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New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

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Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody want to take a shot at how all of this will unwind?

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…

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.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#153
post #101

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.

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...

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#154
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.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can do that right now with Android without root, including Little Snitch functionality.

How?

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#156
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In that case you can just get a burner phone + data SIM, and route all your calls/texts via VOIP provider.

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.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#157
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/

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#158

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 pe…

You should do this

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#159
post #101

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.

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.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#160

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 pe…

...Sounds like chucking TNT into a bonfire tbqh, and unfortunately, you can't unring that bell.
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