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New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

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Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#241

Post by n4r9 »

whyagain1885 wrote: post #215
ramoz wrote: post #27

It's important everyone becomes educated about the fact that virtually every mobile app sells some part of your data that leads to some private company possessing the ability to draw a circle around your house on map and then detect all patterns of life without any PII. I don't think it's fair to pit this as a US gov't surveillance problem. It's true though - the Government missions involved, where this type of data…

I always get annoyed how these programmers can have a good sleep at night given what they have done. Note that blaming it on the marketing VP is not fair. If even 50 % employees have a thought this tracking can be stopped.

The developers may not be aware of the full consequences of what they've been asked to do.

I was recently discussing the Uber revelations in an ethical tech group that I run. The most shocking part for me was that at one time the app was designed to behave differently depending on whether the user was categorised as law enforcement based on their usage history.

This surely required complicity at all levels, from management down to engineers and testers.

But someone point out quite astutely that such a feature can be generically framed as "optimise/adapt behaviour based on historical usage". It makes business sense to categorise a user's profession and alter ride costs based on that. All that's needed then is to give a higher-up the control over a dial that effectively nullifies law enforcement's ability to get a ride.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#242

Post by throwaway0a5e »

VistaBrokeMyPC wrote: post #167
lern_too_spel wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no "backdoors into Google and Apple." The government has to request specific accounts' data with a court order. The NSA isn't "vacuuming up all the metadata and a good fraction of the content from the main nodes." It does full take in some countries with national security interest and collects data to or from some endpoints outside the US known to belong to foreigners with a court order. We know all of this…

That "court order" is from the FISA court, which may as well be a monkey with a rubber stamp. We learned that from the Snowden documents too.

They only call it a court for marketing reasons. It's basically just an internal review process.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#243

Post by ProllyInfamous »

lrvick wrote: post #43

Among the many reasons I choose not to own a cell phone.

There are DOZENS of us!

----

As a fellow non-mobile phone user, my life has drastically improved. There are many (MANY!) acquaintances whom this frustrates immensely (for they cannot instantaneously speak with me), but my inner circle all know how to reach me by pager a/o physically visiting.

As for my outer circle... good riddance (FWIW I am retired)!

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#244

Post by asjdflakjsdf »

dogman144 wrote: post #194

These are the engineers and PM types that have know this for years: - security engineering - privacy engineering - digital marketing - data science Maybe the first two did a vocal but bad job raising the flag due to how antagonistic some of that dialogue goes. But to this whole post acting surprised - look around at what you work on and who with, and what you’re paid for doing it. Be the change you want to see, but p…

I absolutely hate when people respond to these kind of articles with "Why are people surprised". The truth is that no one is surprised. People are more disappointed, and frustrated, that this is allowed to happen, not just from a legal sense, but in a technical sense also.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#245

Post by janandonly »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #113
ramoz wrote: post #27

It's important everyone becomes educated about the fact that virtually every mobile app sells some part of your data that leads to some private company possessing the ability to draw a circle around your house on map and then detect all patterns of life without any PII. I don't think it's fair to pit this as a US gov't surveillance problem. It's true though - the Government missions involved, where this type of data…

> virtually every mobile app Reminder to readers to use F-Droid

Or on iPhone, switch "location services" off.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#246

Post by nl »

lettergram wrote: post #240
nl wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specifics around this matter hugely. Neither Google nor Apple sell your location data. Other ad providers will. This matters a lot but is ignored by comments like this.

Lol if you believe them… Burr regardless, the point was government has it. It’s also safe to assume 3rd party apps track it and capture the same data. Which can then be purchased.

Well selling that data is completely against their business model!

For example Google's entire revenue model is based on the idea you give them money and ads to show and they choose where best to show that. If they sold the raw data it would undermine that.

Basically no amount of money would be enough for Google to give away their entire business.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#247

Post by mab122 »

kornhole wrote: post #220
taneliv wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make emergency calls without a SIM card. The phone identifies itself to the network (with IMEI), even if there is no SIM. The telcos, obviously, map IMEIs to SIMs. (Perhaps needless to say, but for basic operational purposes they have to quite efficiently triangulate your position, to know which cell tower to instruct your phone to use.) Having no SIM does not help you conceal your phone's location at all, on…

This depends on what airplane mode means on your phone. With GrapheneOS, airplane mode blocks baseband transmission, but you can optionally still turn on Bluetooth and/or WIFI. If you dial 911, airplane mode is immediately turned off for the call to go through and stays off until you turn it back on. WIFI triangulation or bluetooth mesh can be used for location tracking in particular areas. MAC address randomization…

> If you dial 911, airplane mode is immediately turned off for the call to go through and stays off until you turn it back on.

I didn't know that, that's really smart and so simple. I like it. I don't know why such trivial thing is so amazing to me.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#248

Post by b112 »

fsflover wrote: post #224
taneliv wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make emergency calls without a SIM card. The phone identifies itself to the network (with IMEI), even if there is no SIM. The telcos, obviously, map IMEIs to SIMs. (Perhaps needless to say, but for basic operational purposes they have to quite efficiently triangulate your position, to know which cell tower to instruct your phone to use.) Having no SIM does not help you conceal your phone's location at all, on…

> I don't know if any location data might leak in airplane mode, but I would not be surprised if some did, for example, through NFC or Bluetooth. Which is why hardware kill switches are the future (see Librem 5 and Pinephone).

The future of never happen.

The worlds worst privacy offenders make/sell phones. Google. Samsung. Apple.

Google, no need to explain.

Samsung? All their apps, their keyboard, collect, collect collect.

Apple? Walled garden of share data with Apple.

And beyond this, for example on Samsung builds, the GPS daemon calls home(Qualcomm? looked into it a year ago...) to update agps data, but also... provide tracking info.

None of these people want hardware kill switches.

Re: New documents reveal scale of US Government’s cell phone location data tracking

#250

Post by themitigating »

ramoz wrote: post #27

It's important everyone becomes educated about the fact that virtually every mobile app sells some part of your data that leads to some private company possessing the ability to draw a circle around your house on map and then detect all patterns of life without any PII. I don't think it's fair to pit this as a US gov't surveillance problem. It's true though - the Government missions involved, where this type of data…

Both are bad situations but the government has more power and control than tech companies.
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