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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

#181

Post by treebeard901 »

Law enforcement should require a subpoena if they want to have location data for anyone. It really isnt a third party loophole issue.

Law enforcement should only be accessing location data if they have probable cause to believe a crime is happening. This invalidates the third party doctrine loophole and becomes an unreasonable search (and seizure of your privacy) under the 4th amendment.

Location data specifically should be treated as the most private data about a person. It should have the highest scrutiny for any access. It is more important than your financial records and medical records.

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

#182

Post by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe »

array_key_first wrote: post #88
nullcathedral wrote: post #28

Yikes. Why are private organizations so happy to participate in mass surveillance.

A lot of them don't know they're doing it. The tracking itself is embedded in dependencies of dependencies. SDKs you add for legitimate purposes. Along the way it's sent from platform to platform. Analytics, add targets, and eventually data brokers. Data brokers then sell it to other data brokers or the government. If you're lucky, it's pseudo-anonymous. Of course it's actually not - aggregated location data is inher…

Yes. The french newspaper Le Monde recently did a piece on how easy it was to find every moves and the home adress of sensitive people (elite special forces, nucleat submarine engineers, president bodyguards, etc) by exploiting the free sample of a data broker.

They were stunned to see lemonde's app appeared as sources inside that excel file because of SDKs in their app.

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

#183

Post by hulitu »

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.

> I'm not sure how the OS is to blame.

Read the TOS.

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

#184

Post by antonvs »

godelski wrote: post #152
lmeyerov wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can trace the big players If Google & Apple & friends refused to take a rake and opened distribution, then I'd agree, net neutrality etc, not their problem But they own so much, and so deep into the pipeline, and explain their fees to courts because "security"... and then don't do investigations. They employ some of the best security analysts in the world and have $10-30B/yr revenue tied to just the app store fee…

> They employ some of the best security analysts in the world and have $10-30B/yr revenue I'll never not be impressed by how many people will defend trillion dollar organizations and say that things are too expensive. Especially when open source projects (including forks!) implement such features. I'm completely with you, they could do these things if they wanted to . They have the money. They have the manpower. It i…

“Priorities” is far too soft a term in this context. These are anti-priorities: not just things they choose not to work on, but things they’ll spend big money to prevent, up to and including bribing, uh I mean lobbying, lawmakers.

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

#186

Post by fsflover »

jmbuilds wrote: post #44
rootusrootus wrote: post #16

Perhaps we could overturn the third party doctrine. With legislation, preferably. And while we are at it, solve the underlying issue of pervasive data collection and sharing in the first place.

Another angle I think worth attention is product developers should build tools / platforms that don't even touch user data and be open about that so consumers can choose those more. I believe people will choose privacy when given the choice more often if the product is just as good or better.

This is what F-Droid does. However Apple doesn't allow you to use it, and Google is slowly following their lead, too.

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

#188

Post by unethical_ban »

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…

What if we put cameras and sensors in every home? What if we require groups of three or more to register their gathering with the government?

What if we could torture someone to have a chance at stopping a terror attack? What if we could torture someone to find where they stashed a stolen car? What if publicizing the errant torture of innocent people is bad for public morale, so we outlaw publishing stories about it?

When does it stop?

These are basic philosophy of law questions but I tend to stand on the side of liberty from an ever more powerful government.

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

#190

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #174
interactivecode wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about jailing CEO's of companies who do this?

I’m not sure that’s how corporate blame works. The ceo signed off on the CIOs proposal to streamline data analytics logs via WeTotallyWontSiphonOffYourDataAndSellIt incorporated for user improvement purposes, which happens to be owned by the CFO’s brother in law. How were the CIO and CEO to know that a third party was selling off the data, and how was that third party to know that the sale of the data to another part…

> How were the CIO and CEO to know that a third party was selling off the data, and how was that third party to know that the sale of the data to another party who then onsold the data to the fbi would be illegal?

Ask yourself the same question about personal health data and the answer reveals itself: the CEO and CIO know (or should know) that the vendor needs to be HIPAA-compliant or it's their necks (the CEO's and CIO's), so they look for a vendor who advertises as being HIPAA-compliant.

Pass legislation to the same effect for all PII and the CEO and CIO will then make requirements of the vendor. If the vendor lies, they get fired because the company hiring them is culpable. The vendor may also be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties. It seems simple, other than the fact that we have a federal legislature with no apparent interest in solving this problem, alongside a populace which either doesn't notice or doesn't care about that.

To answer the question more pithily: communication.

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