"Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products."
It's these type of examples that show just how bad tracking and data harvesting is being used beyond the described use by whatever is doing the hoovering of data. The fact this is something that can be sold is beyond ridiculous. If you collect it for internal use is totally different from collecting for the explicit purpose of selling to others.
This is how Astrology Apps and similar genres work. They prey on a gullible demographic and then extract as much data as possible: contact lists, location, and more. Apple is complicit because even the dumbest reviewer knows an Astrology App doesn't need constant location access (but we need to lookup their star signs! We couldn't possibly just ask for a one-off zip code!).
I'm not sure I follow, but yes, if he has collected personal/(un)encrypted data, then he and the infrastructure he controls would be one of the weakest links wherever he is.
I do think the Russian response is quite a bit of projection, because they know what they would do to get the keys to Telegram's kingdom. It's interesting though that I haven't heard Elon opine on how weak Telegram's end-end security is since the arrest. You'd think he would warn everyone to avoid it?
I don't think it's possible to craft regulation such that companies collecting data for "internal use" can't abuse it. It's so easy to create plausibly deniable ways to move data around. In ML research we get a lot of "anonymized" data for example, which is ridiculous because even pretty primitive statistical methods can usually use such data to uniquely identify people, let alone the inference techniques in widespread usage in industry today
In theory it could be different, in practice it simply isn't. If we want any kind of privacy law, "internal use" or "legitimate interest" or whatever nonsense the data brokers deploy to pretend there's some way to do this that isn't unethical is a smokescreen and a loophole in every context, and we should ban the harvesting of that data regardless of its intended use
This AND liability on the data being part of an inevitable breach. Both working in tandem would limit data collected to a minimum required to operate and remove incentive to collect.
But as you note.. surveillance economy will not be happy about it and likely fight back.
Amusingly, the people who understand the risks and take precautions are also least likely to put a spotlight on them, which privacy-conscious tend to avoid.
> The friction comes from the fact that a large part of our economy is highly dependent on the ability to buy and sell user data.
This is only a recent part of the economy that the world would not collapse if we went back to a time of it not being part of the economy. Just because something is does not mean that it should. There are plenty of historical example of where something was that was not right that took time so that eventually what is is now no more.
I don't think any such regulation can have teeth or actually protect anyone. The mechanism by which data is abused is a moving target that will shift with any regulation you throw at it. It will go to black markets, be reshaped through loopholes, or done in plausibly deniable ways by entities that can bog any legal challenge down in technicalities indefinitely, while still probably making more doing it than they'll be fined for, and every loophole will require new regulation to close it. The only way to regulate data collection with teeth is to make the collection itself illegal, and actually enforce those laws
You are, in too many words, essentially describing data minimization principles.
But I don't believe that the existence of black markets means we shouldn't regulate legal markets. Even if it's true that bad actors would try to find new ways to exploit data as regulations change, this doesn't negate the value of regulation entirely. Lots of industries face similar challenges (e.g. financial regulation, environmental protection) yet still benefit from regulatory frameworks.
Furthermore, the existence of loopholes is an argument for crafting more robust and adaptable regulations, and knowledgeable bodies to govern them--not for abandoning regulation altogether.
Yea, I am. I think minimizing the data that can legally be retained about people is the best policy both on principle and practicality here. Yes, there will always be black markets as long as there are incentives. But it's much harder to prosecute mishandling than retaining it in the first place
Drug/terror networks are composed of anonymous semi-independent actors without clear command/control hierarchies. That's nothing at all like businesses with registered addresses, clearly defined executives who also have addresses, thousands of employees who officially declare this as part of a legit taxable income stream. Every one of those non-anonymous people have to comply with subpoenas, etc. Why would you even make this comparison?
I'm much less concerned about if 'you collect it, you use it' situations. It's the companies that build an app with a psuedo purpose whose real purpose is to collect data for reselling later. Collecting data for the sole purpose of selling to others should be regulated into oblivion.
Okay, so we ban selling data and then people who want it will buy or even fund breaches instead. Massive breaches will likely become more common, because that's how driving valuable stuff into a black market always works, and companies who aggregate data already do a shit job protecting said data and face negligible consequences from regulators or markets for this. Even the press will happily blame the constant stream of leaked data on unnamed "hackers" every single time
I also expect to see a shift to buying more "data-driven insights" from big data aggregators, which in practice will mean the same thing as buying the data means now, just with the middlemen rearranged slightly
Governments will still be able to subpeona the data in ways that route around human rights and on the rare occasions where this comes to light, "national security" and the need to fight whatever war - whether against a concrete nation or organization or an abstract concept - they believe will most muddy the waters to cite
The frustrating thing with this is, that if you have naive friends, family, and professional associates your contact info is getting harvested from their phones without you having to do anything.
They just install one of these scummy apps and click OK to it vacuuming up all their contacts, which includes everything they know about you.
I don't see how this system can track a modern iOS device given Apple's deprecation of IDFA. Likewise, the Wifi MAC address on iOS is randomized by default. The only non-randomized identifier is Bluetooth AFAIK.
Browser fingerprinting is insanely sophisticated, and I am sure that apps have sophisticated techniques as well. When you pool the data together, it’s easy to correlate.
Plus, IMEI numbers can be used by carriers, and that is a very solid identifier per phone. When you operate at that level, tracking is very easy. ATT has been selling this data for years
- malware on phones (even though apps are supposed to only get anonymous information, there are ways to workaround it. For one a app can just ask your name and many people will put it in.)
I don't understand the question. We are talking about the way it in fact works. I'm guessing that nobody at the FAA or FCC has any misunderstanding regarding this fact.
Also phones don't meaningfully actually interfere with modern avionics. If your safety on the flight actually depended on hundreds of people clicking a button consistently every time the majority of planes wouldn't make it.
Isn’t this stuff fairly easy to circumvent as an individual by disabling location services on your phone? There’s still wifi positioning, but at least on iPhone I think that’s opt in. That leaves cell tower triangulation which I believe is only good to within a mile or so, right?
I guess if you really don’t want to be found, put your phone on airplane mode or get a burner.
When your phone downloads stuff, their servers can see your IP. While IPs may not give very specific locations by themselves, the fact that your IP may change as you move around helps a lot to narrow it down.
Collect data for a few days to learn schedules, throw in some more specific data purchased from ISPs, other fingerprints, plot it on top of an actual map with roads and buildings, and you’ve got a very good guess of where specific people are, where they live and work, and how they move around.
Correlate that with other people’s data and eventually you’ll be able to guess who they live and hang with.
A mile or so in a big congested city might make it difficult to find someone, but we're talking about spread out rural areas near the Texas/Mexico border where there are less people per square mile. But even the DFW area is huge and spread out. Maybe it's plausible?
What you really want is noise. You want your phone to generate a bunch of additional fake data. So much so that anyone who collects it will have no ability to tease out the real data from the fake data.
As a U.S. Citizen who's spent stints in Texas over the course of several decades, while I jave friends there, it's clear that they are following in the footsteps of China. They are welcoming an autocratic surveillance state. Stripping freedom of movement and rights to your own body, one by one.
It'd be healthy if they just ceceded. Kind of like the a reverse Taiwan situation. Sorry Chip and JoJo, I think you're about to slip off the USA map, nit that the rest is much better.
well just one data point, but i left texas for california, which may not do much better on the surveillance front (i haven’t really checked) but definitely does on the personal autonomy and movement front (at least, i haven’t heard of any cities in CA trying to adopt sanctuary-city-for-the-unborn laws restricting the use of their roads). we’re just a couple af clicks away from TX trying to mandate pregnancy tests to leave the state at this point.
Washington is doing a lot better despite not being the biggest route into our largest trading partner or flush with oil money. Texas is among the worst states in the union.
Texas is one of the worst for human rights to the point where I wouldn't even drive through. They had to make a law that their police have to stop searching drivers buttholes without cause and yet they keep getting sued for doing random cavity searches. The last run through my parents got the third degree with implication that they might be immigrants. My fathers roots are in England/Scotland and both families have lived here for longer than the US has been the US.
It is the among the worst for reproductive rights with lawmakers wanting to punish women for abortions obtained in other states, punish women who even drive through anti abortion counties on their way to leave the state, and let any interested party including woman's rapists collect a bounty on the head of their victim in a brazen attempt to avoid getting the law thrown out.
Because of this and other factors its drastically short of doctors having almost the worst ratio of doctors to patients in the US
It allows a certain county judge selected by Trump handle all the most insanely biased cases that nobody in their right mind would take handing out rulings binding citizens in other states. These cases are so ridiculous that the 6v3 conservative Supreme Court has to keep stepping in to put down this court's militantly stupid decisions.
It is among the worst for democracy. It is working to try to pass a law that all statewide offices would have to be held by candidates who won the majority of the majority of its counties not its population. For reference Texas has 256 counties some with as few as a few dozen people and the majority of the majority could constitute as little as 4% of its population. It wants to enshrine rural republican rule at the expense of anything else.
It filed a lawsuit last go round asking the surpreme court to literally throw out everyone's votes and essentially appoint Trump President.
> It wants to enshrine rural republican rule at the expense of anything else.
No problem there unless you like being the ruler from afar. Perhaps a good solution would be to split governance so that urban and rural populations stay separate.
Until the West Coast states are safe to be openly anywhere right of center, I’ll take rural Texas or Fort Worth for good or ill.
It is profoundly weird to describe filling statewide offices based on the a democratic vote as "ruling from afar". The alternative filling offices based on whomever wins the majority of the majority of counties would allow a tiny minority of the electorate to decide the fate of all their fellows. It allows the minority to rule from afar instead of the majority.
As described the majority of the the majority is literally four single digit four percent of the electorate. The obvious intent is that at present the majorities views align with the minority and it should change the rules such as to prevent usurpation even should they lose the popular mandate.
It presages a future Texas where the majority of Texans want to move forward and the way is barred for a generation.
It is exactly by proportion as if we should decide that the only people who are allowed to hold nationwide office is someone who wins Minnesota no matter how the vote goes elsewhere. It's a world in which Walter Mondale wins Minnesota and we declare him president despite losing every other state to Reagan.
Then someone pops up and defends Minnisotism somehow as preventing the subjugation of Minnesota.
> Until the West Coast states are safe to be openly anywhere right of center, I’ll take rural Texas or Fort Worth for good or ill.
It's pretty safe... I live in Portland and am not shy about telling people I think that social security and the Wagner Act and OSHA are all unconstitutional, and that I think government should never provide welfare, and nothing bad has happened to me. In fact earlier this year I requested trial by combat from the Portland taxiation office, both on the phone and in a written letter, such that my victory could exclude me from paying Supportive Housing taxes; the only outcome was the lady on the phone laughed at me.
It'd be expedient. An entire generation of people have had such bad experiences in politics they've apparently just entirely given up on them and then have mistaken their position for one of rationale.
It'd be healthy if we fixed whatever caused this type of banter to be accepted.
What you are seeing now is the death knell of the klan and their sympathizers. There basically isn't any "fix" for it other than to keep rejecting their ideology and keep moving our country on one funeral and one election at a time.
>You can start businesses easily in Texas. You don’t have to get permission to cut down a tree in your own yard like you do in California.
Lol, wtf are you talking about. A huge number of municipalities have laws around business regulations and around cutting trees. In addition most new houses in Texas are built in HOA's that have a significant number of rules.
>There is a very good reason most tech companies in California are incorporated in Deleware.
Taxes and well defined legal law that doesn't change on how a random judge feels on a particular day, and law that is tilted toward business needs.
> A huge number of municipalities have laws around business regulations and around cutting trees
> In addition most new houses in Texas are built in HOA's that have a significant number of rules.
Both exist in California on top of California regulations.
What you don’t have in Texas is all the red tape that is required to build, live in, or rent a house. Not do you have the excessive regulatory apparatus that California has for businesses - whether to hire, fire, or retain talent.
> It's leaving the state that said state is looking at punishing you for.
Which is done to good people via abuse of California red flag laws. It used to be done via extraterritorial taxation.
It wouldn't be healthy to have a large potential enemy next door with a chunk of resources that used to accrue to our benefit nor to abandon the 45-47% whose wishes are in accord with the majority of the nation we all live in but who aren't in line with the majority of the state.
Furthermore demographic changes suggest that the majority will be in some decades in accord with the rest of us if we don't blink now.
More importantly it would create a legal precedent that if allowed would fracture the US utterly diminishing our global power and likely leading to long term conflict which we may lose.
Anyone want to see civil war v2 with the new Confederacy aligned with China and Russia?
Conflict with China and Russia seems increasingly likely already in the long run and as China's star rises they have less reason for restaint.
Traditionally the rising star wars with the existing powers when supremacy is in doubt and that would very much be the case if we split in 2 or 3 and allegiance to eachother were in doubt.
There is every reason to believe that the US will defeat the fascist threat presented by Trump and come through it whole. If we allow seccession we will instead likely see the US split into the US and Trumpistan with TX only the first domino to fall. Doubtless other red states would follow probably into a loose confederation of states itself in danger of splintering further.
The best case would be ending up the EU with major economic ties preventing conflict between China and Russias aspirations crushed in Ukraine.
This is however a massive dice roll with no guarantee that it goes so well especially for women, liberals, and minorities in the red states.
> Cobwebs Technologies, which was founded in Israel in 2014 by three former members of Israeli military special units
TX lege been very friendly towards Israel government. Israeli government also has tight controls over who has access to their tech (ie, no sales to non friendly entities).
In wake of Roe v Wade repeal, TX “trigger law” on abortion, and Project 2025. We all know this is really going to be used to track “abortion traffickers”. Let’s hope this election doesn’t go that way though.
Even all surveillance being equal, Texas has demonstrated it uses its powers in vastly more nefarious ways against marginalized groups, notably women and Latinos and that's just in these past few months.
Sounds like investigating actual crimes. Unless you know for a fact that only Latinos are investigated for these crimes, or they are disproportionately investigated (out of all the people committing such fraud in that jurisdiction), you're looking at it all wrong. But thanks for trying.
Surveillance will be the death of the cell "phone". What are the arguments for bringing your phone with you? I'm imagining a future where politicized geofencing has observed people gathering together and is prosecuted precisely becaused it was geofenced.
It's mindboggling and there has to be other solutions convenience technology that do not sacrifice privacy.
It seems the place to focus is on the telcos and the cell phone makers. Boycott? But how?
Next phone will have GrapheneOS or e/os. But that is just me. Seems like most people don not know about all this or are so locked into to a platform it is impossible to get them to change.
The Government is so controlled by corporations we cannot depend on the politicians either.
Many banking apps won't work on custom roms, which can be painful. Open source OSes are getting cornered. Just like self hosted email servers that are getting blocked by many email providers nowadays
The issue is that a lot of apps are starting to require Play Integrity (used to be SafetyNet). Thankfully my banks haven't made the move, and I happily use grapheneos with a secondary profile that has Google play services installed.
What does that have to do with it? The only elected official mentioned in the story is demanding more information because he's worried it sounds like a Fourth Amendment violation.
Republicans/conservatives being the party of small government and individual liberty is kind of dead, if it ever really was serious in the first place.
During the Cold War era there was kind of an uneasy alliance between actual-libertarians and conservatives against authoritarian leftism and Marxism. National conservatism and MAGA are kind of an explicit rebuke of that alliance. The model is now more like Orban's Hungary: big government in service of right-wing goals.
This shift really started during the Bush II era. I remember seeing the writing on the wall back then that if the right couldn't win its culture war democratically it would abandon democracy, and if freedom meant too many people doing things they didn't like they would abandon freedom.
Actual-libertarians are kind of orphaned right now and may become a wing of the Democratic Party... at least the ones who aren't antivax conspiritainment kooks. Those will probably remain permanently orphaned or eventually follow the libertarian-to-alt-right pipeline and become fascists.
This is a weird time for small government pro-individual-liberty libertarians. On one hand many things that such people have fought for like drug decriminalization and LGBTQ+ rights are winning, at least in many US states. On the other hand the movement itself is on the ropes being pounded from both the authoritarian left and the authoritarian right, both of which have experienced surges in the last decade or so. Saying you are a 'liberal' in this sense in 2024 is deeply unpopular and will get you attacked from both sides.
I think it's anxiety over change. Any time you have a lot of change happening the instinctive human behavior is to grab hold of a big strong (usually) man to protect you. You're seeing this globally right now: Trump, Putin, Orban, Xinpeng, Maduro, etc.
The writing was on the wall for Republican party policy when it sold its morals for votes with Nixon/Goldwater's Southern Strategy by courting the racist Southern Democrats after the Civil Rights Act/Voting Rights Act passed. [1]
Thus the (originally) pro-Union anti-Slavery Republican party married its "limited government" conservative midwest base with a "states rights" southern democrat base.
Now the old guard Republicans are dead or retired and the existing Republicans were made from the mold the old Republicans created.
I think Republican party policy today would be significantly different if the Southern Democrats had never joined.
How do you figure the authoritarian left has experienced a surge in the past decade? What are some examples of policies or positions that you consider authoritarian on the left, particularly in the US?
I was an actual libertarian once upon a time. The more I read about the actual function of government, structure, and just “civilization,” the less I was able to hold on to my libertarian values. Now I’m a ridiculously liberal democrat, still with some core libertarian beliefs that I think should hold, but which don’t work in practice.
What I personally favor is a socially liberal social democracy with minimal regulation but a strong welfare state funded by a mostly neo-Georgist model of taxation.
Socially liberal: you can be/do mostly what you want as long as you are not hurting anyone, and what other people are or do is not your business. The exceptions are at the edges where people are arguably harmed indirectly, with CSAM and other non-consensual pornography as obvious examples.
Social democracy: largely democratic but with a strong constitution.
Minimal regulation: economic freedom, at-will employment, business friendly economic climate.
Welfare state: a strong social safety net with at least a minimal level of universal health care and universally available education. A basic income system could perhaps be an alternative model, though there's a risk that this would be actively harmful to people with self-control or other psychological issues.
Neo-Georgist taxation: Georgist taxation is land-value taxation. Neo-Georgism tends to add taxes on other "things people didn't create" such as natural resource extraction and taxes on externalities such as carbon emissions and other forms of pollution. There would be no sales or income tax. Some versions add a tariff on imports. I'd be in favor of tariffs on imports from countries that do not meet a minimum human rights standard.
That's about the best situation I can imagine working on Earth in the 21st century. I don't think it would be half bad.
I call it the music festival model of civilization: run around and do what you want but keep the festival grounds clean and there's a chill tent you can go to if you're having a bad trip.
As with other libertarian-ish models of civilization it's a tough sell because you are throwing the ring of power into the fire. It doesn't offer much opportunity for people to force their views onto others or play central planner and direct the course of human history. I realized a while ago that you don't see too many genuinely pro-liberty politicians because it's kind of like being a vegan butcher. People tend to be attracted to politics because they want power over other people.
I ran for office as a Libertarian many years ago, not seriously, but they needed people to run to retain their privileged position on the ballot in the future.
As a long-time Democrat, I was amused and angered by local Republicans on TV who griped about Libertarians who were siphoning votes. “You think these voters would vote for the Democratic party?” Yes, jerk, some of them would, because we believe in civil liberty.
What does "liberal" Los Angeles have to do with conservative hypocrisy about small government? It would be expected that opposing philosophies would end up in the same place if one was hypocritical and the other was not. Do you know what point you're making, or is it just a generic pavlovian red vs. blue escalation?
When was the last time the "conservative" wing of US politics truly cared about "small government"? It's a stupid platitude at this point, so repeating it should be met with scorn, because its like calling some neolib a communist. Hyperbole. The uniparty won't, and can't, roll back the federal behemoth.
State, local, and federal law enforcement agencies, regardless of where they're located, get what they want in regards to technology, militarized equipment, surveillance, etc.
It's these type of examples that show just how bad tracking and data harvesting is being used beyond the described use by whatever is doing the hoovering of data. The fact this is something that can be sold is beyond ridiculous. If you collect it for internal use is totally different from collecting for the explicit purpose of selling to others.