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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

#161

Post by autoexec »

roysting wrote: post #146
autoexec wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's selling the data is the far more serious issue here. Everyone who has it is selling that info, and nearly everyone who collects it is selling it. Until there are laws that actually protect us, we should stop giving companies our location data every chance we get and push for laws that prevent it from being unnecessarily collected in the first place.

"FBI is buying location data to track US citizens" ... "Until there are laws that actually protect us" I don't see how we overcome that massive hurdle. It's not like those who ostensibly make the laws don't know and approve, and probably intentionally implemented that. We now have full scale mass tracking and surveillance of the kind no one pre-9/11 would believe would have been allowed to exist in the form of the Fl…

> It's not like those who ostensibly make the laws don't know and approve, and probably intentionally implemented that.

In theory we should have to power to vote out those lawmakers and elect new ones who will pass the laws we want enacted and uphold the constitution. If we no longer have that power the founding fathers were pretty open about what was expected from us, but it isn't pretty.

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

#162

Post by pocksuppet »

mhurron wrote: post #19
givemeethekeys wrote: post #2

That's the job of the FBI - to investigate domestic crimes. But, why do private organizations so willingly participate in the tracking ecosystem? I suppose they're in the, "you have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything illegal" camp! Hopefully they understand that they have the most to lose.

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

The purpose of a system is what it does.

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

#163

Post by lukeschlather »

ryandrake wrote: post #109
lukeschlather wrote: post #77

I'd really like to just have legislation to treat location data like audio or video under wiretapping provisions. If you collect my location info and convey it to a third party without my consent or a reasonable good-faith belief that I would consent, that ought to be treated similarly to recording without consent. And consent needs to be granted explicitly for each party that might get access to my location, you can…

> or a reasonable good-faith belief that I would consent Don't deliberately write a loophole. No need for this part.

Good-faith is pretty narrow, mainly talking about emergencies where I implicitly could be said to have given consent, like when calling 911, or services that are close to 911 but privately administered.

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

#164

Post by mogwire »

Dezvous wrote: post #67
mogwire wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Requesting != Buying

When this goes back to the courts you can come back to this comment and still be angry you are wrong.

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

#166

Post by mogwire »

ranger_danger wrote: post #63
mogwire wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> The Court ruled that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the detailed, comprehensive record of their movements that CSLI provides, even though they share it with their carriers. This decision limited the "third-party doctrine," which previously suggested no privacy rights in information shared with third parties, and established that the unique nature of cell phone data requires greater protection.

Additionally, the decision was narrow, applying specifically to historical CSLI.

The issue of buying location data from a 3rd party company as part of a service has not been argued.

> the FBI has confirmed it was buying access to people’s data collected from data brokers, who source much of their information — including location data — from ordinary consumer phone apps and games

This is completely different from CSLI, you are agreeing to provide your location to these apps and games, as most require it, and, finally, a majority of these EULA state that the data may be shared with 3rd parties.

SCOTUS makes narrow rulings all the time and this is one of them.

The argument that you are expressly providing your location information and agreeing that it can/will be shared with a 3rd party who can then do as they please with your data is not a violation of the 4th amendment and will be excluded from the 3rd party doctrine.

Many people won’t agree with this, and if ever argued in a court, they won’t agree with the ruling when it’s allowed to continue.

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

#167

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

autoexec wrote: post #124
cheriot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm game for throwing rocks at Apple and Google, but I don't get this one. > 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 Would you ban ad supported apps? Assuming the comment you're responding to is realistic, I'm not sure how the OS is to blame.

> Would you ban ad supported apps? There's no need to ban ad supported apps when you can just ban the practice of using ads targeting users based on individual characteristics.

You trust the adtech companies to pinky promise to totally not do that anymore?

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

#168

Post by m463 »

cheriot wrote: post #107
lmeyerov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple and Google are facilitating the data sales Specifically, these big companies revenue share with app companies who in turn increase monetization via selling your private information, esp via free apps. In exchange for Apple etc super high app store rake percentage fees, they claim to run security vetting programs and ToS that vet who they do business with and tell users & courts that things are safe, even when t…

I'm game for throwing rocks at Apple and Google, but I don't get this one. > 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 Would you ban ad supported apps? Assuming the comment you're responding to is realistic, I'm not sure how the OS is to blame.

This is really simple to explain:

Apple does not let you restrict app network access[1]

You have no ability to know who your app is connecting to, and you cannot select or prevent it.

[1] except maybe the cellular data toggle

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

#169

Post by shermantanktop »

AngryData wrote: post #157
shermantanktop wrote: post #97

In the US we live in a bizarre world of dual expectations. The government is supposed to follow the law, be accountable, transparent, and must operate within a constrained, circumscribed zone of activity which is debated and discussed. That's at least how it's supposed to work. Private companies are understood as amoral sharks who have no obligation to do anything other than operate in their narrowest self-interest,…

The US is SUPPOSE to do that, but I have yet to see it do any of those things with anything close to regularity or consistency at any point in living memory.

We criticize the government bitterly, but when a company does the same thing we seem to say “oh well of course they did that, what can you do, it’s capitalism and the free market knows best, ho hum.”

See: the US healthcare system.

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

#170

Post by givemeethekeys »

AngryData wrote: post #155
givemeethekeys wrote: post #2

That's the job of the FBI - to investigate domestic crimes. But, why do private organizations so willingly participate in the tracking ecosystem? I suppose they're in the, "you have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything illegal" camp! Hopefully they understand that they have the most to lose.

If this kind of surveillance is part of their job, why are they constitutionally forbidden from doing the surveillance themselves?

Haven't they been tapping phones since their conception?
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