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- cross-posted to:
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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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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.
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)
Bluetooth/WiFi/NFC off
Disable 2G/enable LTE only mode
Offline maps/airplane mode when navigating/at destination/anywhere near your residence or other frequently visited places that could be associated with you. When changing the IMEI/IMSI combo make sure you go to another location first so that you break the link
Infrared AND polarized license plate covers. Remove any and all bumper stickers and other accessories that can be fingerprinted
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
Edit: I forgot to mention that if you drive a car that is mid-2010s or newer you may have to do some digging to disable telemetry, satellite, cellular and any other dystoptian fuckery they install these days.
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.
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.
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 is not new and it has previously been used against anti-abortion activists, tracking locations and even being used to record religious confessions. People on both sides of the abortion issue can oppose this type of monitoring.
Time for an alternative means of communication
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 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.
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ML breaks this defense
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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.
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.
“I got nothing to hide. I’m a boring person” dumbass mfers
“Got nothing to hide” - Man wearing pants
I got nothing to hide.
I’m willing to bet that they have curtains on their bedroom window…
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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.
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?
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.
I definitely support federal Privacy legislation. Here’s at least one take on the issue.
Don’t bring your phone.
Get a burner and set up call forwarding.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Start tracking politician phones. Oh look who paid a visit to the lobbyist house this week! That shit will get shut down real quick.
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…
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.
privacy is important, kids
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
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.
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