this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
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[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

First sentence is most important:

Nevada quietly signed an agreement earlier this year with a company that collects location data from cellphones, allowing police to track a device virtually in real time — all without a warrant.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 7 points 2 days ago

If the police are funded by the government, then that information should legally be publicly available to anyone... this is what is getting towns to stop using Flock as well, when people start asking for that info too.

Not to mention it's probably a Fourth Amendment violation too.

[–] jonesey71@lemmus.org 3 points 2 days ago

Sure they 'can' but I am pretty sure that is still illegal according to the letter of the law, but they aren't going to ever get in trouble for it because the supreme court is trash.

[–] Turret3857@infosec.pub 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

airplane mode + WiFi calling. you shouldnt be on your phone while youre driving, and most places have free WiFi, then install a Google free custom ROM to your phone such as LineageOS, iodeOS, GrapheneOS, RestlessOS GSI, or CalyxOS (whenever they come back)

[–] French75@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The article doesn't say what methods the police in NV are using, so it might be effective against that particular approach, but in general, airplane mode doesn't prevent phone tracking.

[–] Turret3857@infosec.pub 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm not denying that you could be correct, but do you have any more information on it not preventing cell tower based triangulation?

This is what I base my claim on: https://grapheneos.org/faq#cellular-tracking

[–] French75@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

To clarify, i reread, and the article does say they are buying the data from Fog Data. I've read elsewhere that Fog Data logs location data from installed apps using location services. I don't know if that's the only method Fog Data uses. If it is, turning off location services should significantly impair this approach. Airplane mode would not, though it would probably prevent radio triangulation like you describe.

My comment was that there are a lot of ways that phones record location data, and no single countermeasure stops all of them. In addition to apps using location services, the phones themselves track you in a lot of different ways. For example iPhones continuously monitor and log location data even when the phone is off. They use BTLE mesh when other methods are unavailable.