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Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

arstechnica.com

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Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#11

Post by News-Dog »

choeger wrote: post #3

So how does that work? I install some app that "needs" location data to function and in the EULA I "consent" to that data being sold. Police then buys this data via several proxies. So far so "told you so years ago". But how does police use that data? How do they associate account IDs from all these apps to real persons? Is that data collected and sold as well, e.g., via the payment processing? Do they use the email…

When you power up a mobile/cell phone, the handset transmits a handshake to all mobile/cell bases it can hit.

Handshaking between mobile/cell phone and mobile/cell bases continues somewhere between every 10 to 20 minutes.

Data exchanged include; IMEI [1], IMSI [2], and both handset transmit power level, receiver power level to each mobile/cell bases databases.

Coupling both the mobile/cell bases databases and the locations topographical data allows RDF [3].

So even if you have location data turned off, you can still be tracked.

[1] International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMEI

[2] International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_mobile_subscri...

[3] Direction Finding (DF) (aka) Radio Direction Finding (RDF) : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_direction_finder

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#12

Post by kajecounterhack »

robk wrote: post #10
charles_kaw wrote: post #7

The root of this investigation was the EFF. If you make tech money, you can toss $50 their way without any hesitation. https://supporters.eff.org/donate You'll get some cool swag and, more importantly, ensure that they continue their excellent work.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

Seems like the obvious answer is no. But if can see that they are doing important stuff, and you're letting your hangups over unrelated political issues keep you from donating to their awesome work, I'd say that's a mistake. They have a 4/5 from Charity Navigator for spending their money effectively.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#13

Post by sysadm1n »

> "Local law enforcement is at the front lines of trafficking and missing persons cases, yet these departments are often behind in technology adoption," Broderick told AP. "We fill a gap for underfunded and understaffed departments."

So if they had a near-unlimited budget, they would have even scarier tools. Obviously law enforcement isn't the NSA, but that part made me think. Just how far does LE want to go with technology if money is not an object?

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#14

Post by hnbad »

robk wrote: post #10
charles_kaw wrote: post #7

The root of this investigation was the EFF. If you make tech money, you can toss $50 their way without any hesitation. https://supporters.eff.org/donate You'll get some cool swag and, more importantly, ensure that they continue their excellent work.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

This assumes "charitable causes" can be apolitical. I guess the ACLU might be closer to what you want then? They have a recent history of criticism for defending the far-right in the name of free speech while generally being thought of as "liberal".

The problem you're facing is that "fighting against power structures" is a political gradient starting short of authoritarianism and ending at anarchism (unless you're Stirner but egoism is a different topic for debate). Because this is a gradient and because most people's political positions evolve over time through lived experience and exposure to other people, it's impossible to pin down a fixed position on that spectrum without eventually veering in one direction or the other.

The EFF generally tries to use the ideal of individual privacy as a fixture for its politics but the recent US Supreme Court rulings have shown the implications of that as e.g. Roe v Wade and other decisions that used to cement various civil justice issues ranging from interracial marriage and the abolishment of anti-sodomy laws to legalizing abortion were apparently literally based on the "right to privacy", which the Supreme Court ruled doesn't exist.

So if the SCOTUS thinks "right to privacy" is intrinsically tied "various agendas around gender/immigration", it shouldn't surprise anyone that the EFF would think the same, no matter what your stance on those issues is.

It's almost like the Overton window has two natural endpoints but will frictionlessly slide in between them if you start pushing, so if you want to prevent it from moving further you have to exert force that will easily cause it to slide back the way you started at.

PS: On a complete tangent, I think this is an apt metaphor for how the Russian revolution overthrowing the monarchy turned into the authoritarian Soviet Union as the Bolsheviks tried to reel in the more anarchist revolutionaries and asserted dominance of the party, insisting on a central command bureaucracy instead of a federated direct democracy. But I digress.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#15

Post by alfiedotwtf »

charles_kaw wrote: post #8
choeger wrote: post #3

So how does that work? I install some app that "needs" location data to function and in the EULA I "consent" to that data being sold. Police then buys this data via several proxies. So far so "told you so years ago". But how does police use that data? How do they associate account IDs from all these apps to real persons? Is that data collected and sold as well, e.g., via the payment processing? Do they use the email…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity Basically, it only takes a few pointed datapoints to deanonymize a person. They are weaponizing this concept.

"We Kill People Based on Metadata"

-- former head of the National Security Agency Gen. Michael Hayden, 2014

"We Kill People Based on Metadata"

-- local cop with a beef with you, 2025

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#16

Post by pjc50 »

sysadm1n wrote: post #13

> "Local law enforcement is at the front lines of trafficking and missing persons cases, yet these departments are often behind in technology adoption," Broderick told AP. "We fill a gap for underfunded and understaffed departments." So if they had a near-unlimited budget, they would have even scarier tools. Obviously law enforcement isn't the NSA, but that part made me think. Just how far does LE want to go with tec…

This is why "defund the police" became a slogan: operational control against abuse just doesn't work, so the blunt instrument of reducing the amount of money for toys is the only one left.

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#18

Post by Barrin92 »

robk wrote: post #10
charles_kaw wrote: post #7

The root of this investigation was the EFF. If you make tech money, you can toss $50 their way without any hesitation. https://supporters.eff.org/donate You'll get some cool swag and, more importantly, ensure that they continue their excellent work.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

>that are unrelated to their main goal

given that we're commenting on a thread about invasive police surveillance it's pretty funny to think there's no very obvious correlation to immigration. Which groups do you think are among the most targeted by law enforcement surveillance tech?

People who get hung up on this, what's the underlying mindset? "I love privacy for white dudes, but god forbid they accidentally help a Mexican woman in an iCE camp or an abortion clinic"? Marginalized are always the primary target of police force, and increasingly beta-test subjects of police tech[1], so the relationship should be quite obvious.

[1]https://theintercept.com/2021/01/30/lapd-palantir-data-drive...

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#19

Post by weberer »

robk wrote: post #10
charles_kaw wrote: post #7

The root of this investigation was the EFF. If you make tech money, you can toss $50 their way without any hesitation. https://supporters.eff.org/donate You'll get some cool swag and, more importantly, ensure that they continue their excellent work.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

Then you want the Free Software Foundation.

https://www.fsf.org/

Re: Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused

#20

Post by maxehmookau »

robk wrote: post #10
charles_kaw wrote: post #7

The root of this investigation was the EFF. If you make tech money, you can toss $50 their way without any hesitation. https://supporters.eff.org/donate You'll get some cool swag and, more importantly, ensure that they continue their excellent work.

I haven’t followed them enough but is it possible to support them without supporting other charitable causes of a political persuasion I don’t support? I fully support everything directly related to their cause but it gets me very upset when charities are supporting other various agendas around gender/immigration for example that are unrelated to their main goal.

To say that agendas around "gender and immigration" are unrelated to the EFF's goals is missing the point.

You can guarantee that if society moves towards criminializing trans people, or further demonising immigrants, or tracking women's fertility for the purposes of further restricting access to abortion; surveillance technology will be at the forefront of that effort and the EFF's goals of technological privacy and free speech will be important to fight against it.

To support the EFF is, in my opinion, an inherently political act and to say you support their overall aims of online privacy and free speech but also "get upset" when they support groups that directly benefit from their causes is (IMO) a contradiction.

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