this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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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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[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 15 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

this combined with the whole "your pager/phone is now a bomb" texture that the IDF decided to add into the mix should make for interesting times.

soon you will be the drone.

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[–] RBWells@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Better to leave your phone at home (or better, in the pocket of someone who lives in your house and takes the same daily path as you do) if you are doing something that's currently illegal. Or in any situation where you are doing something legal that the cops are likely to break up.

The juror going home thing is terrifying but I don't think the government would be after you for fulfilling your civic duty.

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 19 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Archive: https://archive.ph/bSrZR

tl;dr: It's basically a MAID attack, along with the usual suspects of social media, navigation, and weather apps.

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[–] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 205 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

This should be illegal. There is absolutely no good reason this should be available to anybody. It should also be considered unconstitutional; if one of those dots is a person, whether you directly know who the person is or not, it should violate the right to privacy and the right of illegal search and seizure — no questions asked.

[–] 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.

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[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 75 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

You are right. And you're fighting against the credit reporting agencies and google, facebook, apple, and all car manufacturers for privacy rights.

This is the result of jurists and legislators who don't understand a single goddamned thing about computers in 2024. For fuck's sake it's been thirty goddamned years since this was obviously going to happen. Take a class, you bastards! Those of you who aren't Heritage Foundation fascists.

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 39 points 9 hours ago

It's not getting better either: https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems

There seems to have been a short window of maybe two decades in the 80s and 90s when computers and the Internet were becoming household staples where almost everyone who grew up in that time period knows what's up, while everyone who didn't is way more ignorant. The older folks are lost because they didn't grow up with computers. The younger kids are lost because they were born into a world of advanced UIs, "plug and play", and software that heavily obfuscates the nitty gritty details of how it works.

Being forced to run command line installers, edit config.sys files, set DIP switches correctly for your front side bus speed and messing with IRQ settings for your sound card and such just to play a computer game will definitely teach you a thing or two. My family's PC came with not only an instruction manual, but an entire language reference for the built in GW-Basic interpreter. Nowadays, you get a laptop with a small pamphlet showing you how to plug it in and turn it on.

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[–] Waldowal@lemmy.world 11 points 6 hours ago

Some additional info based on their published material (screenshot below). The software gets its data from "publicly available sources" which includes tracking information from many different online advertisers, public social media posts, etc. As we know, the advertising data can sometimes have your personal info attached - sometimes not. Babel Street claims to anonymize the data, but let's assume there is a $$ amount at which they won't.

So, theoretically, if you can successfully avoid ad trackers, and you don't post on social media platforms except where you want to be "seen", you can avoid this tracking (granted that seems quite impossible these days).

[–] capital@lemmy.world 25 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Don't bring your phone.

Get a burner and set up call forwarding.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 22 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

burner goes from your house, to abortion clinic, to your office, back to your house

Hmm, must be someone else, I don't recognize this number

-The Government

[–] capital@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You really can’t think of a solution to this?

[–] Jtotheb@lemmy.world 10 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You really think you came up with an airtight solution to device tracking that nobody in the industry has considered on a whim?

[–] capital@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Ok how’s the industry tracking a phone with no power?

[–] Jtotheb@lemmy.world 16 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

That was possible over a decade ago.

Link Link Link Link

Also to be clear, you suggested that you bring a burner phone and set up call forwarding. That implies a phone that’s on. If you’re carrying a burner phone that’s off, I do have a novel solution, just don’t bring it

[–] midnightblue@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

No that's not easily possible on every phone. It's a specifically crafted FakeOff malware, used by the NSA for targeted attacks. This is not something that just randomly gets deployed on every phone, it's only used against individual targets. Use GrapheneOS to harden your Android device as much as possible, to defend against such malware getting installed in the first place.

You really think the NSA will get involved to track someone who wants to get an abortion?

That was possible over a decade ago.

You know what also existed over a decade ago? Faraday bags. This concept of physics isn't new.

Just stop spreading fear and misinformation.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 1 points 3 hours ago

You really think the NSA will get involved to track someone who wants to get an abortion?

Probably not, unless it’s an exceptional case where they are already interested for another reason.

But if, say, county sheriffs across the country also got access, I would be surprised if I didn’t hear about women’s and doctors’ lives being ruined by them.

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[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 7 points 7 hours ago (9 children)

Then how you gonna take a selfie in the bed?

Seriously tho, people need phones for everything, including their calendar and map and communication with their partner.

Not bringing a phone isn't an option

[–] basmati@lemmus.org 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

There are alternatives to all of that. If you're going to do potentially illegal acts, and you don't want to rot in jail for the next however many decades until a scotus exists to set you free, take basic operational security into account and don't bring the corporate tracking device that cops can freely tap into.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 5 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Yes. And we need laws that provide this protection to everyone by default.

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[–] WindyRebel@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Mapquest is still around, so that solves one problem. The rest can be alleviated by communicating in person with your partner and aligning on a plan to not get tracked (like partner driving you and leaving their phone at home).

In the absence of that help, friends or family you trust. A cab? The clinic probably has a phone to hail a cab when you’re there.

Disclaimer: I’m just providing work arounds, I’m not saying they’re ideal.

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[–] Petter1@lemm.ee 9 points 7 hours ago

🤯imagine how much they spent only to to terrorise women

[–] egrets@lemmy.world 45 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

The EFF have a bit more general information about location data brokers. Well worth a read.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 20 points 8 hours ago

God I hate data brokers. Rats! All of them, vermin contributing nothing of value to society.

[–] Spitzspot@lemmings.world 91 points 11 hours ago (14 children)

Time to start casually walking by clinics en masse.

[–] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 50 points 11 hours ago (6 children)

That does not sound like a viable long term solution to me.

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[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 35 points 10 hours ago (11 children)

As people get ready to vote here in the US, one issue I haven't even heard brought up is the lack of privacy regulations in the US. Do most people not care if the person they're voting for is fine with every corporation selling and sharing personal data?

[–] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 hours ago

It's such a non-problem to my family members that if I even suggest it is a problem, I get ignored.

No one cares. It's either nothing anyone values or they figured they never had any privacy to begin with.

[–] Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 8 points 7 hours ago

Privacy regulations are to the left of the Overton window. The idea that corporations don't have some divinely ordained ownership of our personal data is unthinkably radical.

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