The worst part is there isn't any possible way I know of to defend yourself against this other than not having a phone.
You still can't be sure. Your car may contain a SIM card nowadays, always connected, for your protection, sure thing.
US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
341–350 of 648 posts
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good way to loose your job very quickly. I don't think we should have to rely on somebody sacrificing themselves to make a difference.
Why not? How do you think change comes about, by complaining about it on a tech forum?
I you are willing to be blacklisted than more power to you. I wouldn't want to force that on someone.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#343The worst part is there isn't any possible way I know of to defend yourself against this other than not having a phone.
A while ago I thought of a very neat 'future job': you walk around town with somebody else's phone. So if you 'need to be' somewhere, you just hire this service, deliver your phone, which will be returned to you, and there goes your track record.
That's fairly easily detectable through analysis, though.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an amateur radio operator, I would expect nothing less for carrying a highly networked radio transceiver with loads of sensors including geopositioning. Simply put: don't want to be tracked? Put your phone in a lead sealed box or leave it at home. Tracking only tracks the phone , not your person.
So basically either give up your right for privacy or don't use any new technology? That doesn't look practical. A better idea would be to ban cell carriers (and anyone else) from using location data for anything except explicitly permitted by law, like help in emergencies or conducting investigations.
What would be most effective would be a pair of rules in tandem:
1. Allow the location data to be utilized by the cellular carrier only for legitimate engineering purposes relevant to the delivery of the cellular services. (The network needs to know your location in real time in order to route calls to you.) Also, allow the use of real time location data for emergency services in response to an emergency call. Potentially also allow the use of emergency services initiated real time locations, with a non-suppressible UI required to be presented to the user if this is performed.
2. Require that the cellular service providers purge / NOT retain this location data for any longer than is literally required to provide proper service.
The data retention policy #2 item here is essential in preventing temptation to come up with end-runs for the first rule. It's important that historic data that has no legitimate use under rule #1 not be preserved so that there isn't a mound of accumulating data of theoretically increasing value if only we could change / get rid of rule #1. That sort of thing will create ever mounting incentive to repeal / replace rule #1.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#345Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? Both government and private industry bring innumerable benefits to humanity. But we can and should view them both with constant skepticism and exercise vigilance. Why should holding one accountable mean that we can't hold the other accountable? If you're looking for someone to root for, I'd suggest the individual citizen.
The individual citizen has practically no power against large institutional actors.
That's like saying voting is pointless because individual votes don't matter.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't need oral approval or any approval. GEICO is only asking so that their customers won't freak out when GEICO magically knows where they are. The customer service rep probably had the data up on their screen already when they asked.
I wonder if they use this data to price insurance -- they would easily know when their drivers are going over the speed limit (or, if such data is not so precise, if their average speed over 10 minutes exceeded the speed limit).
More likely is approximating number of miles driven and price discriminating based off that. More miles driven = more risk of an auto accident. Basically pay-per-mile car insurance, but hidden.
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you feel guilt over creating them?
Should they? The vast quantity of users find it incredibly useful and have no reason to be concerned about governments or third parties being able to determine their geographic location, because governments or third parties don't generally care.
1) Users get no benefit from information resale.
2) COINTELPRO
Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#349Re: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the current setup, sure, but that's by design. The cellular modem could stay off until you decided to take the call if there was a nationwide page circuit listening, the user would get the ring, see the number the page sent, and if desired, answer, which powers on the modem, hits a tower and connects to a backend system that sent the page which took the incoming call. Page messages are in-the clear, but that's f…
You want every single cell phone call in the world to send out a signal over every single cell tower?
No. But at a certain point, with the high speed modulations we have today, it is totally feasible to broadcast these passively to a multi-state region encompassing a radius of hundreds of miles.
There's not a legitimate engineering reason that the network needs to maintain constant fine-grained location data for each registered device at this point. The scope of the registration can be far more widely cast.
This would even have upsides for the devices and users. As check-ins to the network in which the device must transmit to the network would be far reduced, battery life improvements can be had.
Yes, this increases the amount of "broadcast" traffic, but honestly, even for some of the busiest telco switches in New York or LA, those data streams don't even approach the throughput requirements of a single HD Youtube stream...