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ICE buys tool to monitor millions of smartphones. Experts say it’s dangerous (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 3 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/privacy@programming.dev

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In a redacted acquisition document obtained by the tech news site 404 Media, the immigration agency proposes entering into a contract to buy “all-in-one” tools from a company called PenLink that will allow agents to “compile, process, and validate billions of daily location signals from hundreds of millions of mobile devices.” The document also mentions payments for services involving “face detection,” “advanced face search,” and a “dark web data feed.”

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[–] chisel@piefed.social 23 points 3 months ago (21 children)

No OS protects you from this. If you are carrying a device that communicates with cell towers, your location is being triangulated and logged. I'm not sure about the daily location signals they're referring to, but cell tower triangulation has been a thing for a long while.

Only way to avoid it would be to only carry devices that cannot transmit data. Internetingly enough, pagers fit the bill as receive-only devices. Messages are broadcast on the entire network instead of routed to a single device.

[–] YoSoySnekBoi@kbin.earth 9 points 3 months ago (20 children)

I'm well aware of this, the reason I bring up GOS is because it fully disables your phone's radios when you turn them off, meaning cell tower triangulation and GPS do not work at all unless explicitly enabled.

This as opposed to a typical phone, which leaves GPS on even when location is off and pings towers periodically even when service is inactive.

I personally leave my phone in airplane mode with location/camera/microphone disabled at all times unless I explicitly need them. I use wifi calling so I can still use it as a typical phone and per-connection MAC address randomization (+ a VPN on public wifi) so my device isn't easy to track via IP.

GOS is great for this because I can be reasonably assured that apps are not bypassing my permission settings without my knowledge and consent. (That and I can de-google which in and of itself goes a long way in decreasing trackability)

[–] RFKJrsBrainworm@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago (14 children)

Isn't GPS only one way? Is the phone then sending the data to the carrier?

[–] xav@programming.dev 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

GPS doesn't send anything - except maybe a ping to some server to get the first fix quicker of you didn't use it for a long time, but this is completely optional.

[–] IceFoxX@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Good that all roms and cell phones that should be usable as a phone are dependent on SS7... Nice that there are also silent sms and other crap stories...

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