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US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

theguardian.com

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Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#101

Post by drnick1 »

Havoc wrote: post #100
drnick1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically impossible to do on a global scale. And even within a jurisdiction, there is a great risk of overregulation, see e.g. Europe. Disclaimer: I am a Linux and GrapheneOS user, running my own DNS with filtering for trackers, etc.

>This is basically impossible to do on a global scale. Is it though? Brussels effect and USB adoption tells me it is possible to affect global outcomes even in hard things like hardware if a heavyweight decides to put their finger on the scale

This precisely points to my overregulation point. The E.U. shouldn't be telling private companies how to design their products.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#102

Post by nephihaha »

samus wrote: post #39
slowmovintarget wrote: post #9

This is just happening now? Shouldn't this have been done for troop security a long time ago?

The US is currently not deploying troops against an adversary that can make use of that information.

China, Iran and Russia are probably all capable of it. Russians would love the blackmail potential.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#103

Post by obviouslynotme »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #99

Why even allow any mobile phone for the US solider if it could cause any arbitrary problem for the US military if the location data, name, unit, rank, ... of the respective soldier was published and permanently updated on a publicly viewable website? It should be obvious that the US military has good reasons why this would be the death for many military strategies. So, why doesn't the military than treat every soldie…

There are MANY problems that are too politically or practically difficult to tackle for the US Military and personal cellphones aren't close to the top ten. It's far easier to force everyone to register their cells to be automatically blacklisted from data collection than it is to justify tens of thousands of NJPs and court martials every year, many of which will include officers and senior enlisted.

The US Military doesn't win through stealth or secrets either. Their advantage from the beginning until now has always been funding and logistics. With the Internet, satellites, and now AI, OPSEC is a fool's errand outside of very specific operations anyhow.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#104

Post by 2legit2quit »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #99

Why even allow any mobile phone for the US solider if it could cause any arbitrary problem for the US military if the location data, name, unit, rank, ... of the respective soldier was published and permanently updated on a publicly viewable website? It should be obvious that the US military has good reasons why this would be the death for many military strategies. So, why doesn't the military than treat every soldie…

> Why even allow any mobile phone for the US solider if it could cause any arbitrary problem for the US military if the location data, name, unit, rank, ... of the respective soldier was published and permanently updated on a publicly viewable website?

By this logic, why keep anyone around after the SF86 hack[0]? Simple answer: Costs. It's a lot more expensive to lay off everyone with a security clearance (especially, if they're regular employees) and make a whole new batch of people go through the security background checks. We're probably talking billions - not to mention the issue with downtime of no one being around to do anything.

> So, why doesn't the military than treat every soldier who has a mobile phone near to him where the above could cause military problems to be a saboteur (perhaps even with the accusation of being a spy of a hostile nation) who should be charged by a military tribunal?

...because they (they being the military, in general) have - relatively - planned for this in places that they physically control (and the threats levels demand it) by essentially making all buildings that need to be secure giant faraday cages[1].

What that doesn't account for is people outside of the buildings[2], which is probably what they're hoping to address with this change. (Too little, too late, I think - as that data's already out there.)

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Office_of_Personnel_Manag...

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform...

2 - https://www.wired.com/story/phone-data-us-soldiers-spies-nuc...

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#105

Post by tharkun__ »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #90
astrobe_ wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what people talk (and write) about after meetings.

If you talk and/or write about what happened in one of those places, you can face consequences from discipline up to prison. Yes, it happens. No, it better not happen much, and it's not supposed to happen at all.

Really? Tell me again, what happened to that dude ... what was his name? I think they used to be on TV. Can't quite place them. Please help me out.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#106

Post by jdm2212 »

elevation wrote: post #73
jdm2212 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC they actually don't and it materially reduced Meta's profit when Apple rolled out the advertiser ID system.

That may have been true initially but meta has enough information to heuristically observe unidentified users and compare their behaviors with known consumers. It only takes a few actions to uniquely identify a consumer with a high degree of confidence.

Pretty sure Meta doesn't do that on iOS devices because that'll get you banned from the App Store. They just figured out ways to not need individual fingerprinting.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#107

Post by [deleted] »

gruez wrote: post #78
pnw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disabling "advertising ID" on iOS makes it extremely difficult to reliably fingerprint phones. Apple doesn't allow SDKs which attempt to bypass this, so the app would have to have a first party auth of some type.

>Disabling "advertising ID" on iOS makes it extremely difficult to reliably fingerprint phones. You got this flipped. The whole point of "fingerprinting" is to build a stable identifier that works even if a explicit identifier (IMEI or advertising ID) isn't available. And yes, there are shady SDKs that do this without facing repercussions. https://www.buchodi.com/i-broke-applovins-mediation-cipher-p...

[deleted]

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#108

Post by lokar »

jdm2212 wrote: post #106
elevation wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may have been true initially but meta has enough information to heuristically observe unidentified users and compare their behaviors with known consumers. It only takes a few actions to uniquely identify a consumer with a high degree of confidence.

Pretty sure Meta doesn't do that on iOS devices because that'll get you banned from the App Store. They just figured out ways to not need individual fingerprinting.

Apple does not enforce the rules uniformly

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#109

Post by LoganDark »

tencentshill wrote: post #2

It sounds like they disabled the "advertising ID" OS feature, but there are many other ways to fingerprint a device for advertising. Maybe this will lead to real privacy reform, now that the true risks are apparent. Not to mention ICE using the same data against civilians.

On iOS you can apparently simply check the APFS filesystem creation date and that's stable and unique enough to need almost no disambiguation. And any app can do this with no entitlements

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#110

Post by joshspankit »

throw0101d wrote: post #64
jdm2212 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC they actually don't and it materially reduced Meta's profit when Apple rolled out the advertiser ID system.

"Facebook says Apple iOS privacy change will result in $10 billion revenue hit this year" (2022): * https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-priv... See also perhaps "It’s not Meta - its APPLE who have screwed us small advertisers": * https://www.reddit.com/r/FacebookAds/comments/1o85w2q/

I would be even more shocked if instead of adapting, they’ve continued to lose $10b a year
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