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

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/technology

248 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] homesweethomeMrL 2 points 4 weeks ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] homesweethomeMrL 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

That would be a better approach, of course.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] homesweethomeMrL 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] wreckedcarzz 2 points 4 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] homesweethomeMrL 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] homesweethomeMrL 0 points 4 weeks ago

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.