[HN Gopher] The Manual for the Mass Surveillance Tool Cops Use t...
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       The Manual for the Mass Surveillance Tool Cops Use to Track Phones
        
       Author : AtomicOrbital
       Score  : 236 points
       Date   : 2022-09-02 12:34 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
        
       | O__________O wrote:
       | Direct link to the PDF of the manual linked to in the article:
       | 
       | https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22273682/fog-data-sci...
       | 
       | Appears the "device IDs" mentioned in the manual are:
       | 
       | - Apple's Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) or
       | 
       | - Android's Advertising Identifier.
        
       | maerF0x0 wrote:
       | I do not understand why we accept such low standards from our
       | governments.
       | 
       | A warrant should be required. A warrant should be a cryptosecure
       | signed file from the judge(s). The search tool should validate
       | the signatures. The parameters in question should also be signed
       | across and be the only allowed inputs.
       | 
       | Also there should be accountability for the reasonable
       | expectation aspect of warrants. A realistic threshold should be
       | enforced... If an officer or judge starts to dip below the
       | threshold they should be seen as incompetent.
        
         | formerly_proven wrote:
         | > A warrant should be required. A warrant should be a
         | cryptosecure signed file from the judge(s). The search tool
         | should validate the signatures. The parameters in question
         | should also be signed across and be the only allowed inputs.
         | 
         | The issues run deeper. Court orders are widely rubberstamped.
         | Circumventing legal processes like this creates a verneer of
         | judicial review that's meaningless, because "judicial review"
         | should not mean "a judge's eyes have scanned the warrant for
         | the signature line he needs to sign on".
         | 
         | As a cherry on top, things like the fruit of the poisonous tree
         | doctrine are pretty unique to the US - most countries don't
         | have something like it, or only forbid using evidence if the
         | manner in which it was gathered was too egregiously illegal,
         | but otherwise it doesn't matter if prosecutors obtained
         | evidence legally or not. It doesn't take a genius to see how
         | that's not exactly conducive for the LE system to stay in their
         | legal lane.
        
           | SuperKamiyay wrote:
           | > should not mean "a judge's eyes have scanned the warrant
           | for the signature line he needs to sign on".
           | 
           | We need CAPCHA for warrants!
        
             | ccooffee wrote:
             | I wonder what would change in the criminal legal system if
             | all warrant applications must be counter-argued by a
             | public-defender-like-role. I suspect the "defender" would
             | just end being an always-ignored voice in the room, at
             | least based on my understanding of post-patriot-act
             | America.
        
           | maerF0x0 wrote:
           | >The issues run deeper. Court orders are widely
           | rubberstamped.
           | 
           | I wrote the following to try and address that. I agree it's a
           | big problem. > Also there should be accountability for the
           | reasonable expectation aspect of warrants. A realistic
           | threshold should be enforced... If an officer or judge starts
           | to dip below the threshold they should be seen as
           | incompetent.
        
         | guerrilla wrote:
         | > I do not understand why we accept such low standards from our
         | governments.
         | 
         | Do you even? Who would you vote for for that not to happen? As
         | far as I can tell, virtually 100% of both parties everywhere in
         | the country support all of this.
        
           | wmf wrote:
           | People aren't protesting in the streets.
        
             | maerF0x0 wrote:
             | and voter turnouts are something like 20-30ish percent last
             | I checked...
        
               | codingdave wrote:
               | 66.8% in the last USA presidential election. But even so,
               | that still isn't enough. People would be amazed how much
               | a difference it would make if everyone voted.
        
             | banannaise wrote:
             | Well they certainly tried. After a few months of
             | politicians giving lip service to their cause, followed by
             | about 6-12 months of the cops mercilessly beating the shit
             | out of them without consequence, protesting in the streets
             | about policing started to look a lot less interesting and
             | effective.
        
               | bobsmith432 wrote:
               | Those were riots and riddled with with racial issues that
               | have nothing to do with this.
        
               | otikik wrote:
               | The riots were only two or three bad apples, most
               | protesters were decent.
        
               | maerF0x0 wrote:
               | The real issue is enforcement turning a blind eye to the
               | bad apples. It's literally their job to root out and
               | bring them to the justice system ...
               | 
               | And part of their job is to reasonably accurately not
               | affect innocent people in the process.
        
               | zaroth wrote:
               | To be a bit more quantitative, I think the sheer volume
               | of property damage coincident to these protests should
               | disabuse anyone of the notion that they were mostly
               | peaceful.
               | 
               | Guess the amount of attributable property damage, and
               | then click [1].
               | 
               | [1] -
               | https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/2020-protests-
               | changed...
        
               | AlexandrB wrote:
               | "Defund the police" had nothing to do with police
               | overreach. Interesting. Perhaps the problem is that so
               | many are convinced that it's "just" a racial issue, not a
               | general police issue.
        
               | banannaise wrote:
               | 1. The line between "protest" and "riot" is fuzzy and
               | arbitrary at best, and that's without considering that
               | police violence against a protest will almost universally
               | turn it into a riot because humans are humans.
               | 
               | 2. Are you seriously trying to say that racial issues
               | have nothing to do with excessive police surveillance?
        
               | bobsmith432 wrote:
               | Those riots had absolutely nothing to do with police
               | surveillance.
        
               | zhengyi13 wrote:
               | Call it "police malfeasance" then, and put both their
               | warrantless dragnets and their racist violence under that
               | umbrella.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _put both their warrantless dragnets and their racist
               | violence under that umbrella_
               | 
               | Which is a politically worthless coalition if you want to
               | actually get something done.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | maerF0x0 wrote:
               | > "riot" is fuzzy
               | 
               | I think theft, property damage, violence upon innocent
               | bystanders all clearly count as rioting.
               | 
               | The fuzzy part is more like what proportion of the people
               | are rioting and how many are protesting and how to
               | separate the former from the latter for the sake of
               | justice.
        
         | banannaise wrote:
         | > I do not understand why we accept such low standards from our
         | governments.
         | 
         | The short answer to that is "the police have effectively
         | executed a soft coup, and no politician or political process
         | can meaningfully oppose them"
        
           | vdqtp3 wrote:
           | That implies that the police overthrew the government. The
           | police are the government, and the government has not been on
           | the side of the people for many years.
        
         | bjt2n3904 wrote:
         | Found the guy who thinks technical solutions can solve human
         | problems!
         | 
         | Let's put warrants on the block chain while we're at it!
        
           | maerF0x0 wrote:
           | no surprise he's on HN . /jk
           | 
           | I'm more talking about accountability and auditing (like an
           | audit log of actions)
        
         | Razengan wrote:
         | > _I do not understand why we accept such low standards from
         | our government_
         | 
         | All paths to the dark side start with Fear.
        
         | secabeen wrote:
         | Warrants are still required to compel data from companies like
         | cell phone companies. This is different. This is a company
         | expressly setup to sell data they gather to the police. No
         | compulsion is required, they're voluntarily doing it, and the
         | users are "voluntarily" giving that data away, via sketchy apps
         | that only disclose the location data giveaway buried in a ToS.
        
           | maerF0x0 wrote:
           | But they should require a warrant to get data on me... We
           | need to normalize that entering my data is like entering my
           | home. You require a warrant to inspect things that are
           | default private.
        
       | bagels wrote:
       | I wonder if this data is being used in trial or being used in
       | warrant applications given that the data can easily be spoofed by
       | providing inaccurate data to these analytics apis?
        
         | AlexandrB wrote:
         | You give the legal system way too much credit. When it comes to
         | evidence provided by the police, "spoofed data" is considered
         | an ultra rare edge case not worth considering unless the
         | defense has some excellent evidence to the contrary.
        
       | metadat wrote:
       | Is there a direct download link to the manual?
       | 
       | I wish we knew which apps are contributing user location data to
       | the Fog Feed. This is an egregious abuse of user trust, just to
       | make a buck (or fractions of a penny per user).
       | 
       | Do Apple and / or the Google Play Store have policies about this?
       | Are the app developers in breach of ToS?
        
         | O__________O wrote:
         | Posted a link here:
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32691723
        
       | jjwiseman wrote:
       | The location tracking industry is getting ready for the real
       | possibility of much stricter legislation coming soon. "Warren
       | proposes sweeping ban on location and health data sales":
       | https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/15/23169718/roe-wade-elizabe...
        
         | ccooffee wrote:
         | The backing legislation, Health and Location Data Protection
         | Act of 2022 (S.4408), was forwarded to subcommittee on June 15
         | but hasn't seen any action since [0]. That said, I don't know
         | how quickly the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and
         | Transportation moves through things. From skimming the previous
         | meeting agendas [1], it appears that they often take months
         | before discussing bills. It's possible that they will discuss
         | this bill before midterm elections, but I'm doubtful. According
         | to the Senate's schedule [2], the Senate has 33 more working
         | days before midterms. I don't see enough momentum behind this
         | bill to actually get it considered before midterms.
         | 
         | Fingers crossed for 2023, though.
         | 
         | [0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-
         | bill/440...
         | 
         | [1] https://www.commerce.senate.gov/hearings
         | 
         | [2]
         | https://www.senate.gov/legislative/resources/pdf/2021_calend...
        
       | dsq wrote:
       | I am curious as to whether the apps that leak data are specific
       | to a certain operating system. That is, are they android-only or
       | iOS-only.
        
         | 3np wrote:
         | Both. In general Android exposes more dimensions compared to
         | iOS.
        
           | fsflover wrote:
           | More details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261.
        
         | toss1 wrote:
         | Seems the buried lede in the article was this:
         | 
         | >>Fog Reveal refers to a company called Venntel as its "data
         | partner," but neither company would clarify their relationship
         | to the outlet. Motherboard has reported extensively on how
         | Venntel sources global advertising data from its parent company
         | Gravy Analytics. The data itself comes from apps installed on
         | peoples' smartphones; app developers often enter agreements to
         | sell their users location information to third parties. Venntel
         | then sells its own surveillance product to government agencies,
         | including Customs and Border Protection.
         | 
         | Seems this is no particular app, just apps SELLING the location
         | data on to aggregators, who then sell it to Fog, who surface it
         | in their Reveal product.
         | 
         | So, no need to identify a person or phone and phish them into
         | installing your tracker. This is just find your crime, ID the
         | phones in the area, and start tracking them based on location
         | data sold into the marketplace...
         | 
         | While it's a great capability for the cops, it means that we
         | really are at the point where we've all been sold a covert
         | device to track our every move.
         | 
         | (And deleting our Google location history is worthless, as
         | Google has nothing to do with this.)
        
         | kornhole wrote:
         | Possible sources: -Telcos who use cell tower triangulation
         | -Apple and Google -A huge list of apps that collect location
         | data regardless of OS
        
       | 3np wrote:
       | Related ongoing thread:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32690053
       | 
       | EFF post: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/what-fog-data-
       | science-...
        
         | woodruffw wrote:
         | I think you meant this thread[1].
         | 
         | [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32686750
        
           | 3np wrote:
           | Oops. Yes.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | TechBro8615 wrote:
       | The dumbest part about this is that it's only _partial_ dragnet
       | surveillance. They're surveilling a biased sample of the
       | population that installs sketchy apps on their phones. I'm
       | betting there are more Android users in this dataset than the
       | general population. In a way, by using Android you're actually
       | increasing your chances of false imprisonment.
        
         | smoldesu wrote:
         | > I'm betting there are more Android users in this dataset than
         | the general population
         | 
         | Is this distinct from the dataset of iCloud users that the NSA
         | maintains, or the same one?
        
           | TechBro8615 wrote:
           | I guess that depends if the Snowflake sales team has been
           | able to touch base with them about their migration to the
           | modern data stack.
        
         | dontbesilly123 wrote:
        
         | citizenpaul wrote:
         | >Android you're actually increasing your chances of false
         | imprisonment.
         | 
         | That used to be true until apple implemented CSAM a black box
         | that scans for hashes of straight to federal prison files.
         | Without your consent or any way to audit it. No oversight.
         | 
         | Yeah I know its not 100% implemented yet but that is just a
         | matter of time.
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | > _until apple implemented CSAM a black box that scans for
           | hashes of straight to federal prison files_
           | 
           | Of photos uploaded to iCloud. That's a far cry from
           | persistent surveillance.
        
             | erdos4d wrote:
             | Wait til they add the hashes of the next set of leaks to
             | this. We all know that's coming. The next Snowden is going
             | to have it harder.
        
             | smoldesu wrote:
             | Correct. The persistent surveillance comes in the form of
             | PRISM compliance and covert warrants that we, the general
             | public, don't get to see.
             | 
             | You'd have to be _crazy_ to think the most popular American
             | phone is free from government surveillance.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _persistent surveillance comes in the form of PRISM
               | compliance and covert warrants_
               | 
               | You've moved the goalposts. We're talking about
               | warrantless surveillance. FISA courts are flawed. But
               | they're subject to investigation, deliberation and reform
               | in a way police buying commercial data is not. (The
               | warrant process is first and foremost a gate. When it
               | fails at that, as it appears to have with FISC, it serves
               | as a judicial record.)
        
               | smoldesu wrote:
               | The warrant is a pretty bad gate. Apple complies with 90%
               | of the requests they get from American law enforcement
               | for account access (and a startling 95% of device access
               | requests by the CCP (!!!)), so I don't really buy the
               | idea that they're valiantly protecting my identity tooth-
               | and-nail. Moreover, I agree that these are two different
               | arenas, but I don't see what the difference is. Apple
               | cares about privacy _sometimes_ , but the fact that they
               | don't care about it _all the time_ leads me to not trust
               | them.
               | 
               | If we're going to demand user privacy, we need to do it
               | properly. Apple has zero accountability, so they have
               | zero incentive to not sabotage your privacy.
        
             | TechBro8615 wrote:
             | The default setting on iOS is to immediately upload every
             | new image (photo or screenshot saved to the camera roll) to
             | iCloud. Screenshots default to saving to the camera roll
             | (and contain quite a bit of auxiliary data, btw). On the
             | web, the default and sometimes only way to save an image is
             | to add it to the camera roll.
        
         | sashahrzg wrote:
         | After listening to some experts speak about this, I don't think
         | that's the case. One cited a lot of large apps as sources of
         | data, especially free apps that offer a good service. Waze
         | keeps getting brought up in this debate as well, though I'm
         | unsure if it is used in this context.
        
       | michaelmrose wrote:
       | Some uses that spring to mind. Stalking. Finding out if your
       | significant other is cheating. Finding out who your kid has
       | visiting your house. Finding out who visits the local abortion
       | clinic for shaming, suing, persecuting, and prosecuting.
       | 
       | Finding out who visits the local gay clubs. Finding out whose
       | fucking especially when this is valuable blackmail material.
       | Making a list of everyone's religious affiliations because nobody
       | has ever misused THAT before.
       | 
       | Keep track of all the abortion clinics and sell lawsuits as a
       | service. Plug in your name and let it tell you if there is anyone
       | you are eligible to collect 10,000 from. Just check a box to have
       | papers sent to your door and theirs and wait while other people
       | harvest their money like they already reaped their privacy.
       | 
       | Privacy laws are in need of radical revision and I think I need a
       | new phone. Ideally one that isn't tied to my name and makes voip
       | calls over an out of country vpn.
        
         | citizenpaul wrote:
         | You missed one thing.
         | 
         | Once your location pops up in one of these things you are now a
         | "person of interest" which is just a fancy way for the police
         | to avoid saying "suspect"
         | 
         | You are now in a position forced to defend yourself from guilt
         | rather than them finding something that points to you.
         | Everything about police work is motivated towards finding a
         | reason to pin guilt on you. Nothing is about exonerating you.
        
           | michaelmrose wrote:
           | You are absolutely correct and worse the more this tech is
           | used to actually solve cases the fewer crooks will carry
           | their phones and many crimes aren't pinpointed neatly in
           | time.
           | 
           | We will know that sometime between Friday afternoon and
           | Saturday morning someone robbed a location and due to
           | imperfection of GPS signals your suspects will include dozens
           | of people including people who walked by 2 streets over. Over
           | time your suspect list will be less and less likely to
           | contain the criminal but it will statistically likely contain
           | at least a few who got in trouble previously especially
           | minorities who can be threatened with 10 to 20 years in jail
           | in order to make them accept 6 months -> probation or risk
           | facing a jury of mostly white people. You can then
           | successfully close tons of cases without finding any actual
           | criminals, doing any real work, or even risking court.
           | 
           | And your local businesses get unpaid slave labor rented to
           | them cheap. What a goddamn paradise. All we need is some
           | cotton that needs picking you know or a soul and a shred of
           | decency.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | mariodiana wrote:
       | I'm going to propose something crazy. Government shouldn't be
       | allowed to do whatever isn't illegal. Government should not be
       | allowed to do _anything_ unless specifically authorized by law.
       | With respect to electronic surveillance, the methods need to be
       | clearly circumscribed. Anything outside of specific, written
       | guidelines enacted into law should be illegal.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | So what happens you get a warrant that specifies electronic
         | data collection only, yet when you arrive at the location, you
         | find they don't use computers at all and have everything you
         | need to convict in a handwritten ledger of some sort? Do you
         | have to leave the ledger because the warrant specified
         | electronic?
        
           | jackson1442 wrote:
           | yes, that's how warrants work. if you get a warrant that says
           | you may search the kitchen and don't find anything, you don't
           | get to go and search the bedroom.
        
           | otikik wrote:
           | Of course you do. Why do you think otherwise?
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | I have no idea, I'm not a lawyer, nor a criminal to be on
             | the receiving end of a search warrant so I have no insights
             | into their details. Why do you assume otherwise?
             | 
             | So you're saying that an investigator looking for a
             | specific type of evidence cannot find other evidence of the
             | same crime? Are they then supposed to go back to a judge to
             | say now we need to modify the warrant or get a new warrant?
             | Do they leave people around so the new evidence isn't
             | removed while the new/updated warrant is obtained? Are
             | their time limits on the execution of a warrant?
        
               | Terretta wrote:
               | This is mostly a US thing, not really the case in UK, EU,
               | or India for instance.
               | 
               |  _"Fruit of the poisonous tree" is a legal metaphor used
               | to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The
               | logic of the terminology is that if the source (the
               | "tree") of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted,
               | then anything gained (the "fruit") from it is tainted as
               | well._
               | 
               |  _The doctrine underlying the name was first described in
               | Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385
               | (1920). The term 's first use was by Justice Felix
               | Frankfurter in Nardone v. United States (1939)._
               | 
               |  _Such evidence is not generally admissible in court. For
               | example, if a police officer conducted an
               | unconstitutional (Fourth Amendment) search of a home and
               | obtained a key to a train station locker, and evidence of
               | a crime came from the locker, that evidence would most
               | likely be excluded under the fruit of the poisonous tree
               | legal doctrine._
               | 
               |  _The fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine is intended to
               | deter police from using illegal means to obtain
               | evidence._
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
               | 
               | See also "exclusionary rule":
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule
        
           | mariodiana wrote:
           | Yes.
        
         | R0b0t1 wrote:
         | This is how it's supposed to work in the US.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | benlivengood wrote:
         | That's pretty much how the U.S. constitution was written.
         | Federalism superceded that in spirit in many ways, and states
         | followed suit.
        
           | mariodiana wrote:
           | Yes. I understand that. For some reason, most of my fellow
           | Americans don't.
        
             | TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
             | Most of your fellow Americans play tribal politics and turn
             | a blind eye whenever their preferred party does it.
        
           | advisedwang wrote:
           | That's true for the Federal government (although even that
           | has loopholes you could drive a truck through, like
           | exceptions for national security) but not for states. States
           | have general police power and generally can regulate anything
           | unless there it is forbidden.
        
             | therealjumbo wrote:
             | A state could be a leader and enact that type of provision
             | into their state law or state constitution. Good leadership
             | is hard to find.
        
               | vdqtp3 wrote:
               | No government has willingly given up power
        
               | therealjumbo wrote:
               | Yes they have, just not very often and not without a long
               | political fight and not without strong political leaders
               | to push it forward.
               | 
               | Say what you want about the "system" and the two parties
               | and so on, but we the people send our senators and reps
               | to Congress, and the same is true at the state level.
               | This type of thing would be best done at a state level to
               | show people, particularly those in other states that it
               | can work well.
        
               | pksebben wrote:
               | this view of an average Americans level of agency in our
               | political process could most politely be described as
               | 'simplified'.
               | 
               | Before you even get in the weeds as to how voting
               | actually works, that two party thing you mentioned
               | provides, at the ideal best, two people with two sets of
               | ideas about how to get things done. IF they don't agree
               | on how to manage something (say we get the rare
               | politician who's not in favor of further deregulating
               | banks), there's no guarantee that one of those two ideas
               | will be any good, or aligned with the political zeitgeist
               | they're supposed to represent. Much more often, the wedge
               | issues they differ on are a fraction of the things
               | they'll be making decisions about, and stuff like
               | military spending, bank deregulation, and general market
               | deregulation are bipartisan supported. So if you don't
               | like either of those, you're effectively excluded from
               | the political process.
               | 
               | Then, you have all the ways in which the voting process
               | is gamed by those in charge of it. Gerimandering is an
               | obvious and easy one to spot, but there are other, more
               | pernicious methods employed - like restricting voting to
               | a single day, not making voting a holiday, purging voter
               | rolls prior to the primaries (we'll deal with the
               | primaries in a second), restricting felons from voting
               | (whilst making things like marijuana possession a felony,
               | an easy way to shunt out the underprivileged). There's
               | more, for good reading on this topic check out Republic
               | Lost by Lawrence Lessig.
               | 
               | We are married to first-past-the-post voting, which is
               | demonstrably the worst system but the easiest to game.
               | 
               | The supreme court, which makes many of the most impactful
               | political decisions, isn't voted in. And they have life
               | terms. So even if you manage to make progress elsewhere,
               | they can just decide that things should be different and
               | change the way the law works.
               | 
               | The Senate arbitrarily distributes the power to block
               | legislation among the least populous states, making it
               | easier to manipulate the population into voting for
               | people who will do this.
               | 
               | K Street (the lobbyists) literally get paid to 'help'
               | draft legislation that favors only those who can afford
               | it. Some of our laws are actually for sale.
               | 
               | Then you have the primaries, which are effectively
               | controlled by two fairly small cabals of (who exactly? I
               | dare you to enumerate the people involved). Each of which
               | has it's own set of obtuse rules that's not subject to an
               | iota of the scrutiny that actual elections are subject
               | to, even though you could make the argument that the
               | primaries are the more important election, because they
               | decide what the two options will be.
               | 
               | Then there's the news. Rather, there's the institutions
               | that claim to be news, but all of which behave more like
               | winged propaganda machines, pumping their color and
               | fueling anger at (whatever the wedge issues are for the
               | other team today). These outlets all have things they
               | will not talk about, like the issues with our elections
               | or growing income inequality, because these things are
               | precisely the things that the power structure, which all
               | major news networks benefit from, is founded upon.
               | 
               | One thing both parties agree on completely; there should
               | only be two parties. This would strike one as odd if they
               | weren't so deeply acclimated to the situation.
        
               | krapp wrote:
               | Exactly. For instance, we were all warned that the
               | "temporary" measures taken by governments to enforce
               | quarantines and travel restrictions during COVID were
               | just a pretext for a permanent state of pharmaco-
               | military-industrial fascism precisely because governments
               | never willingly give up power, and to this day I'm not
               | allowed to leave my apartment without government
               | permission or else snipers will shoot me dead in the
               | street, and not having my vaccine passport on me at all
               | times means an instant lifetime vacation in the CDC
               | gulags.
               | 
               | Oh wait, no... that never actually happened because
               | governments actually willingly give up power all the
               | time.
        
               | oceanplexian wrote:
               | I don't personally remember the government "willingly"
               | giving up anything. They had to be dragged kicking and
               | screaming to end the TSA Mask Mandate, and only did so
               | after they were ordered to terminate it by a judge. The
               | same thing happened with the vaccine mandates for private
               | employers, and several other measures.
        
         | fallingfrog wrote:
         | You can write the law however you want, but it's the people
         | holding the guns who decide how those laws are enforced that
         | really decide what the laws are. The glorification and
         | deification of cops and soldiers as saint-like figures of pure
         | virtue makes it that much easier. Ultimately the only real
         | constraint on police and military power is mass civil
         | disobedience, and technology and weaponry and mass surveillance
         | can nullify much of that.
        
         | fsflover wrote:
         | Now you need to propose how to implement that in a law.
        
           | krapp wrote:
           | It already has been - the Fourth Amendment to the US
           | Constitution.
        
       | mikeiz404 wrote:
       | From the AP article [1]:
       | 
       | > It relies on advertising identification numbers, which Fog
       | officials say are culled from popular cellphone apps such as
       | Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on a
       | person's movements and interests, according to police emails.
       | 
       | > ...
       | 
       | > On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission sued a data broker
       | called Kochava that, like Fog, provides its clients with
       | advertising IDs that authorities say can easily be used to find
       | where a mobile device user lives, which violates rules the
       | commission enforces. And there are bills before Congress now
       | that, if passed, would regulate the industry.
       | 
       | 1: https://apnews.com/article/technology-police-government-
       | surv...
        
       | joemazerino wrote:
       | Degoogled Android would help this but giving your location data
       | up for free is still the caveat.
        
         | advisedwang wrote:
         | The article suggests this is not getting data from Google (as
         | that requires a warrant) but from other apps that agreed to add
         | location tracking SDKs.
        
           | joemazerino wrote:
           | I would argue that the average deGoogled device has less apps
           | and Google Play app bloat to decrease the surveillance
           | surface. Less apps translates to less location data.
        
             | advisedwang wrote:
             | It's a question of _which_ bloat!
             | 
             | All the google stuff spying on you goes to Google
             | databases, which (at least as far as we know from public
             | info and the news story here) requires a warrent.
             | 
             | It's non-Google apps that are sending location data to the
             | 3rd party brokers supplying this tool. deGoogling a phone
             | has nothing to do with these apps.
        
       | mxuribe wrote:
       | I'm sure if the location data (and other related data) for those
       | in power and law enforcement leaders were to be made available to
       | everyone, in an easy to digest and display method...I'm sure some
       | of these data flows would be quickly be made illegal, and quickly
       | shut down. ;-)
        
       | ilaksh wrote:
       | So now the phone is the biggest security problem I have, but all
       | of my data is unlocked with it..
       | 
       | I think I need a smart phone without the actual phone part? But
       | sometimes I need remote data.
        
         | thewebcount wrote:
         | Serious question - would removing the SIM card do the same
         | thing?
        
       | erdos4d wrote:
       | I quit carrying my phone out of the house because I knew
       | something like this was coming. I really like it, I look at
       | scenery and actually think about things now. People around me
       | probably think I'm poor as dirt too, so they leave me alone.
        
         | alcover wrote:
         | I only have a dumb phone and I also often leave it at home. I
         | don't get smart phones.. Why carry an addictive computer on
         | yourself ?
        
         | hallway_monitor wrote:
         | This is a great idea. I broke my phone in Mexico and it made
         | the last few days a much different, amazing experience.
        
       | ganyu wrote:
       | When people in the U.S. are arguing about why their govts should
       | need a warrant to spy on peoples phones, people in PRC are
       | required to install an app that literally spies on them.
       | 
       | Surveillance is really going in its worst way, if there's not a
       | worse one.
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-02 23:01 UTC)