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Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics (www.404media.co)

submitted 11 hours ago by otter@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Privacy advocates got access to Locate X, a phone tracking tool which multiple U.S. agencies have bought access to, and showed me and other journalists exactly what it was capable of. Tracking a phone from one state to another to an abortion clinic. Multiple places of worship. A school. Following a likely juror to a residence. And all of this tracking is possible without a warrant, and instead just a few clicks of a mouse.

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[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 18 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Search and seizure, the Fourth Amendment, only applies to State actors. The only exception is when a private entity is acting as an agent of the government, such as in the case of private prisons.

Congress needs to pass consumer protection laws aimed at privacy in the digital age. They haven't updated this sort of thing I believe since 1996. It used to be legal for adult video stores to disclose the tapes people rented, but Congress passed a privacy law forbidding it when some journalists disclosed some of their rentals. The scandal had some cool name. I forgot what.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 1 points 11 minutes ago

The government cannot access the information without a warrant. It does not matter if SPYco lays it all out on a public website. If they needed a warrant to track you before, they need a warrant to check for you on the public website.

Saying the government is allowed to obliterate the 4th amendment because a private company did the hard part is just asking for government aligned corporations to gather it all up and hand it over whenever the government gives them a dollar.