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ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

404media.co

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Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#81

Post by dzdt »

gruez wrote: post #31

>The material does not say how Penlink obtains the smartphone location data in the first place. But surveillance companies and data brokers broadly gather it in two different ways. The first is from small bundles of code included in ordinary apps called software development kits, or SDKs. SDK owners then pay the app developers, who might make things like weather or prayer apps, for their users’ location data. The sec…

If you install 100 apps on your phone, and 50% are participating in the kind of ad network that this data is sourced form, and 10% of the apps convince you to enable location services either by having a plausible need for it or by dark patterns or by your carelessness, that means there are still multiple sources where this information gets out. The math is on the trackers' side, not the users'.

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#82

Post by codingdave »

daheza wrote: post #22
icameron wrote: post #20

When I first heard the advice to ditch your phone when you go a protest, I thought maybe that's a little extreme. But it's a real threat. We already knew post Snowden there is an extensive big brother apparatus. We saw post 911 that all rights can be taken away in the name of counter-terrorism. Now with a government that's operating outside the law and labeling peaceful protesters as terrorists, I don't think we can…

If we all ditch our phones then how will we record the abuses of power?

Buy a camera. And/or an audio recorder. Or pull the SIM out of an old phone and use that.

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#83

Post by noncoml »

ActorNightly wrote: post #67
daheza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we all ditch our phones then how will we record the abuses of power?

Hate to break it to you, but people just simply dont care as much as you think they do. We have the right to own firearms for the purposes of protecting us against tyrany, but thats pointless when we cant even realize tyrany right outside our door.

This shows how flawed the idea is that individual gun ownership protects people from a rogue government. Acting alone with a firearm does not stop tyranny. It only leads to prison or worse.

Real resistance to authoritarianism has never come from isolated individuals using violence. It requires organized collective action where people stand together and refuse to comply. History shows that meaningful resistance often begins with simple nonviolent acts like refusing unjust rules or asserting basic dignity rather than a lone person reaching for a gun.

Owning a gun by itself does not meaningfully protect anyone from government overreach. Organization solidarity and collective action do.

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#84

Post by chasd00 »

daheza wrote: post #32
chaps wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

....cameras exist :)

True, cameras can be taken away or smashed after the fact destroying evidence. With my phone I can stream video to a cloud so that it can't be deleted. The ACLU used to have an app specifically for this but it seems to have been discontinued. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU_Mobile_Justice

the world isn't perfect, you do what you can. Just take a small RunCam or something and keep in it your pocket and be discreet when you're using it.

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#85

Post by drnick1 »

gruez wrote: post #56
drnick1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not use devices that can be trivially tracked through the cell network, or that can be surveilled by big tech. This means a device bought anonymously, a free/libre OS like Graphene, no Google/Facebook/Apple spyware apps, and an anonymous SIM paid for with cash or crypto. This should be done by everyone to avoid the possibility of mass surveillance, not only people who have something to hide from a three-letter age…

>Do not use devices that can be trivially tracked through the cell network, or that can be surveilled by big tech. This means a device bought anonymously, a free/libre OS like Graphene GrapheneOS isn't magically exempt from cell tracking, and both android and ios phones can go into airplane mode and have location disabled, which provides similar privacy. >and an anonymous SIM paid for with cash or crypto. This should…

> GrapheneOS isn't magically exempt from cell tracking, and both android and ios phones can go into airplane mode and have location disabled, which provides similar privacy.

You practically can't do anything on a Googled Android device or iOS without a Google or Apple account, so no, they don't provide "similar privacy." The point of a FOSS system is that the user fully controls it, and can install apps privately from any source.

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#86

Post by tonyarkles »

beej71 wrote: post #55
daheza wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we all ditch our phones then how will we record the abuses of power?

I have an old point and shoot (20x optical zoom) and a SIM-free phone that has never been used in my name for anything.

> SIM-free phone

Is the modem completely disabled? Does it still show the "SOS" option that allows you to call 911 without a SIM? If so, and if it's ever been turned on in your residence, there's a decent chance the IMEI could be traced back to your house just based on pattern-of-life movement.

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#87

Post by jordanpg »

moogly wrote: post #48
silisili wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most maximally vindictive candidates I think that's how we got to this point today, tbh.

It's been building for a long time; it's not recent per se, just accelerated. 2025 showed that you can't just go "ok, it's over now, we'll go back to business as usual" (like I know the limp-wristed Dems will want to do) or it'll repeat after every other election until it's successful. You just cannot have this many people constantly being convinced they live in this alternate reality for much longer without civiliza…

More to the point, it's the collapse of the carefully balanced entente around things like WMD and war crimes that will be our undoing.

Recent events have brought this into sharp focus.

This is really the glue that holds it all together -- that we and our allies haven't even had to think about these things for our entire lives up until now.

I hate to be hyperbolic, but I fear that fear of these things will soon become a looming presence in our lives. For the rest of our lives. And kids' lives. And grandkids' lives.

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#88

Post by empath75 »

gruez wrote: post #73
shermantanktop wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the 'both sides' POV except in the longest historical view. Right now it's just not true. One team is a feckless collection of timid hesitators who is trying to defend a social welfare policy from 70 years ago, and the other team believes their volatile leader is infallible and will direct revenge at whatever they are pointed to by the latest 3am tweet. It's just not the same.

>One team is a feckless collection of timid hesitators who is trying to defend a social welfare policy from 70 years ago What is this referring to? >and the other team believes their volatile leader is infallible and will direct revenge at whatever they are pointed to by the latest 3am tweet. >It's just not the same. What does this have to do with gp's claim about cycle of reprisals by both parties? It can be simulta…

> What does this have to do with gp's claim about cycle of reprisals by both parties? It can be simultaneously possible to admit that the leader of one party is more sane than the other, and to observe that both parties are engaging in cycles of retaliation when they get in power, and that egging on even more retaliation is going to make the situation worse.

I think the reason we are in the situation we are in now is that the last administration wasn't nearly retaliatory _enough_ after J6

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#89

Post by Jtsummers »

ck2 wrote: post #41

I submitted this three hours earlier but apparently my links are now shadow-banned? eh at least it's being seen Be sure to read their other DHS coverage

404media links are shadowbanned, not necessarily yours. They have been for years, people vouch for them to bring them back from the dead.

Re: ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

#90

Post by Vegenoid »

gruez wrote: post #39
nemomarx wrote: post #5

Any tips on how to avoid this? I suppose those tin foil signal blockers might be useful?

See my other comment. At least in this particular case the databrokers are getting the data from apps themselves. If you don't grant location permissions to shady weather/transit/delivery apps, you should be safe.

Without more information about how the system works, a casual "eh if I don't grant location data access to shady apps I'm probably safe" seems very risky. What apps are "shady"? How does the real-time bidding system obtain and divulge location data?

I think that it is not a safe assumption that the only way corporations are obtaining people's location is via OS location APIs.

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