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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

#41
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> kinda the same technique Democrats want to use as well with their "pack the SCOTUS" campaigns. They want to shove a bunch more justices in there so they can get their way. Did this take place? Or is it just a fear of a hypothetical?

Well yes, but by republicans on Trumps behalf. Not allowing Obama to put a new judge forward in the last year of his term, and then allowing Trump to with even less time left in his term is just a chef's kiss of hypocrisy.

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

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy almost anything for cash.

Hell, I can get you a toe by three o'clock this afternoon -- with nailpolish.

Your German girlfriend will not be happy about it. Give her "halbe Pfannkuchen"!

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

#43

Who's selling the data is the far more serious issue here. Behind this is a remarkably well-structured syndicate. The supply chain looks something like this: 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 → that data flows to aggregators who don't have any direct relat…

We can hold both accountable actually, its a workaround of our fourth amendment rights and also it should be illegal to do this for the companies involved.

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

#44

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.

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

#45
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Earlier quoted context omitted.

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There is nothing sacred about the number of Supreme Court justices, and historically there was one for each circuit, which is not the case now.

But the truth is, Democrats can win every single election this year and in 2028 and they would not be allowed to govern by this Supreme Court, which has chosen over and over again to overturn precedent and sow chaos.

Unfortunately, to arrest the slide into right-wing authoritarianism, you have to adopt their tactics sometimes.

But you don’t have anything to worry about. The democrats aren’t going to do any of this, and we’ll be in an even worse state in 2032.

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

#46
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kinda the same technique Democrats want to use as well with their "pack the SCOTUS" campaigns. They want to shove a bunch more justices in there so they can get their way. Did this take place? Or is it just a fear of a hypothetical?

Well yes, but by republicans on Trumps behalf. Not allowing Obama to put a new judge forward in the last year of his term, and then allowing Trump to with even less time left in his term is just a chef's kiss of hypocrisy.

When people talk about packing the Supreme Court they're talking about adding justices so that one side (the one doing the nominating and appointing) gets a majority. It's not about filling vacancies (or blocking filling vacancies) to reach the current limit of nine justices.

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

#47
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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That's not "kinda the same" at all. You can feel however you like about the strategy, but the constitution specifically doesn't elaborate on how many justices make up the supreme court. Article III simply states the following:

> The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

There is a huge gulf between ignoring standing law or a supreme court ruling and ignoring precedent. One involves choosing not to acknowledge i.e. disobeying, an authority, and the other involves choosing to act differently than has generally been expected in the past. Moreover, at least in recent history, it's primarily the Republicans who began the practice of ignoring precedent, long before our slow descent into where we are now: blatantly flaunting the law. See Merrick Garland's ignored nomination or the house's recent ludicrous delay of swearing in an elected representative for just two easy examples of this.

I mean none of this in any partisan fashion. It's simply a matter of fact. The idea that the GOP and the Democratic parties somehow engage in the same level or kind of antics and are thus deserving of the same level of nihilistic apathy as some kind of moderate position is charitably tragically misinformed.

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

#48

Who's selling the data is the far more serious issue here. Behind this is a remarkably well-structured syndicate. The supply chain looks something like this: 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 → that data flows to aggregators who don't have any direct relat…

Not sure about now, but geolocation data used to be available for purchase from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless

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

#49

Who's selling the data is the far more serious issue here. Behind this is a remarkably well-structured syndicate. The supply chain looks something like this: 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 → that data flows to aggregators who don't have any direct relat…

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a headline in a few years when we find out other actors (e.g. China, Russia) have been buying this data en-masse too.

The CIA buys this data to track Putin's chef so of course China and Russia are doing the same to us.

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

#50
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just business. Buy (your data) for a dollar, sell for two. It's all legal and the data brokers are mostly unknown or already-hated companies so I'd say they have nothing to lose.

I wonder if we can still buy burner phones for cash at Mondo Mart

Differential identification means you can be singled out based on profiles. Even if you don't have any accounts, big tech companies still have shadow profiles, and those shadow profiles can be linked to your offline identity, such that everything you've done that's been recorded, and everything you've done in (temporal, physical, or digital) proximity to other people who do have accounts results in a record of activities.

Sure, you can get a burner, but you have to make sure you never use it anywhere near anyone you know, that the sim is obtained anonymously, that you're never imaged by any of the ubiquitous cameras, etc. Merely having it powered on provides enough metadata to establish a shadow profile, and it's nearly impossible for a person to secure two separate identities. There's also the superman problem - the burner phone would only ever appear when anonymars is missing, and vice versa, creating a real and exploitable pattern if anyone like the FBI wanted to root around in your life. All they'd have to do is query which shadow profiles match the temporal gaps correlated with your disappearance from tracking.

There's really no escaping it. The only fix is legislation - outright banning mass surveillance, with lethal corporate penalties and long prison terms for C-Suite responsible for violations. Short of that, we live in a world that is implicitly compromised and insecure unless you have nation state level resources.

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