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FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

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Re: FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

#61

Post by ranger_danger »

SoftTalker wrote: post #24
FL4TLiN3 wrote: post #20

Who's selling the data is the far more serious issue here. Behind this is a remarkably well-structured syndicate. The supply chain looks something like this: consumer apps embed ad SDKs → those SDKs feed location signals into RTB ad exchanges → surveillance-oriented firms sit in the RTB pipeline and harvest bid request data even without winning auctions → that data flows to aggregators who don't have any direct relat…

There probably was a consent, buried on page 12 in the terms of use of the app they installed at the front of your chain.

I think that practice should be illegal... they know nobody reads those.

Even the "reasonable person" standard for court would probably conclude that most people would never read it.

Re: FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

#62

Post by triceratops »

RickJWagner wrote: post #53
hombre_fatal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda reminds me of when I saw footage online of a group of teens raiding a 7/11 store -- maybe during the BLM riots --, and a top comment was "heh, come try that in Texas ;)". Fantasizing, of course, that Texas has a unique bulwark against that behavior, probably having to do with gun ownership. And then it turns out the video took place in Dallas. We like to think there are all these barriers to bad things happenin…

It’s that sort of behavior— groups of perpetrators committing crimes— that allow people to justify enhanced surveillance tactics. I think in years past people would have objected to sale of personal location data. But that was before people had videos of groups of lawbreakers overwhelming laws through organized efforts.

> groups of lawbreakers overwhelming laws through organized efforts

You're saying organized crime is new? Or videos of it?

Re: FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

#63

Post by ranger_danger »

mogwire wrote: post #39
nomel wrote: post #10

The supreme court had a 5-4 decision related to this [1]. Was there something specific, in that decision, that leaves a loophole open? [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf

> Carpenter v. United States (2018) was a landmark Supreme Court case that held the government generally needs a warrant to access historical cell-site location information (CSLI) from cell phone carriers, as its acquisition constitutes a Fourth Amendment search This is very different from buying your data from a company especially when the user consented to their location being tracked. Too many people in these thre…

Why is it different though? Who gets to say so?

If the SCOTUS case merely said "needs a warrant to access historical data"... it didn't say "only if acquired via specific means" (like a subpoena), right?

Re: FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

#65

Post by ranger_danger »

thenthenthen wrote: post #55

There was a great talk at the Chaos Computer Conference a few years ago how to diy this, sadly cant find it because web search seems dead nowaydays. If anyone knows, please chip in. It was a german researcher following german politicians who hilariously(scandalously?) related travel patterns

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/12/whistleblower-finds-une...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHsz6jzjbRc

Re: FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

#67

Post by Dezvous »

mogwire wrote: post #39
nomel wrote: post #10

The supreme court had a 5-4 decision related to this [1]. Was there something specific, in that decision, that leaves a loophole open? [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf

> Carpenter v. United States (2018) was a landmark Supreme Court case that held the government generally needs a warrant to access historical cell-site location information (CSLI) from cell phone carriers, as its acquisition constitutes a Fourth Amendment search This is very different from buying your data from a company especially when the user consented to their location being tracked. Too many people in these thre…

> This is very different from buying your data from a company especially when the user consented to their location being tracked.

No, it's not 'very different'. When you sign a cellular contract you consent to all sorts of tracking and data collection, but it still requires a warrant for government to obtain.

Re: FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

#68

Post by themafia »

saltyoldman wrote: post #52
mhurron wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it is not the job of the FBI to to conduct mass surveillance of citizens.

What if an investigation is based on finding the same specific people near another specific person that they're tracking, but they only know about the one person, not the others. And by doing this they stop a terror attack? One more thought - if they buy just data for specific people related to an investigation, the seller of the data is tipped off. If they just buy all the data, then there is no potential tip-off to…

You get a "geofence warrant." They exist and are ubiquitous. You then go to Google or any other provider and you demand the data for a specific location in a specific time window. You then use the data to capture criminals. Any other data would not meet the standards of evidence and probably couldn't be used in court anyways. It's only function is for "parallel construction."

Then again, what I _really_ want is for the FBI to prevent crime. If their only solution is to let crime happen and then use a giant dragnet to put people in jail then they are less than worthless... they are actively dangerous to democracy.

Re: FBI is buying location data to track US citizens, director confirms

#70

Post by anigbrowl »

observationist wrote: post #50
anonymars wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we can still buy burner phones for cash at Mondo Mart

Differential identification means you can be singled out based on profiles. Even if you don't have any accounts, big tech companies still have shadow profiles, and those shadow profiles can be linked to your offline identity, such that everything you've done that's been recorded, and everything you've done in (temporal, physical, or digital) proximity to other people who do have accounts results in a record of activi…

There's also the superman problem - the burner phone would only ever appear when anonymars is missing, and vice versa, creating a real and exploitable pattern if anyone like the FBI wanted to root around in your life. All they'd have to do is query which shadow profiles match the temporal gaps correlated with your disappearance from tracking.

This is nonsense. By your logic, people go 'missing' any time they are not using a computer, whether they're reading a book, in the shower, or asleep in bed.

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