541–550 of 648 posts
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> A dumb phone can be localized by cell triangulation. The US military disclosed ... In the U.S., aren't dumb phones (or 'feature phones') locatable for E911 service?
if it doesn't have GPS, it doesn't have GPS
> the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn't restrict disclosure to other companies Clearly the US has their priorities completely the wrong way.
Part of the American mythology is that government involvement is always bad. It's hard for me to know if this developed because of the myths of the America Revolution, that a small colony won it alone and not because of external factors, and how much is due to people preaching small government politics. Regardless a distrust of the government seems to be ingrained in the American psyche IMO.
Big government arose as a response to and check on big business.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=big+business%2...
I believe the relevant T-Mobile privacy policy (that I definitely read before signing up...) is: "With your consent. We may provide location-based services or provide third parties with access to your approximate location to provide services to you." https://www.t-mobile.com/company/website/privacypolicy.aspx That is why a text message confirmation is required to get a cell phone's location from https://www.locations…
Well, the locationsmart fails completely on my Google fi phone.
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If all that is claim in here isn't conspiracy, how can it stay a secret? Isn't it the reason wikileaks was created in the first place?
How is it a secret? We're talking about it right now.
In 2009, Malte Spitz (German Green Party politician) sued his telecom provider for all the information they had stored on him in the last 6 moths. He and others made a good (and spooky) visualization showing how it tracked his entire life [2]. He did a TED talk about it [3], which received a spirited applause and unfortunately minor press coverage.
I think many naively bought the idea that all this detailed data was only for LE (maybe a side effect of all the reporting on the Data Retention Laws?), despite constantly seeing clauses in their EULA's saying their data will be shared with third parties.
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People only care about these issues once they become evident and widespread, and they personally are affected. I remember the shock my friends had when Google Maps released the location history feature. Up until then, its just a theoretical concern.
Good demonstrations, hard hitting expositions and good press coverage are essential.
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[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_retention
[2] - https://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data-protect...
The worst part is there isn't any possible way I know of to defend yourself against this other than not having a phone.
That probably won't do much for you in many urban areas in many countries. Municipalities are routinely maintaining data captured from license-plate scanners and some cities now have CCTV networks with facial recognition software. So unless you don't drive and walk around with a new rubber mask on every day you are still subject to the panopticon. Most businesses these days have some kind of camera system for securit…
Gotta invent that Scramble Suit!
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Oh, sweet summer child ... "Even if there was a separate OS running in parallel with Android, how could it access the wireless-networks-based and satellite-based location data? I thought that access to these things is controlled by Android." There is a separate OS running in parallel with Android and it is running on the very hardware that makes the network connections to the cellular network that you are speaking of…
Remember back when people got upset over Intel CPUs having a unique ID in them? Remember when people got upset over tracking pixels? Since then, things went really bad, really fast, just no one noticed.
That's why I don't mind being "that guy" in social situations when these issues are brought up.
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Will it blow up, even if the public is aware? When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA activities, it caused a momentary uproar but the people moved on pretty quickly after that. As far as I know (and let me know if I am wrong!!), there was no fallout for the government, and business continues as before. So I am not sure if people will care this time either.
Snowdens' revelations had a massive effect on the tech. sector. It provided security people with ammunition to push things like encryption of data over "private" network connections, which prevented their misuse by governments (or at least made it harder) It also pushed tech. companies to publicly take positions on government spying, in general by insisting they wouldn't co-operate.
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 can confirm this is happening, I designed some of the analysis systems used. Contrary to what many people assume, this is not just a US thing. It is done throughout the industrialized world to varying degrees, including countries where most people believe privacy protections disallow such activity. Governments tacitly support it because they've found these capabilities immensely useful for their own purposes.