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.
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.
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.
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.
This is correct. But if you don’t work in the field, it’s fine.
You don’t have to know how to bottle wine if you’re not a wine maker. You don’t need to know how to build a dam if you’re not an engineer. You don’t have to learn everything about the architecture of an OS if you’re a user and not a programmer. Let the kids use their devices without knowing obscure shit, just like people let us wear clothes without knowing how to sew. There are things we should all know how to do - changing a light bulb is cheaper if you don’t call an electrician every time it needs to be done. But there are things that are so opaque at first sight that they need to be performed by people with specialized knowledge. And it’s okay to not have that knowledge if you’re not in that field.
Yes, there are 1-2 generations where everyone was learning how computers work. But there were also quite a few generations where everyone was learning how agriculture and farming works - you know, to survive. And I’ll be damned if I wanna have my kids birth a cow or install Linux on their PC. Unless for some godforsaken reason they decide that’s their job.
You’re ignoring the point of why it’s useful and at this point, necessary, to have an above average understanding of technology to maintain any semblance of privacy in your life…you can do so much harm to yourself without ever knowing it just by having an Alexa or by having a Tesla.
At certain point it’s like what the fuck can we even do with things specifically like the tool this article is talking about but tech illiteracy isn’t excusable if this day and age anymore. The world demands a certain level of knowledge or you can and will be exploited.
I know this is the case today, but we are still in the early days of massive surveillance and everyone being globally interconnected. I have to trust legislation will follow to regulate this, just like any potentially dangerous invention is now regulated in most countries, from pharmaceuticals to firearms, to lead based paints, to news outlets.
The fact of the matter is, regular people cannot keep up with all inventions ever. It’s up to governments to protect their citizens from threats, and a failure to do so should be punished. If instead the government chooses to be that threat, the solution isn’t easy, but it is simple.
Mm idk, I think knowing how to use folders is pretty important. It helps people stay organized.
The article wasn’t talking about file systems like FAT32 or NTFS. It was talking about using directories, instead of “pulling files from a laundry basket” by using a search bar.
Ehhhh I’m not convinced that the method of dumping everything in a pile and using search is such a bad thing for average users. For admins on servers it’s absolutely critical to know what is in what directory, but for average users does it actually matter at all?
Honestly I’m bad enough about being consistent with my data organization I genuinely wonder if I should join them in just searching through the pile of documents rather than organizing in neat folders…
That explains why cars got so much worse once Boomers were no longer their primary market.
I’m convinced that a good number of legislators understand the implications of this stuff on a cursory level, but are convinced (read: bribed) to not care on the “condition” that it doesn’t apply to them or their families. They are beholden to their constituents, and their constituents aren’t you and me, as we can’t afford them.
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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.
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.
Edit to add- This is the way it should work. Instead the government really is just buying data they’d need a warrant for previously.
This is not an area of law I stay up to date on, but that did not used to be the case. Is that a rather new development?
Last I knew most courts were holding that since customers are sharing this information with third parties (sharing with their phone companies, Apple and Google, Facebook, etc.), giving everything away anyway, most individuals have waived any claim to an expectation of privacy. The right to privacy is founded upon reasonable expectations. I did hear about some pushback on that, more recently, but not from the Court of Appeals from DC, which has jurisdiction over appeals taken from federal agencies, prior to the Supreme Court. I’d be grateful to be shown otherwise. About time, if true.
Yeah I should have been more clear. That’s the way it should work. Instead the courts interpret the 4th amendment as narrowly as possible. Making it effectively non-existent in many cases.
The solution is to subscribe to these services. Then create a website that offers real-time tracking information, freely to the public, of the most wealthy and powerful people in the country. Every Congressperson should have their location shown freely available to all in real time. You could call it “wheresmyrep.org” or similar. Literally all of them tracked like animals in real time, freely shown for any and all to see. Let them live in the fish bowl they’ve created for us all.
We’re kind of seeing that with those private jet trackers. But that’s not changing anything except getting those accounts banned from social media.
I think those just need to move to have their own independent sites instead of basing their operations on social media. Ultimately what they’re doing is entirely legal, but it’s way too easy for some asshat billionaire to pull some strings to get them pulled from a platform.
Yep. Spin up your own website and throw a couple YouTube ads out into the world. We’ll have legislation drafted making this illegal before your first server bill comes due.
Although we already know what would likely happen if someone did that. It would just be made illegal to track the locations of congresspeople (and only congresspeople), like it was made illegal to do so during the BLM protests.
Just like how the moment their videotape rental history was exposed, that was when privacy became an absolute must in the case of video rental services.
When supreme court justice kavanaugh was followed by protesters he had a hissy fit and said they couldnt do that. But it’s totally fine to spy on everyone with a phone and expose their medical data.
These hypocritical fuckheads deserve exactly what you are proposing and I’d fucking love to see it happen.
We could even say it’s to protect the children… make sure certain politicians who have expressed interest in legalizing child marriage aren’t left alone with any.
Time for faraday cage phone covers/bags to become popular in these states.
Get this in front of the Supreme Court ASAP!
…oh…
It drives me nuts how our economic system is making not having a cell phone increasingly difficult. Many necessary things won’t even work on a tablet. The smartphone is the most amazing futuristic device I dreamed about that has evolved into a distopian nightmare.
It drives me nuts how our economic system is making not having a cell phone increasingly difficult.
that’s by design. why you do you think the US government allows corporate interests to take such a high position above American citizens? it’s not just only because of corruption, it’s because one hand washes the other.
The smartphone is the most amazing futuristic device I dreamed about that has evolved into a distopian nightmare.
like all technology, it can be used in ways that you cannot even imagine.
instead of blocking advertising data, we should embrace it IMO.
imagine a world where users shove so much information at these tools that they can’t even tell what’s real or not. camouflage works better when everyone participates.
instead of blocking advertising data, we should embrace it IMO.
imagine a world where users shove so much information at these tools that they can’t even tell what’s real or not. camouflage works better when everyone participates.
There’s an ad blocker that does exactly this. Called Ad Nauseam. Chrome blocked it from their store super fast, then blocked it from being installed in Chrome from 3rd party sites, then blocked known versions of it from being manually installed in developer mode. I used to run it set to a low percentage - if I “clicked” every ad they’d know to throw my data out, but if I click say 3% of them…
Run a headless browser that does random searches at random times across different social media and search engines and have it click random ads.
you can essentially already do this with TrackMeNot and AdNauseam
This was part of the fictional operating system in the book Little Brother. I think it inspired similar features in a particular real life Linux build too
that’s by design.
See also: automobiles. Automobiles and smartphones certainly have strong cases for how utilitarian they are. They are both genuinely very useful.
But the expectation that everyone has one, along with them becoming practically a requirement for most people, has turned them into a dependency and a means of control. Some people can manage to forgo them, but you almost have to build your life around doing so.
ML breaks this defense
does it though? if everyone is sharing their advertising data under the covers no amount of ML could correct it.
think of it like a tor network for advertisement tracking.
you’re going to Walmart, I’m going to Target. but according to our phones, I’m at Walmart and you’re at Target. now scale it up to thousands or even millions of users sharing their advertising trackers.
It is only dystopian because we have not taken back the power to control our devices. We of course need some serious privacy laws to allow this to happen. Right now is the defining moment for the 21st century. Will we take control of our technology or be enslaved by it?
I don’t see smartphones being better unless they are completely different. Since its basically iphone and an iphone mimic and its just the way the whole ecosystems are built. Like you can install a free smartphone os but you will not be able to do things with it at the same level as someone without one as far as corps and stuff.
Most of the population is choosing be enslaved by it. Buckle up.
The smartphone has effectively turned into a leash.
Time to start casually walking by clinics en masse.
That does not sound like a viable long term solution to me.
It is something we can do right now though. Even the youth who can’t vote yet can participate.
I’d be surprised if it lasted longer than any other socially progressive trend. A few weeks, tops, with largest proportions falling off in the first week.
This is the reality of social momentum these days. Resistance is no threat because it has extremely brief lifespan before moving onto the next thing to be a part of.
I agree but not because it’s “trends” but because this system forces us to have short attention spans by presenting us with a massive deluge of information about horrible things happening everywhere (many of which are caused either directly or indirectly by that very system) so we have basically no choice but to keep shifting our focus and updating our threat assessments or risk becoming totally overwhelmed and falling behind or burning out.
I instinctively closed your comment after reading “short attention span” because I knew what you were going to say. Had to go back to comment because I realise the irony.
What about an app that spoofs location?
It also won’t work since the service has enough precision to know whether you go in, and for how long. The real issue is that mobile phones are continuously broadcasting their location to any device that wants to listen, even if you turn wifi and bluetooth off.
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Or - OR, right, everyone can turn off location and WiFi on their phones.
It’s true the cell ping is always going, but that’s a different thing and definitely not what this tool is using to track people. Odds are good it’s using facebook or some other cancer to perform this evil.
I don’t think cellular location would be excluded from such tracking tbh. I would rather not take my phone with me at all when visiting such a potentially sensitive place, or at the very least use a Faraday cage.
That would be a better approach, of course.
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Odds are good it’s using facebook or some other cancer to perform this evil.
You really need to read the entire article. Turning off your WiFi and deleting Facebook isn’t going to fix this.
It’s a good start tho
This sort of surveillance is only possible because of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Location data is sometimes used to build profiles on device users and better target advertisements to them. Much of that advertising relies on a MAID, the unique advertising ID, on a phone. The MAID acts as the digital glue between a device and its associated data.
But that same underlying system, of Google and Apple linking a unique identifier on the phone to a user’s activity, allows Babel Street and others to build their mass monitoring products. In many cases, a device’s MAID is also displayed inside Babel Street.
So periodically refresh / replace your ad id as well.
The problem is turning off wifi doesn’t actually turn off the wifi, it just stops a subset of packets being broadcast and won’t trasmit any data you want it to send. Among other things this is how ‘find my device’ works with the wifi and bluetooth “off”. They’re actually on.
You can turn this wifi and bt scanning/‘location accuracy improvements’ off though, at least on android. It’s tucked away in the settings but once it’s done, it’s done.
Or - OR, right, everyone can turn off location and WiFi on their phones.
Right now. But maybe not forever and so regulation to make sure that we canor even better, regs against this tracking. Because it shouldn’t be necessary.
That won’t work. But if you install the ROM without gapps or closed source software, you don’t have to worry about these issues.
Having just done that for the first time I feel confident in saying anyone who’s still using facebook or Xitter or tiktok or whatever - is not going to do that. I wish they would but that’s an order of magnitude more technical than where they are.
Counterpoint - the only reason I didn’t degoogle earlier was because my phone simply didn’t support Lineage or Divest. Chances are that whatever budget Chinaphone you have would be in the same situation. Now I bought a Pixel specifically with the intent of installing a privacy-preserving OS, but for a while most I could do was ADB-disabling Google services.
Unlike installing Linux, chances are high that a degoogled OS wouldn’t work on the hardware you already have.
Oh it took me a solid month of trial and error, scrolling through xda and other forums reading every how-to and watching plenty of vids and I finally got it to work. But it was not even fun. Yes starting with a Pixel is better, but f* teh googlez.
Start tracking politician phones. Oh look who paid a visit to the lobbyist house this week! That shit will get shut down real quick.
Lol next story over is this https://infosec.pub/post/19174603
If you don’t want to be tracked illegally, don’t bring your phone.
If you don’t want any to be tracked legally, write/call/tweet/visit your representatives.
edit: responded to the wrong comment
Ah yes, democracy is a healthy and fully functioning institution.
You just got confused who’s sponsoring it, that’s understandable.
What else would you suggest to do about it?
Throw it down and bring real democracy like in Switzerland
Or throw it down and bring anarchism
None of these are realistic, so…
I see your point. I have no illusions that democracy is healthy in modern times. Perhaps not ever? We don’t even live in a democracy any more, we live in a corporatocracy.
But doing nothing will solve nothing.
edited to add: In fact, it’s our complacency that our corporate masters depend on. Corporate news is designed to overwhelm you. Advertising is designed to lull you to sleep. Together, they make it seem like there’s nothing you can do. But that’s not true. You can do something. Maybe not the things I suggested, but something. It will make a difference, even if it only makes a small difference for a few people. Isn’t that better than nothing?
If you don’t want any to be tracked legally, write/call/tweet/visit your representatives.
And donate to the EFF if you have the means because they can and have and will likely continue to lobby on average internet users behalf!
I sure wouldn’t vote for someone who met with lobbyists.
Do you?
All politicians meet with lobbyists. It’s hard to get a handle on the needs of the nation (or state, or so on), and lobbying is how people inform their representatives of that need. Now whether those lobbyists are scumbags or saints, that’s a different question.
“I got nothing to hide. I’m a boring person” dumbass mfers
I got nothing to hide.
I’m willing to bet that they have curtains on their bedroom window…
I’m willing to bet they lock their doors
all because they’re afraid someone will laugh at their micro dick.
they not wrong tho, I be laughin at them regardless.
“Got nothing to hide” - Man wearing pants
“why don’t you take your clothes off, then? You said you ‘have nothing to hide’, didn’t you?”
I’ve heard this exact same thing from a former colleague that left my company to go work at a place selling “smart” security systems 🤦🏻♂️
The EFF have a bit more general information about location data brokers. Well worth a read.
God I hate data brokers. Rats! All of them, vermin contributing nothing of value to society.
How is this not a warrantless search?
It is, but the USA hasn’t cared since Snowden.
UNDERTALE???!?!?!??11
That’s the issue with the patriot act, they’ve been allowed to do warrantless searches for a long time now.
FISA court if they run into any friction
Because a carrier’s data on you is not your person or belongings. The companies holding this data are selling access to it, so it’s not being searched, it’s being offered.
In other words, the same reason as why they don’t need a search warrant if there’s a breaking and the business across the street volunteers their security camera footage, even if you’re on that footage.
Courts have actually said that looking back at someone’s location data counts as a search and requires a warrant. There’s currently a lawsuit recently filed by the institute for justice aledging that the use of flock safety license plate readers is unconstitutional because it’s a warrantless search.
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?
Our electoral system results in a choice between two candidates, and both are fine with it.
And more over the electorate is calcified along party lines where the outcomes for either side is perceived as being stark and dire. I suspect this means concerns like these might get stifled even if it is held by both parties.
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I was just traveling in the UK and I had this discussion more than once having to explain why our options are always terrible and ignoring issues voters want addressed.
I definitely support federal Privacy legislation. Here’s at least one take on the issue.
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.
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.
You don’t hear about it because the two major parties both oppose them and have nothing to argue about
improving the healthcare system is not even a topic of discussion this time around let alone something most people would see as abstract
It’s not mentioned because only things rich people care about are mentioned on our rich people news programs
Omg there’s soo many critically important issues that never even get brought up.
Like shutting down the nuclear arsenal, defunding the military and police, establishing a carbon tax, making carbon extraction illegal, establishing UBI. All of these basic policies never even get discussed on mainstream media and it drives me crazy.
a device that constantly connects to antennas all over the place, is used to track your location.
who would have thought?
if you dont wanna get tracked - dont bring your phone.
If you don’t want to be tracked illegally, don’t bring your phone.
If you don’t want any to be tracked legally, write/call/tweet/visit your representatives.
Also just write your Supreme Court and ask them how this isn’t a flagrant violation of the intent of the fourth amendment. Seriously the founding fathers would be asking what the fuck about this. They weren’t good people but they would’ve been privacy nuts.
if you’re talking about the supreme court, as in the SCOTUS, they’re long past pretending they give the slightest fuck about the bill of rights.
“The fourth amendment means what we say it means” – SCOTUS, probably.
Oh absolutely but it annoys them when they’re called out about it
The US Supreme Court has had an antagonistic relationship to the forth and fifth amendments to the Constitution of the United States since before I was a kid in the 1970s since they often interfered with efforts to round up nonwhites. But after the 9/11 attacks and the PATRIOT ACT, SCOTUS has been shredding both amendments with carve-out exceptions.
Then Law Enforcement uses tech without revealing it in court, often lying ( parallel reconstruction ) to conceal questionable use, and the courts give them the benefit of the doubt.
Or, you know, let the gov work for you, not against you, & fully expect people to get jailed if they track you.
It’s a matter of perspective what the minimum standard should be.
Especially when a personal device like a phone is basically necessary for a normal life and even public services.
Is a phone a basic necess[ity] for a normal life?
Yes, imho, and increasingly so.
In an environment where the vast majority has one people act like everyone has one (eg restaurants having qr links to menus).Even EU ruled as much (eg my company phone is my own personal device regardless of ownership & my privacy is protected differently than eg my work PC or laptop).
And even if this wasn’t the case, why would you need to opt out of having a mobile phone just to get basic privacy?
Unfortunately yes, and I would go even a step further and say a smart phone is a basic necessity. More and more companies and even government services are operating on the assumption that everyone has a smart phone. I have encountered various services where if a person didn’t have a smart phone they literally can’t use it. I even have personal experience with it.
My landlord uses a company for payments that can only be interacted with via an app on a smart phone. There is no web portal option. There is no option to mail a check. There is no option to setup a direct bank transfer. I was essentially strong armed into it since the place itself was (and still is) better than almost anything else I saw and is a reasonable price.
Android virtual machine? Waydroid?
Are we talking about me specifically or people in general? I’ll assume general as I was just relaying a personal anecdote to show that my point/thesis wasn’t just a hypothetical as I do know how to get around it in my specific case.
In the general context, that’s not a great solution for most people as it is beyond their skill or time set. For the most disadvantaged people just having the ability to have a phone at all and a place to reliably charge it is an issue. There is also the issue is practicality. When I take public transit where I live, the app pulls up a QR code on my phone they gets scanned. I’m not even sure I could fit my laptop screen into the space to scan the QR code if I was emulating Android.
So I guess my thesis here is that systems should be made more accessible and inclusive rather than requiring those in the minority to either have to put more effort in using a workaround to reach functional parity or end up left out all together.
Fair points, misunderstood indeed.
I have encountered various services
For example, some of these services would be… ?
Gov agencies require 2 factor to a cell phone. Land lines dont work and VoIP lines with texting also don’t work. The only option is to use snail mail and have sensitive data sent via post office
If I were stuck in that position, then I would not hesitate to choose the postage method. That being an option does not comport with the assertion “if a person didn’t have a smart phone they literally can’t use it”.
I respect your stubbornness in that regard, but understand that in such a situation you’re putting yourself in a position of significant friction, possibly costing yourself income, promotions etc.
I learned very quickly by playing the game by the unofficial rules and expectations things are way easier and my quality of life is much improved. Stubbornness won’t change the system, but it will certainly annoy people and slow down your access to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. If that’s a trade off you’re willing to make so be it, but personally I’d rather enjoy my life than die on hills that very few people so much as glance at.
Yes Boomer
I’m almost 50 myself, come on
Millennial, actually
Press X to doubt
A millennial not having a cell phone is such an unimaginable concept?
For whatever it’s worth, I do use SIP software telephony in order to make calls and receive texts, so in that way I do technically have a “phone”. But what I’m fundamentally rejecting here is the notion that I must be compelled to carry around a device in my pocket infested with proprietary malware.
You can answer this yourself. Get rid of your phone and see. If you beleive it’s not a necessity, don’t say “yeah I could do these alternative things to get by”. Actually do it. I hope you’re not job-shopping
Yes, the impact on quality of life is just so significant that it’s a handicap to normal daily lives.
The above being a rhetorical question, I just wanted to take a temperature of the room.
I have lived without a phone pretty much all my adult life. The experiment for me would be to get a phone and see what changes. In that way, I have answered it for myself and the answer is a clear “you don’t need a phone”.
Good for you. Other people do.
Considering nearly everything requires a phone number and also rejects VoIP numbers? Yes. A phone is required now to participate in society.
You and I must live in two different societies then. I work with at least two other individuals who also don’t have a cell phone (not just smart phone, but any cellular device), one of whom is also a millennial. My SIP number has never had any issues with online service auth.
We absolutely do the society I live in even the homeless have cell phones and I haven’t ran into anyone without one in decades
To be fair, I don’t go around in public telling everyone “I don’t have a cell phone btw”. So I suppose we are easy to miss.
Depends on where you are really. Small towns everything is cash or a phonecall to a person from any phone (it’s really like stepping back in time about 15 years) but in larger cities you might find yourself required to use an app to unlock your apartment or office door or buy a train ticket or pay for a parking space, or buy a bus ticket or hail a taxi. In work I’ve needed a phone for 2FA in my last 3 jobs (granted in IT that’s probably for the best) and in college they distribute resources on the school website via big in-person QR codes.
While every single one of those things almost always has a non-smartphone option, it increases friction significantly, and then you’re the annoying person who is slowing everything down by not doing something the way everyone else does, however in a workplace they’ll often simply provide you with a phone because that’s easier than going to the trouble of ensuring every edgecase is covered and ensuring fair compensation for requiring you to have a phone.
Or we could get rights protecting us from this. Especially considering that that’s a reasonable interpretation of the fourth amendment and the ninth amendment.
We already have rights protecting us from this. They aren’t being enforced.
Meanwhile when I turn off Bluetooth on my iPhone it says “for the next y hours” and there’s no option to turn it off permanently.
Don’t buy Apple?
and there’s no option to turn it off permanently.
Did you actually try looking this up. Turn it off in settings and it’s off forever until you turn it back on.
Yeah, IOS and stock android are not acceptable if you care about this stuff
On graphene my bluetooth and wifi turn themselves OFF if I haven’t been connected for a few minutes
Maybe you need arch btw
Wouldn’t just keeping your phone in a metal box prevent it from communicating with anything? Keep your phone in a metal box and only take it out when you need it. Only take it out in a location that isn’t sensitive. Or hell, just make a little sleeve out of aluminum foil. Literally just wrapping your phone in aluminum foil should prevent it from connecting to anything. A tinfoil hat won’t serve as an effective Faraday cage for your brain, but fully wrapping your phone in aluminum foil should do the job. Even better, as it’s a phone, such a foil sleeve should be quite testable. Build it, put your phone in it, and try texting and calling it. If surrounded fully by a conductive material, the phone should be completely incapable of sending or receiving signals.
A Faraday cage is supposed to be grounded, so aluminum foil isn’t the same thing. Maybe you could turn the phone off, wrap it in foil, and then place it upon a conductive metal surface that is grounded, such as a 240v kitchen appliance
You could also just turn it off.
You sure it’s still not phoning home? How do you know “off” is really “off” anymore with a modern phone? It’s not like an old flip phone that you can just pop the battery out. Sure it sounds paranoid, but we’re literally talking about something that used to be the realm of crackpots and cranks - “the government is tracking all of us 24/7!” Well, it seems that’s actually literally the case now.
I absolutely do not trust that an “off” phone is actually off, unless the battery is removed (assuming it can be).
Yes. When your phone is off, it is off.
If you’re paranoid you can buy a faraday bag.
The iPhone remote locator function still works when the phone is powered off. It doesn’t work when the battery is completely dead, but it does work when the phone is supposedly “powered off.” This is irrefutable proof that iPhones at least retain some of their functions even when you’ve “turned them off.”
This is where paranoia comes into play. That’s Apple’s information. Not anyone else’s. If you believe Apple is selling it to this company and ignoring the phone setting that enables it then use the faraday bag.
But this company is not getting that information directly. It gets your information from cell tower pings at best, and social media scraping at worst.
I don’t want to encourage paranoia here but “off” does not mean “off”. Modern phones are almost never actually “powered down”. If you’re paranoid, turning your phone off is not enough. Leave it behind.
(Also a gap in your phone’s location history can also be used against you, fwiw.)
Yeah, and Alexa/Siri/Google assistant don’t eavesdrop unless you use the magic words to activate them.
There has to be some way that we could have created the architecture to do everything a phone does without letting a user be triangulated easily.
I know there is no incentive to do that, but it amazes me how far ahead the security of the web is compared to phone tech.
Like maybe if phones could authenticate without broadcasting a unique identifier. And maybe they could open a vpn style encrypted tunnel and perform their auth over that tunnel.
Idk, I know nothing about phones, but it has to be possible.
there’s the ole https://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/
kitschy name, but when it was established it was not even planning anything like what it is doing now. meshnet is the section you’re looking for.
Don’t bring your phone.
Get a burner and set up call forwarding.
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
You really can’t think of a solution to this?
You really think you came up with an airtight solution to device tracking that nobody in the industry has considered on a whim?
Ok how’s the industry tracking a phone with no power?
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.
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.
Yes, yes. If you want to avoid being tracked by the government buy a Faraday bag. Thank you for the valuable information. I’m in awe.
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Hm. I said without power. Not switched off.
Judging by the upvotes you’re far from the only one who forgot about simply removing the battery.
I suggested no power but not for the entire trip. Put the battery in when you’re sufficiently far from your house so as not to be associated with it. Remove it again when you’re sufficiently close to your house.
Use your imagination. It helps.
You know, we can talk about how batteries aren’t removable in most phones anymore, about whether or not the act of suddenly buying prepaid phones isn’t itself incriminating, any number of factors, but I really only replied to you because you were rude, not because I wanted to talk about it.
But that’s not a burner phone, that’s an off phone.
Keep reading the thread. I’ve already addressed this.
Really getting confused as to how people read “no power” and think “phone off” instead of “no power”.
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
I can assure you that people don’t need instant access to calendars and maps. Smart phones are a convenience, not a necessity.
(Source - lived through the 80’s. Still alive to tell the tale)
Name me literally one way to use a calendar or map without a phone?
“And fuck all the other people who are addicted to smarphones. They don’t matter” /s
No, they don’t. Because if they’re weak enough to allow themselves to become addicted to a device, that’s their problem to solve. Not even else’s.
Smartphones are a convince, a tool. Nothing more. If one can’t live without one- there’s a problem needing to be addressed.
if they’re weak enough to allow themselves to become addicted to a device
That’s not how addiction works.
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.
Yes. And we need laws that provide this protection to everyone by default.
That’s cute but to get those laws you have to vote third party and hope they don’t get killed or bribed before passing said law. I don’t see that happening until long after the US collapses, so in the meantime it makes more sense to understand how not to be a victim to a fascist government.
In the US, yes. But this is mainstream in countries with democracies.
Anyway, of course. Stein or West or youre voting for climate catastrophe, privacy erosion, and genocide.
The opposite, actually, they’re the only candidates, assuming you meant Stein and Claudia, that do not have any of that in their policies.
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.
Believe it or not, digital cameras exist as standalone devices.
You can also buy an rf blocking bag for your phone.
Yes, you can. But thats the last thing on the mind of someone who is struggling to terminate a pregnancy in the US in 2024. We need something better.
Not having endless hedonistic recreational sex in the first place? Is it really that difficult to remain abstinent?
There are many reasons for a pregnancy to be terminated, and not all of them are for fun, or because of casual sex. Maybe the child has defects incompatible with life, or the mother is not capable of carrying to term, and attempting to do so will kill them both.
People don’t tend to go “oh, it’s a nice Sunday today. I think I’ll pop by the abortion clinic.”
As a percentage, what proportion of pregnancies do those scenarios comprise? What percentage of abortions are carried out simply as a form of birth control?
Genuinely, fuck you.
Not bringing a phone definitely is an option.
But I suggested a burner with forwarding so that handles comms to partner.
If you can’t function without your main device for special circumstances such as this, I guess you just can’t be helped.
If you want maximum privacy, you gotta nix that partner and, really, the communication. Shit, I’ve already said too much.
Calendar
Non digital is sufficient. And if it must be digital for some reason, no you don’t specifically need to use a serf phone for that.
map
I get around just fine without proprietary tracking BS. Navit + Openstreetmaps pre-downloaded binary data + detachable USB GPS transceiver.
communication with partner
Softphones and SIP telephony are fine for this.
Sauce: I am a functioning adult who lives without a phone as a matter of principle.
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.
Thank you for this, I had to scroll down so far to find a subscription-wall free link. Makes me wonder if anyone actually checked the article…
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.
That required special assembly. It was not a hack blowing up commercial batteries. That’s not a possible thing. They gave Hezbollah pagers and radios with explosives built in.
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…Or just not taking a phone and taking public transport instead of a car.
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how does one change your imei number using a pixel 6a, with a rooted phone with magisk.
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Still can’t escape cell tower triangulation
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The IMEI can’t be changed. That’s the serial number of the cellular modem
Edit: reviewing the link you shared in another comment that looks plausible. Just be warned good luck on any kind of warranty or insurance claims if you change IMEIs. I used to work for a cell phone manufacturer and we used the IMEI to both identify roughly when the device was purchased to make determining warranty status dead simple, and to identify devices as they went through the repair process.
Additionally carriers will often blacklist IMEIs for activation (usually on devices which were financed but never paid off) so that’s another potential opportunity for trouble
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Apple and Google can fix the problem. Apps are required to ask for permission to access location information. Most of the time, it’s for tracking and analytics, not anything related to the app’s functionality. That’s the data that is leaking to these data brokers.
In those cases, if asked, user can say no, but apps keep haranguing you until you capitulate.
Instead, the OS could add a button that says: “Yes, but randomize.” After that, location data is returned as normal, but from totally random locations nearby. They could even spoof the data clustering algorithms and just pick some rando location and keep showing returns to them, or just trade the data from one random phone for another every N days.
You do this enough and the data will become polluted enough to become useless.
Apple and Google want to sell that data, they’re not going to help you obscure it.
I don’t think this would be technically useful to prevent exploitation of location data. The handset always has to identify to a tower using the SIM card, which is going to identify the phone and its user. Your cellular service provider can still sell this information to data brokers.
With that said, I would love the option to lie about my location to apps that have no business knowing it.
You have the option to spoof/fake/mock it manually with an app. This one, it seems, even has some available add-ons for mocking UnifiedNlp data and more…)
Mock my GPS (mock the GPS and Network location providers) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.warren_bank.mock_location/
Mock my GPS UnifiedNlp Backend (mock the GPS and Network location providers) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.warren_bank.mock_location.service.microg_nlp_backend/
Mock Silently (mock the GPS and Network location providers) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.warren_bank.mock_location.silently/
Possibly you’ll have to enable dev options and set the location spoofing app in there. At least, I remember seeing the option in there, but that was years ago.
This changes location reported to applications by the OS. It doesn’t change that your signal is coming from a direction and distance as known by the tower tracking the phone. MIMO and other beamforming techniques use this data to boost signal, but it is also collected for monitoring.
Tower dats i guess is harder to get as it requires a warrant?
Unless you become a phone company or use a StingRay
Or you just have some money to buy the data from a data broker that phone company sell your data to already.
Well i meant why wouldn’t telco sell or provide it to the feds?
If they get a warrant, sure. Sell it I dunno. There’s more legal cases about cell tower data simply because it’s some form of technology courts have at least made an effort to understand at some point.
Well we know telco sells your traffic data as ISP as “anonymized” i dont see how they are not doing this with tower data but i am not familair with case law on the issue.
So maybe there is some legal bar to that…
Amazing how warrant got turned into a joke in modern age tho all within last 30 years.
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).
If that’s true then a simple VPN and some social media opsec will work.
