the point was government has it.
|
| It's also safe to assume 3rd party apps track it and capture
| the same data. Which can then be purchased.
| nl wrote:
| Well selling that data is completely against their business
| model!
|
| For example Google's entire revenue model is based on the
| idea you give them money and ads to show and they choose
| where best to show that. If they sold the raw data it would
| undermine that.
|
| Basically no amount of money would be enough for Google to
| give away their entire business.
| lettergram wrote:
| I'm sure they would be happy to sell data provided the
| person purchasing the data would not be in the ad space.
|
| For example, if the government says, "here's $10B dollars
| / year" give us that data and we wont use it in ads.
| Google doesn't have a business incentive not to provide
| it the data.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| > you're tracked 24/7 and everything's recorded imo
|
| If you have Android, open Google maps, open menu, select "Your
| Timeline", and scroll through days.
| moonbas3 wrote:
| This can be disabled, although who knows if it's just hidden
| for you.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| We need to demand more options on technology platforms! We cannot
| impose effective consumer pressure when we are forced to choose
| between two locked down App Stores which make it impossible to
| categorically prevent these kinds of malicious actions.
|
| How long do you think it would take for a "Little Snitch"-like
| application to pop up that firewalls location API access if the
| platforms were more open?
| chrismartin wrote:
| If you have (or are willing to buy) a compatible phone,
| GrapheneOS is as good as it gets in my experience -- pushes the
| envelope of usability and security more than any other mobile
| device OS yet. The sandboxed Google services compatibility
| layer (using device profiles) lets you have your privacy cake
| and eat proprietary apps when you need them, too.
| HKH2 wrote:
| We clearly have options. On an Android phone, you can install
| F-Droid, and you can flash a custom Android ROM. You can even
| pay for a phone with those things already set up.
|
| Like it or not, people want convenience.
| kelnos wrote:
| I mean, we have that: Android has plenty of alternative ROMs,
| many of which have Google services removed or otherwise
| sandboxed. But, overwhelmingly, people (myself included) do
| _not_ choose to take this route, because they are much less
| user-friendly, and you lose functionality.
|
| Regarding "firewalling location API access", that's something
| that you get for default on both Android and iOS, no? Granted,
| there's no guarantee Google and Apple themselves are respecting
| those settings on their own platforms.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| What I'm trying to say is that there should be significant
| pressure on companies like Apple and Google to take their
| successful and user friendly platforms and open them up so we
| can implement the functions we want without opting to replace
| the whole thing (rooted or jailbroken) ROMs.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| You can do that right now with Android without root,
| including Little Snitch functionality.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| How?
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| Every person, living and dead, has been uniquely identified and
| is tracked in near real time.
|
| Source: I read the news, don't suffer from amnesia or willful
| ignorance.
|
| We used Seisent (since bought by LexisNexus) in the mid-aughts.
| At the time, every person in North America was accounted for,
| with pretty good coverage of the Caribbean and Central America.
| The NSA bought a few clusters, then wove in their own datasets
| (phone use, location tracking, credit cards, library usage,
| email, etc).
|
| There are many entities maintaining all encompassing panopticonic
| demographic databases. Governments and publicly traded companies.
| This is not refutable.
|
| Ironically, in the USA, both voter registration and gun ownership
| are explicitly excluded. Because reasons. (You can't manage what
| you don't measure.)
|
| We could, trivially, resolve all the policy food fights over vote
| registration "fraud", gun ownership, and conducting the
| consensus. Turn all those flash points into simple database
| queries.
|
| We could, trivially, outright stop all anonymous trolling and
| disinformation. Purveyors of social media don't authenticate
| their users because they don't want to. Their business models
| require that they remain willfully ignorant.
| pjc50 wrote:
| South Korea used to require that people log in with their
| government ID to websites. Through an ActiveX control, even. I
| believe they eventually gave up on this level of direct
| tracking.
|
| > We could, trivially, resolve all the policy food fights ..
| flash points into simple database queries.
|
| The flashpoint _is_ that people don 't want to be queryable.
| You can't wish that problem away.
| specialist wrote:
| The great irony is that actual privacy requires unique
| identifiers, like RealID or equiv.
|
| GUIDs unlock the Translucent Databases achievement, actual
| per field encryption of PII data _at rest_. TLDR, clever
| applications of salting and hashing, just like with proper
| password storage. https://www.amazon.com/Translucent-
| Databases-Peter-Wayner/dp... http://wayner.org/node/46
|
| I was utterly against RealID, until I figured this out. Much
| chagrin. Super embarrassing.
|
| Source: Worked on both electronic medical records and
| protecting voter privacy. Did a translucent database POC for
| medical records, back in the day.
|
| If there's another technical solution, I haven't found it.
|
| But I think to your point, people generally don't want the
| sensitive data being collected in the first place. I don't
| have an answer for that.
| WebbWeaver wrote:
| All great points.
|
| >We could, trivially, outright stop all anonymous trolling and
| disinformation. Purveyors of social media don't authenticate
| their users because they don't want to. Their business models
| require that they remain willfully ignorant.
|
| Yes well what argument would you make, if you could or would,
| to change the current landscape?
| specialist wrote:
| Since you asked...
|
| Social (popular) medias all eventually implode. Lifecycle
| maturity models and all that. Seems to me that Facebook and
| Twitter are well into the top of their S-curves. (I can't
| speak to TikTok.)
|
| If I wanted to accelerate their demise, I'd attack their
| revenue. Like pop the digital advertising bubble.
| Congressional and criminal investigations into digital ad
| fraud would mosdef do the trick.
|
| --
|
| If we could go back in time, perhaps lessons for whatever
| comes next, I'd advocate three general categories of reforms.
|
| 1) All the "well duh" stuff that Sen Mark Warner et al
| advocate. Here's the PR for SAFE TECH Act and Warner's white
| paper.
|
| https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/2/warner.
| ..
|
| https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/d/3/d32c2f.
| ..
|
| And a layperson's summary:
|
| https://diginomica.com/sen-mark-warners-15-common-sense-
| rule...
|
| I particularly like clearly identifying bots. Some are
| authentic, legit activity. So not an outright ban of bots.
|
| "Media literacy" is quixotic; I guess they want to say they
| tried.
|
| I want to know more about "information fiduciaries"; see #3
| below.
|
| 2) Nerf the algorithms, squelching instead of boosting viral
| content. Addressed by section 1.4 of this commission's
| recommendations. (Which also has a lot of "well duh" general
| purpose civil society stuff.)
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54901083
|
| https://informationdemocracy.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/11/...
|
| 3) Most radically: Individual property rights over personal
| data. My data is me. If someone is using my data in some
| economic way, I want my cut. This nicely dovetails
| (necessitates) the misc proposals of treating aggregated data
| as a liability, instead of as an asset. Which would totally
| flip the current script for investors, regulators, insurers,
| etc.
|
| I've tried to understand the opposition to "personal data
| sovereignty" -- just came up with that, clever!, because I
| don't know what else to call it. I dimly recall some "privacy
| experts" in California concern trolling that state's
| initiatives. I think their reasoning was something like "we
| can't put a price on personal data because that'd encourage
| more collection". Um. Okay. Felt very cassandra, unattached
| to our reality. So a _philosophical_ rather than a practical
| opposition, I suppose.
|
| FWIW, talking about this stuff is really hard. My "pay me for
| using my data" proposal doesn't make sense unless the
| audience already understands the current ecosystem.
|
| As I've said elsewhere, I worked on electronic medical
| records information exchanges. Our startup was bought by a
| national laboratory (Quest Diagnostics). I sat in various
| meetings and calls, with PHBs, lawyers, and other goons,
| brainstorming ways to further monetize medical records.
|
| Back in the mid-aughts, every single participant (doctors,
| hospitals, labs, scripts, insurers, pharma) absolutely
| considered patient data as "theirs". And our potential
| partners like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault and
| Cerner and EPIC were all hellbound in trying to figure out
| how to monetize it.
|
| It was absolutely disgusting.
| [deleted]
| fundad wrote:
| Can they tell us what members of our corporate security
| departments participated in Jan At this point we know our
| employers know but are covering it up so as not to anger RWers.
| We don't even know if insurrectionists were purged from corporate
| security departments or if the rest of the department has been
| vetted extra.
|
| All we know is our employers want us back into the office to
| serve as their human shields.
| [deleted]
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| No right to privacy in the Constitution and batshit insane Jesus
| freaks. May thy live in interesting times.
| ramoz wrote:
| It's important everyone becomes educated about the fact that
| virtually every mobile app sells some part of your data that
| leads to some private company possessing the ability to draw a
| circle around your house on map and then detect all patterns of
| life without any PII.
|
| I don't think it's fair to pit this as a US gov't surveillance
| problem. It's true though - the Government missions involved,
| where this type of data is relevant, face rather compelling
| offerings especially in complex times; e.g. immigrant/refugee
| surges where understanding the flow of people up to the border is
| important for stability.
|
| All of this data comes from Big/Small/all tech; usually branded
| as "ad tech" or "mobility data". And the supply chain is rather
| murky, masked, and rebranded/repackaged numerous times between a
| network of data providers & downstream businesses.
|
| Working close to Government... I've never seen any mission
| specifically seeking large-scale citizen-based tracking
| capabilities. US government in recent timeframes have seemed
| adamant about not purchasing any US-based location data & are
| cautious even for non-US based monitoring; especially as they
| learn more about the origins & scale of mobility data.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| These sorts of things are compartmentalized.
|
| The FBI, ICE and DEA absolutely do scaled collection. DEA/ICE
| was known (ie NY Times article) to be tracking cars via
| LPR/camera a decade ago up and down I95, for example.
| Individual cities and other jurisdictions share LPR and camera
| data. Things like fusion centers and drug task forces probably
| get access to various forms of intel.
|
| Civilian government is different - they are subject to lots of
| controls and audit, and usually take data protection seriously.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > usually take data protection seriously
|
| Do we need to list the number of government data
| breaches/leaks over the past 20 years? My own PII has been in
| several.
|
| They may take it seriously, but their actual track record
| isn't really that great.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| We need to start facing the fact that PII just isn't
| private.
|
| It's not necessarily personally identifiable either
| (considering all the different ways to fake it, make
| mistakes, the inability to correct mistakes once the
| information is out there, and the unreliable methods used
| to verify identity)
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Spoken like someone that's never had a partner with
| impulse control or anger issues. Keeping PII private is,
| IMO, like freedom of speech or privacy: it may seem
| trivial and unimportant when you don't need it, but it
| sure as hell matters to some people, and can keep them
| safe.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It matters to me a great deal, but I've just come to face
| the fact that much of what I and the various
| organizations who collect PII from me consider private is
| effectively publicly accessible, no matter what lip
| service to privacy these organizations give.
|
| Our SSN's, names, ages, address, phone numbers, emails,
| locations, habits, interests, political opinions and
| affiliations, sexual orientations, medical histories and
| countless other "private" and identifying information are
| in countless databases and available to those willing and
| able to pay for, spy on, or steal them
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| [deleted]
| whyagain1885 wrote:
| I always get annoyed how these programmers can have a good
| sleep at night given what they have done. Note that blaming it
| on the marketing VP is not fair. If even 50 % employees have a
| thought this tracking can be stopped.
| pjc50 wrote:
| People are very willing to do almost anything against "the
| bad guys", defined by whatever ideology they were brought up
| with. Everyone doing this imagines that they're preventing
| crime and terrorism, and can probably point to a case in
| which it was.
| tibbon wrote:
| I don't find it is generally one programmer enabling it.
| Decimation of privacy often occurs slowly at most orgs. One
| exception at a time. One "critical" temporary need on top of
| another. Often in different teams. The person who built the
| UI didn't build the GPS modules. The person who built the GPS
| module didn't build the data store. The person who built the
| data store didn't deal with report exports. And that person
| didn't deal with their privacy and compliance policies- or
| sales pipeline. Lots of people wanting to say yes and do a
| good job. Often leadership is caught up chasing a dollar
| dogleash wrote:
| Programmers selling out is the goal in and of itself these
| days.
|
| It's gotten to the point where we just sorta accept that
| people want to work at places like Facebook and Google.
| There's so many of them that the thing to do is treat it like
| a morally neutral job or be seen as a weirdo.
|
| And when the largest and most pervasive global surveillance
| systems history has ever known "aren't _so_ bad ", then
| nothing is.
| philderbeast wrote:
| the programmers sleep at night because doing this is the only
| thing that lets them feed there families.
|
| like it or not, there are always people who will see this as
| the lesser evil because of their personal circumstances don't
| give them other options.
| benwad wrote:
| I'd agree if we were talking about low-skill work where
| people are just scraping by. Programmers have the luxury of
| choosing from a wide range of places to work. We're all in
| a position where we can refuse work we find unethical, even
| if it means taking a pay cut.
| tibbon wrote:
| Yes, but... I've seen that it is often just shades of
| bad. There are so few morally pure companies out there-
| they are all willing to do bad things for money. Or the
| vast majority of them. And it is hard to evaluate that
| upfront. Even the most virtuous will bend privacy for the
| right stakeholders
|
| I should go work for Google? Because they clearly value
| privacy?...
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| You say that as if we all started out fresh from college
| with the ability to pick and choose the kind of dev work
| we do. Not everybody has the kind of safety net starting
| out that implies the ability to do that.
| mkmk3 wrote:
| True, as long as there's money in it, but I'd bet the
| majority of people in adtech aren't in terrible positions,
| so I don't think that's the root of this. Do people
| generally care about acting ethically without circumstances
| forcing them to? Beyond paying lip service. And if you
| think so, do you think they generally care in the context
| of surveillance, where most of us haven't had first or
| second hand experience of any obvious cost?
| n4r9 wrote:
| The developers may not be aware of the full consequences of
| what they've been asked to do.
|
| I was recently discussing the Uber revelations in an ethical
| tech group that I run. The most shocking part for me was that
| at one time the app was designed to behave differently
| depending on whether the user was categorised as law
| enforcement based on their usage history.
|
| This surely required complicity at all levels, from
| management down to engineers and testers.
|
| But someone point out quite astutely that such a feature can
| be generically framed as "optimise/adapt behaviour based on
| historical usage". It makes business sense to categorise a
| user's profession and alter ride costs based on that. All
| that's needed then is to give a higher-up the control over a
| dial that effectively nullifies law enforcement's ability to
| get a ride.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I can believe that some employees of these companies are
| genuinely shocked and surprised that this is being done,
| but few will refuse to do it, and fewer still will quit.
|
| The sad fact is that our surveillance society was built
| with the willing cooperation of countless developers for
| whom money was far more important than the privacy of their
| users.
| RektBoy wrote:
| Exactly this. But I think it's similar to the "Matrix".
| They're part of the system.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Listen to Jordan Peterson - especially Maps of Meaning
| lectures and/or book.
| thrownblown wrote:
| Then i start having dreams that my dad is giving me a
| lecture but my dad is also kermit the frog
| pnutjam wrote:
| Don't fall down that rabbit hole.
|
| https://www.unikumnett.no/2019/10/12-reasons-why-no-one-
| shou...
| dogleash wrote:
| C'mon, it's just someone with some opinions you don't
| like, not the bogie man.
|
| It's not a rabbit hole to hear out someone you disagree
| with. Unless you're either afraid 1) they might be right,
| or 2) the listener doesn't have critical thinking skills.
| I get that #2 is scary, and it's a legit issue in
| society, but they shouldn't be listening to you either.
|
| Also, there are good tear-downs Peterson's message
| online, the one you linked is... not.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I used to think that - despite his overreaching when it
| comes to politics and culture - he was probably a decent
| enough psychology researcher and self-help author.
|
| However, having been through a fairly significant
| psychological journey myself and then reading the 12
| Rules for Life, I'm quite worried that his rules have the
| potential to prolong or exacerbate psychological
| insecurities. Some of them, e.g. "Pursue what is
| meaningful" and "Make friends with people who want the
| best for you." are absolutely fine. But there is nothing
| there I can see about self-compassion or self-acceptance.
| If anything there's a general trend in the opposite
| direction of encouraging self-criticism. This probably
| works in the short-medium term for people who experience
| pleasure from validating their own self-critical
| thoughts, but I fear in the longer term that it will
| postpone or diminish their potential to love themselves.
|
| Admittedly I have only read the rules themselves and not
| the whole book; in fact I'm reluctant to read the rest if
| that is the best he can do.
| pnutjam wrote:
| Just a quick link to alert people who may not realize
| who/what he promotes.
|
| I read all sorts of terrible stuff, and it probably
| influences me more then I'd like, but it's easy to jump
| in the middle of something that "seems" reasonable on the
| Internet.
| smt88 wrote:
| Jordan Peterson is indeed a good person to help answer,
| "Why do they do it?" Because the answer is always money,
| and Peterson is willing to be repeatedly make a fool of
| himself and compromise his supposed morals to pander to
| people who give him money and attention.
| nly wrote:
| "How do you sleep at night?"
|
| https://youtu.be/GO0JaecRWy0
| ramoz wrote:
| Responsibility is still probably more in the product VP
| realm, but with a few internal "cambridge analytica" shops
| where the devs/data scientists know exactly what they are
| doing; however or more jazzed up by their desire to advance
| in their research domain.
|
| For vast majority of devs, any level, the way data pipes out
| to different business units from your appliance at a large
| business is often obscure/unknown. You integrate SDKs and
| API's that are black boxes, you send data out to warehouses
| with 30 analytics teams measuring/creating new data products
| you'll never see.
| themitigating wrote:
| Both are bad situations but the government has more power and
| control than tech companies.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| > virtually every mobile app
|
| Reminder to readers to use F-Droid
| [deleted]
| mmerlin wrote:
| F-Droid then DNS66
| mouzogu wrote:
| i think a state level actor would find it much easier to
| compromise f-droid and its app then the play store.
|
| at least with google play you know they're selling your data
| so can adjust your behaviour accordingly.
| janandonly wrote:
| Or on iPhone, switch "location services" off.
| feet wrote:
| I don't trust Apple either
| sfmike wrote:
| naive question, if you use f droid and you have location
| services on, use a bunch of social apps, have google maps on
| it, use it normally, what extra layer will f droid have with
| all of those leaks anyways?
| fsdffvsdsdfb wrote:
| It Depends.
|
| Any f-droid app that depends on location uses the standard
| android location APIs. That means you're submitting what RF
| networks (mobile and wifi) are visible, and Google then
| passes back an approximate location. Once you have a good
| GPS lock, the same data is submitted to Google again for
| inclusion in their database.
|
| If you avoid installing Google Play services, you'll have
| to use a framework like microG that re-implements the
| Google APIs. microG lets you plug in a number of backends,
| with a default of sending the same data to Mozilla Location
| Services instead of Google. You can easily turn this off
| and use local-only location providers that either build
| their own database any time you have a GPS lock, or use
| downloads from opencellid.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Unified-nlp is another option to replace the Google
| location backbend. It similarly allows you to select
| location options or build your own local database.
| Z_I_F_F wrote:
| Also curious of this
| pessimizer wrote:
| None. F-Droid is just an app store whose apps tend to be
| very safe. It isn't a program to protect you from apps that
| you installed from other stores, or from google.
| kornhole wrote:
| F-droid is an app store that carries only FOSS apps that do
| not have any Google API's. These apps are generally safe.
| Some may require your location such as maps to function.
| The difference with most of these mapping apps based on
| OSM.org is that they do not transmit your location
| anywhere.
|
| You can still install other proprietary location harvesting
| apps on your phone. If you do so, you are just minimizing
| the number of data harvesters.
|
| To ensure nobody but you knows where you are: 1. Have only
| safe apps installed. 2. An OS that does not send your
| location to Google, Apple, or others 3. Your SIM must not
| be transmitting to the Telco's. This means no SIM or
| airplane mode.
| taneliv wrote:
| You can make emergency calls without a SIM card. The
| phone identifies itself to the network (with IMEI), even
| if there is no SIM. The telcos, obviously, map IMEIs to
| SIMs. (Perhaps needless to say, but for basic operational
| purposes they have to quite efficiently triangulate your
| position, to know which cell tower to instruct your phone
| to use.)
|
| Having no SIM does not help you conceal your phone's
| location at all, only perhaps to make it harder to map it
| to your identity.
|
| I don't know if any location data might leak in airplane
| mode, but I would not be surprised if some did, for
| example, through NFC or Bluetooth.
| kornhole wrote:
| This depends on what airplane mode means on your phone.
| With GrapheneOS, airplane mode blocks baseband
| transmission, but you can optionally still turn on
| Bluetooth and/or WIFI. If you dial 911, airplane mode is
| immediately turned off for the call to go through and
| stays off until you turn it back on.
|
| WIFI triangulation or bluetooth mesh can be used for
| location tracking in particular areas. MAC address
| randomization and generic phone ID makes this more
| difficult, but broadcasts of known devices in WIFI or
| bluetooth scanning can give you away.
|
| Others may know more than me on this.
| mab122 wrote:
| > If you dial 911, airplane mode is immediately turned
| off for the call to go through and stays off until you
| turn it back on.
|
| I didn't know that, that's really smart and so simple. I
| like it. I don't know why such trivial thing is so
| amazing to me.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I don't know if any location data might leak in
| airplane mode, but I would not be surprised if some did,
| for example, through NFC or Bluetooth.
|
| Which is why hardware kill switches are the future (see
| Librem 5 and Pinephone).
| bbarnett wrote:
| The future of never happen.
|
| The worlds worst privacy offenders make/sell phones.
| Google. Samsung. Apple.
|
| Google, no need to explain.
|
| Samsung? All their apps, their keyboard, collect, collect
| collect.
|
| Apple? Walled garden of share data with Apple.
|
| And beyond this, for example on Samsung builds, the GPS
| daemon calls home(Qualcomm? looked into it a year ago...)
| to update agps data, but also... provide tracking info.
|
| None of these people want hardware kill switches.
| fsflover wrote:
| Which is why we should support the ones I listed.
| [deleted]
| Semaphor wrote:
| > I don't know if any location data might leak in
| airplane mode, but I would not be surprised if some did,
| for example, through NFC or Bluetooth.
|
| Not sure about NFC, but at least BT gets disabled in
| airplane mode.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Bluetooth stays enabled on iOS in airplane mode. You have
| to disable Bluetooth separately.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Weird choice for a "stop all radios" toggle to not stop a
| certain radio.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| And now you are the weird outlier that doesn't have the same
| data spewing forth instead of Average Joe making Average
| Data.
| hzmixi wrote:
| i suggest you download netguard and block all apps from
| accessing internet https://netguard.me/
| pretext-1 wrote:
| Are the apps different if I download them from F-Droid? For
| example if I download Signal, is it different then the Play
| Store version?
| avhon1 wrote:
| In the case of apps that are available on both f-droid and
| on the play store, the difference is that the f-droid
| versions will be compiled without google play services.
| This can limit functionality (for example, receiving
| notifications while the phone is asleep), but does increase
| privacy somewhat.
|
| Significantly, there is very little overlap in the apps
| available on f-droid and the apps available on the google
| play store. Most play store apps siphon data, and most
| f-droid apps don't.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > Working close to Government... I've never seen any mission
| specifically seeking large-scale citizen-based tracking
| capabilities.
|
| They tend to keep those kinds of things pretty secret. We
| didn't know about all kinds of spying they do on us for even
| decades after the spying started.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| > Working close to Government... I've never seen any mission
| specifically seeking large-scale citizen-based tracking
| capabilities.
|
| Further and rarely understood, but it never is about what the
| government currently does, but what it could do when change
| occurs.. like the Nazis could exterminate the dutch jews (was
| it then?) better because they had those registers.. like what
| if the next Putin/Orban/Trump takes over and wants to take
| some more steps..
|
| General principle of data economy is one pillar for civil
| rights! Its abuse by companies right now is an super annoying
| but comparably small issue.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > what if the next Putin/Orban/Trump takes over and wants
| to take some more steps..
|
| What are you implying here by bring up those names?
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