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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

#61

Post by uoaei »

sva_ wrote: post #9

I wonder why are we so complacent with these kind of things? Is it really just the fact that we got our bellies full, and live in climate-controlled homes? Or has there been some degeneration of the human body brought upon us with all kinds of new artificial materials we use, that might affect our bodies in ways we can't yet comprehend; or is it a psychological thing based on the results of technological achievements…

https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/2011/lagi2011a...

See Fig 2. Note how tight the correspondence is between FAO Food Price Index >= 190 per "constant prices", i.e. cost of food adjusted for inflation, and the emergence of civil unrest.

There is a certain level of desperation necessary to spark revolution. Food prices seem to predict unrest remarkably well in MENA countries per the study linked above. Maybe our experience in "developed" nations is so well-padded with infrastructure and consistent resupply that we are simply not enough in want. The hungry can usually find enough food to survive, because there's so much accessible excess, whether by theft or charity.

A writer at Statista provides an update for 2022 since the invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent effect on food prices around the world: https://www.statista.com/chart/27110/food-prices-political-i...

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

#62

Post by PuppyTailWags »

candiddevmike wrote: post #49
photochemsyn wrote: post #29

Note that this is just records of some of the federal agencies, not all of them, according to the linked ACLU report: > "Although the litigation is ongoing, we are now making public the records that CBP, ICE, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, and several offices within DHS Headquarters have provided us to date." The NSA is still vacuuming up all the metadata and a good fraction of the content from the ma…

And yet, even with all of this surveillance, we still have mass shootings every five days.

My understanding is that in the vast majority of these mass shooting cases, authorities are well aware of the danger but there's no enforcement mechanism for "probably going to do a mass shooting".

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

hunglee2 wrote: post #2

I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a surveillance state

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by RyEgswuCsn »

photochemsyn wrote: post #29

Note that this is just records of some of the federal agencies, not all of them, according to the linked ACLU report: > "Although the litigation is ongoing, we are now making public the records that CBP, ICE, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, and several offices within DHS Headquarters have provided us to date." The NSA is still vacuuming up all the metadata and a good fraction of the content from the ma…

> It's not quite China yet,

I'd call it a decentrailized surveillance system --- very robust against any attempt to dismantle it.

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

#66

Post by plugger »

candiddevmike wrote: post #49
photochemsyn wrote: post #29

Note that this is just records of some of the federal agencies, not all of them, according to the linked ACLU report: > "Although the litigation is ongoing, we are now making public the records that CBP, ICE, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, and several offices within DHS Headquarters have provided us to date." The NSA is still vacuuming up all the metadata and a good fraction of the content from the ma…

And yet, even with all of this surveillance, we still have mass shootings every five days.

surveillance doesn't seem to do much to deter crimes, it just makes investigation easier

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

#67

Post by bombcar »

ok_dad wrote: post #40
photochemsyn wrote: post #29

Note that this is just records of some of the federal agencies, not all of them, according to the linked ACLU report: > "Although the litigation is ongoing, we are now making public the records that CBP, ICE, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, and several offices within DHS Headquarters have provided us to date." The NSA is still vacuuming up all the metadata and a good fraction of the content from the ma…

Funny thing is, they started the surveillance in late-2001 to suck all the records up. Where did they get the computers and storage devices to do that all at once? They must have been installing equipment for months or years, especially since I am pretty sure they even built a new data center on Fort Mead for it around that time. Now, this is 2001, when building a datacenter didn't just involve spinning up 1000 AWS E…

I would suspect it was already being done (in part, or in whole who knows) and the attacks were an excuse to "legitimize" it going forward.

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

#68

Post by Smoosh »

freeAgent wrote: post #41
hunglee2 wrote: post #2

I used to be skeptical of the skeptics, thought they were paranoid to worry about 'big tech' snooping and tracking our lives. Turns out it is not big tech but 'big govt' that I should've been worried about. We are in danger of turning into a surveillance state

I think it's becoming increasingly apparent that there's not much difference between "Big Tech" and "Big Government." As this article makes clear, they have a symbiotic relationship with each other. Big Tech makes money from Big Government, which uses Big Tech to get around restrictions on what it's allowed to do on its own.

The trouble with big-everything is that they are indeed the big players, and therefore heavily invested in the status quo, and are the ones with power and influence. They don't want to fix things we see as problems, because they're doing just fine thank you.

Another instance of "Fuck you, I've got mine".

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

#69

Post by boomboomsubban »

flerchin wrote: post #48

If I have no choice about the ubiquitous surveillance, I'd at least like some positives like stopping the school shootings. As it is, they're watching, but clearly not doing anything useful.

Let's avoid giving them an acceptable reason to lock up anyone they want because they claim they're going to commit a crime.

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

#70

Post by perrylaj »

vorpalhex wrote: post #42
ok_dad wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing is, they started the surveillance in late-2001 to suck all the records up. Where did they get the computers and storage devices to do that all at once? They must have been installing equipment for months or years, especially since I am pretty sure they even built a new data center on Fort Mead for it around that time. Now, this is 2001, when building a datacenter didn't just involve spinning up 1000 AWS E…

I legit don't believe they can store all that data. Youtube alone creates too much data for them to process and handle. They must be storing either a subset or only partial metadata.

I'm on the other side of the fence - I believe they can store all they need to. Backdoors into Google, AWS, and others were strongly hinted at if not fully exposed with all the leaks back in the Snowden days, so US Agencies may not even need to store some of the bulky stuff. But given the vast size and number of datacenters operated by US agencies, it seems likely they have a LOT of storage capacity. http://worldstopdatacenters.com/government-data-centers/
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