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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

#71

Post by bombcar »

Mo3 wrote: post #3
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

Damn, even most of what we know is already a decade old information. I wouldn’t be surprised if the intelligence agencies had much more crazy new projects going on the last few years. I also suspect there will be a point in the future where they’ll break encryption and we won’t find out until years later.. they already started looking into building a quantum computer in 2014, and I’d bet it’s not necessarily for mora…

I suspect the intelligence agencies are still in absolute surprise that all their hard work was for nothing and everyone will happily tell Facebook, Google, et al everything with no prodding at all, and all they have to do is slurp it up.

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

#73

Post by HKH2 »

nixpulvis wrote: post #25

We need to demand more options on technology platforms! We cannot impose effective consumer pressure when we are forced to choose between two locked down App Stores which make it impossible to categorically prevent these kinds of malicious actions. How long do you think it would take for a "Little Snitch"-like application to pop up that firewalls location API access if the platforms were more open?

We clearly have options. On an Android phone, you can install F-Droid, and you can flash a custom Android ROM. You can even pay for a phone with those things already set up.

Like it or not, people want convenience.

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

#74

Post by lstodd »

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…

Remember the Clipper chip from 1993? It's not like they suddenly started it in 2001.

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

#77

Post by kelnos »

nixpulvis wrote: post #25

We need to demand more options on technology platforms! We cannot impose effective consumer pressure when we are forced to choose between two locked down App Stores which make it impossible to categorically prevent these kinds of malicious actions. How long do you think it would take for a "Little Snitch"-like application to pop up that firewalls location API access if the platforms were more open?

I mean, we have that: Android has plenty of alternative ROMs, many of which have Google services removed or otherwise sandboxed. But, overwhelmingly, people (myself included) do not choose to take this route, because they are much less user-friendly, and you lose functionality.

Regarding "firewalling location API access", that's something that you get for default on both Android and iOS, no? Granted, there's no guarantee Google and Apple themselves are respecting those settings on their own platforms.

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

#78

Post by eointierney »

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 legit believe they store everything they can because they've been doing exactly this for longer than anyone else. They are _the_ experts in metadata management.

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

#80

Post by kelnos »

g8oz wrote: post #21

I'm wondering when citizen vigilante groups will start buying location data from these brokers to solve crimes.

I'm surprised no one has bought location data for prominent Congresspersons and used it to embarrass them into writing up laws around this.
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