301–310 of 648 posts
I’m shocked that anyone is shocked about this! Transportation departments have been buying this data since the late 90s. More creepy are the planning solutions for commercial development. You can buy datasets that will tell you the average income of drivers on larger highways in hourly buckets.
We don't _all_ work in adtech, you know?
Throwaway account. I work in location / mapping / geo. Some of us have been waiting for this to blow (which it hasn't yet). The public has zero idea how much personal location data is available. It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually…
I'm in the space as well. I've tried telling my congressmen but they ignore me. I'm waiting for the backlash, especially will all the recent privacy issues. It hasn't happened yet and the problem is so large that I honestly doubt whether the public will ever truly grasp what the scope. The advice I always give when this topic comes up us to be very careful with what you install on your phone. The least expensive mobi…
If you're not comfortable with your name being publicly attached, at least give news orgs the information and request confidentiality.
Part of the reason congress people can punt is that the cost of inaction A big part of shifting that equation is starting to publicize "You had all the information available now on X date and did nothing" as loudly as possible. Naming and shaming has been healthy for vulnerability disclosure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calls could be done over IP, and as long as you could anonymously authenticate to the tower then you could be granted a new IP address at each tower via something like DHCP. I imagine roaming and handovers would have to be done on the end-device though; the end-device would need to proactively associate to new towers and both ends of the voice call would need to agree to switch to the new IP address. But if the tower…
If you really wanted to do this, a more secure approach is onion routing. It's essentially the same problem -- attempting to preserve anonymity in the face of adversarial network hardware, while being limited by a requirement to enter / exit through certain nodes. So you'd want a mesh network, formed adhoc out of currently in range cellular device neighbors, with packets re-encapsulated and encrypted at each hop, eve…
Throwaway account. I work in location / mapping / geo. Some of us have been waiting for this to blow (which it hasn't yet). The public has zero idea how much personal location data is available. It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually…
It's so strange--I never would have expected the boot of tyranny to come from private corporations, but here we are. And what all this proves is that technology is value-neutral and can wipe us all out, or just make us incredibly miserable, if we let it. Hopefully there will be a way to opt out. Otherwise, I should start selling faraday bags for devices. Probably should anyways.
> Hopefully there will be a way to opt out Don't use a cellphone. See also: the FBI can't wiretap your phone lines if you never use a telephone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you really wanted to do this, a more secure approach is onion routing. It's essentially the same problem -- attempting to preserve anonymity in the face of adversarial network hardware, while being limited by a requirement to enter / exit through certain nodes. So you'd want a mesh network, formed adhoc out of currently in range cellular device neighbors, with packets re-encapsulated and encrypted at each hop, eve…
Anonymous attestation protocols is a thing
Do you have any links where this is done without a third party?
It's so strange--I never would have expected the boot of tyranny to come from private corporations, but here we are. And what all this proves is that technology is value-neutral and can wipe us all out, or just make us incredibly miserable, if we let it. Hopefully there will be a way to opt out. Otherwise, I should start selling faraday bags for devices. Probably should anyways.
This tracking abomination is an emergent phenomenon of the merger of private industry and government in the US. See for example both legalized bribery (a.k.a. unlimited campaign contributions by corporations thanks to Citizens United) and outright bribery (Cohen) by telecoms like AT&T, ensuring that they will have the flexibility to perpetrate such garbage as this tracking data sale. Why not distrust both government…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This tracking abomination is an emergent phenomenon of the merger of private industry and government in the US. See for example both legalized bribery (a.k.a. unlimited campaign contributions by corporations thanks to Citizens United) and outright bribery (Cohen) by telecoms like AT&T, ensuring that they will have the flexibility to perpetrate such garbage as this tracking data sale. Why not distrust both government…
Alright, but distrusting all parties doesn't suggest a way forward.
If you're looking for someone to root for, I'd suggest the individual citizen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Banning things works relatively well for people because they fear having trouble with law and justice. Doesn't work that well for corporations whose law department is just like any other department. In this case you must assume that if it's technically possible then it's done.
This argument can be used against any law, like antitrust law. Having a law department doesn't give you a free pass to break laws.
edit: Reading into the context of 'too big to fail' and 'collateral consequences' reveals exactly that kind of behavior.
Throwaway account. I work in location / mapping / geo. Some of us have been waiting for this to blow (which it hasn't yet). The public has zero idea how much personal location data is available. It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually…
I'm in the space as well. I've tried telling my congressmen but they ignore me. I'm waiting for the backlash, especially will all the recent privacy issues. It hasn't happened yet and the problem is so large that I honestly doubt whether the public will ever truly grasp what the scope. The advice I always give when this topic comes up us to be very careful with what you install on your phone. The least expensive mobi…