- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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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This is nothing new. Did we already forget about the Snowden leaks?
The leaks that 2% of the population got very excited about for a while, but try not to think much about? The leaks judged by many on the reputation of an obscure man living in Russia? Those leaks?
I trust my government and not things only nerds understand. Also they sound weird and made up and very scary ( said most of the people)
Average people were only “thinking” about it for as long as it remained in the news cycle. Once the new cycle moved on, so did they.
Maybe, I think people still “know” its going on, but they forget by the allure of our smart phones, so this is a good reminder.
Why stop at phones? Practically every car made today has a 4g modem and gps module onboard.
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.
So why abortion clinics in the title if it can track people anywhere? Do they think abortion clinics are the most popular destination for the majority of people? Why not put pizza joint im the title? Or sex club? Bath house? Dairy farm?
It’s American focused and abortion is at the forefront of their christofascist-liberal culturwar.
You really wanna piss people off, tell them their bosses are using it to see if they’re actually going into the office or not
You could always read the article…
Yeah, I could, but it’s a perfectly valid line of conversation to critique a post’s title.
There’s a reason we have the saying, “Always judge a book by its cover, and judge a response by it’s grammar”
Yeah, I could, but it’s a perfectly valid line of conversation to critique a post’s title.
I don’t think laziness is a valid line of criticism. I also find it strange to critique a title separate from its intended context.
we have the saying, “Always judge a book by its cover, and judge a response by it’s grammar”
I don’t think that’s a very common idiom. It seems to imply that pedantry is more important than substance.
It seems to imply that pedantry is more important than substance.
It’s certainly more common; I mean, we’re on a social media platform that incentivises it.
For the vast majority of people DooM scrolling these days, they want a quick dopamine hit. And influencers want those upvotes in quantity, not quality.
Knowing that the defacto message of a given post is its headline, we need to have a conversation about proper standards and dark patterns.
Click baiting isn’t the kind of baiting for which I came to the internet, and it doesn’t keep me coming again, so why put up with it?
Lol, you can’t confirm it’s click bait unless you read the article…
None of your critiques are valid, as the substance of the article is congruent with the messaging in the title.
You’re just being lazy.
I’m not just being lazy; I’m providing justification for my laziness. We should be calling out clickbaiters and other manipulators, not taking them as part and parcel to online discourse
But your “justification” is based on feels…
The article goes into great detail supporting the substance of the title, meaning it’s not click bait or manipulation.
You are the one attempting to manipulate people by claiming that the title is something it’s not.
Because right now’s political climate is about how abortion is being billed en masse as murder, and people are having to go to other states to get abortions (even for miscarriages), so the states that bill abortion as murder want to be able to prosecute the women. So there are a lot of fears that states will be tracking women through tools like this, and it turns out the fearful were correct.
All they gonna do is chase their women away. They’re welcome in sunny Canada
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Became a Russian house cat
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loserhero
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.
🤯imagine how much they spent only to to terrorise women
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…
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?
But that’s not a burner phone, that’s an off phone.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Who else are they selling this too?
Whoever has money I suppose. Makes me wonder if there are laws regulating this sort or tech.
Looks like everyone should be getting these bags
I didn’t read the article, but wouldn’t the site see the phone as soon as it’s taken out of the bag? Unless the plan is to leave the phone in the bag the whole time, at which point it seems easier to just leave it behind.
Pretty much. Can’t see the rest of the article, but most likely it’s just tower data, which only gives a general location. But as soon as you pull your phone out and get messages you would be traceable. Kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone
I’ll admit I didn’t open the article, as far as I’m aware the best way to sidestep silly requirements like warrants is to just purchase data intended for advertising. Databrokers really have an amazing wealth of info ready to be tapped into, all you gotta do is pay.
Or just hit airplane mode / power off. Or just leave the phone at home, the procedure takes only 5-10 minutes.
People are way to attached to their phones. The world will not collapse in that hour, it is a survivable event, or so I hear from reputable sources.
Can you really trust airplane mode to ensure there is nothing going out. I agree people should just leave them at home, but these bags are like putting tape over your laptop camera. Just an extra peace of mind when going to the Dr.
I probably wouldn’t trust airplane mode, but I do believe power off is safe. There is no transmit capability in off correct?
But yeah, leaving phone at home is best knowing tracking sites like these exist.
It has been know for at least a decade, I think, that the GSM chip could still contact cell towers while the phone was powered off. I’m sure its successor hasn’t lost that capability.
airplane mode is on record not trustworthy.
it will not communicate outward, but it will scan for WiFi and BT APs, then report home once you’re back online.
even turning your phone off won’t help.
you need to remove the battery to be sure.
when I commit my “crimes” against “society” I just leave my phone at home.
“where were you on x night?” - at home
“what were you doing?” - jerking off to the thought of your intelligence guys listening to me beating off
“…”
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.
Run a headless browser that does random searches at random times across different social media and search engines and have it click random ads.
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
you can essentially already do this with TrackMeNot and AdNauseam
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.
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…
The smartphone has effectively turned into a leash.
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?
Most of the population is choosing be enslaved by it. Buckle up.
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.
“I got nothing to hide. I’m a boring person” dumbass mfers
“Got nothing to hide” - Man wearing pants
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 🤦🏻♂️
“why don’t you take your clothes off, then? You said you ‘have nothing to hide’, didn’t you?”
I got nothing to hide.
I’m willing to bet that they have curtains on their bedroom window…
I’m willing to be 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.
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?
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
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.
fACSziSm
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.
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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.
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.
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.
I definitely support federal Privacy legislation. Here’s at least one take on the issue.
Article link not requiring you to sign up: https://archive.ph/Th1Sq
ty 🙏🙏🙏
Your survival kit:
Empty GrapheneOS Pixel 6a bought with cash that isn’t your daily driver (last Pixel with snapdragon chip that allows IMEI changes)
JMP.chat
Silent.link
Sensors off (developer options)
Offline maps/airplane mode when navigating
Infrared AND polarized license plate covers
IR blocking lens sunglasses for facial recognition
And of course, it wouldn’t be complete without the tor browser over a trustworthy VPN
So yeah fuck the police
Still can’t escape cell tower triangulation
They can triangulate the signal, but in this case it has absolutely no connection to you or your identity, so you don’t need to. Regularly changing esims (IMSI) and IMEI will effectively neuter triangulation. You’re just a random red dot with no name.
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
…Or just not taking a phone and taking public transport instead of a car.
But that’s so boringgg. And in the U.S public transport is pretty limited.
how does one change your imei number using a pixel 6a, with a rooted phone with magisk.
I may be wrong, but I don’t think root is required. Most of the methods in this article use the AT command.
