Stay up to date on all things crypto and blockchain

Greetings, sabrefoxx. Unfortunately, your submission has been removed from /r/nottheonion because our rules do not allow:

• Content that doesn't have an oniony quality to it (rule #2). Your submission may be better suited for another subreddit instead.Remember, just because a title is funny or ironic, that doesn't mean the article is appropriate for /r/nottheonion. The actual article must make a reasonable person think "No way, this must be satire."

For a full list of our submission rules, please visit our wiki page. If you're new to /r/nottheonion, you can check out NTO101: An Introduction to /r/NotTheOnion for more information on our rules and answers to frequently asked questions. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to message the moderators. Please include the link to the post you want us to review.

The fact that companies are allowed to do this is disgusting

We need some sort of rulling saying that it's still personal information even if it's collected by a 3rd party

I though Carpenter v. United States (2018) would've been enough

Not oniony at all, but should be cross posted everywhere.

So which one of our bill of rights is still fully in effect at this point?

It should be obvious that your phone broadcasts Bluetooth and looks for WiFi both with an identifiable address. How else do you think it works. This isn’t difficult anyone could do this.

There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.

Okay so then they’ll just leave their phones out of the area. Then we’ll be killing privacy for nothing.

Watched a police officer type in a tag number and then got the owners phone number. Officer proceeds to track the owners phone to a local bar. The car was parked in a reserved parking spot.

Cops can find the entire location history minute by minute of your cell phone going back months using the Securus system. It uses tower ping triangulation not gps, and works even on flip phones.

Originally designed to monitor the movement and compliance of parolees, it's being widely abused by thousands of police departments across the country. Spend two seconds googling and you'll find numerous articles including a long NYT piece on it.

BBC.

Carrying a phone is optional, even if you decided to have a phone it’s easy enough to register them to a fake name... unless you are fancy and have a contract by choice also. Half this stuff “they” use to watch and monitor us, we allow because we can’t help ourselves.

If you’re going to commit an illegal act, you don’t bring your fucking iPhone around. Shit like this should be common sense.

From now on we leave our phones behind.

Sounds like some tech terrorism needs to be thought about.

Good ole United Police States of America.

S.S: Babel Street's sale of location data to the government raises potential liability issues for app developers under the Stored Communications Act. The 1986 law prohibits providers of computing services or electronic communication to the public from knowingly divulging customer information to any government entity.

[Meta] Sticky Comment

Rule 2 does not apply when replying to this stickied comment.

Rule 2 does apply throughout the rest of this thread.

What this means: Please keep any "meta" discussion directed at specific users, mods, or /r/conspiracy in general in this comment chain only.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

On mobile so haven’t checked and double checked, but a few months ago it was publicized on hacker news (reputable newspaper aggregator) now your location was being sold by your operator to third parties who were using that day, e.g. your bank checking were you in the same location as your transaction, but also potentially nefarious reasons since the data was for sale to anyone.

I’ve since seen an article suggesting that is no longer legal. A quick search pulls this up, but there may be more/this article might not be addressing exactly what I mentioned: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/warrantless-cellphone-location-data-unconstitutional-illegal-11-circuit-court-appeals/

Also, it says ”citizens”.

A former government official familiar with Locate X provided an example of how it could be used, referring to the aftermath of a car bombing or kidnapping. Investigators could draw what is known as a geo-fence around the site, identify mobile devices that were in the vicinity in the days before the attack, and see where else those devices had traveled in the days, weeks or months leading up to the attack, or where they traveled afterward.

"If you see a device that a month ago was in Saudi Arabia, then you know maybe Saudis were involved," this person said. "It's a lead generator. You get a data point, and from there you use your other resources to figure out if it's valid."

So: End run around getting a warrant / 4th Amendment privacy rulings.

Sleazy as all shit.

A spokesperson for Babel Street, Lacy Talton, declined to answer specific questions about the company's government sales or its Locate X technology, but said the firm handles data carefully to comply with both the law and internet terms of service. There is no indication Babel Street is doing anything illegal.

Advocating in favor of pederasts and domestic abuse is also legal, that doesn’t mean you should be doing it.

In summary: 1984 is real, Big Brother has privatized unreasonable searches via corporate sleaze-baggery.

Well shit not good.

excerpts:

U.S. law enforcement agencies signed millions of dollars worth of contracts with a Virginia company after it rolled out a powerful tool that uses data from popular mobile apps to track the movement of people's cell phones, according to federal contracting records and six people familiar with the software.

 

Federal records show that U.S. Customs and Border Protection purchased Locate X, and the Secret Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also use the location-tracking technology, according to a former Babel Street employee.

 

CBP signed a first contract worth $981,000 for "Babel software" in September 2017. The Targeting and Analysis Systems Directorate, the CBP branch that purchased the software, apparently liked what it received. A year later, the agency signed a fresh contract worth $2.2 million for "Babel software licenses." In March 2019, CBP filed an amended contract, worth an extra $130,000, to "upgrade the current Babel Street Locate X licensing from basic to premium licenses as well as add an additional 10 licenses."

 

In September 2018, ICE officials signed a one-year, $1.1 million contract with Babel Street. The deal included Locate X, according to a former Babel Street employee. Last August, ICE signed a fresh five-year deal worth up to $6.5 million with Babel Street for "data subscription services," records show.

 

The data used by Babel Street, said the former employees of Babel Street and Gravy Analytics, comes largely from third-party data aggregators who broker deals with mobile app developers, offering revenue in return and sometimes detailed analysis about how users are engaging with the app.

Another reason not to use those crap apps.

This isn't a new problem. I think it's right that we place some level of restriction on the data law enforcement are allowed to collect, but if we voluntarily give that data to a private company we're allowing those restrictions to be bypassed as the private company will usually have it in their terms that they can sell the data to whoever they want. It's a bit like how the US and the UK circumvented laws against snooping on their own people in the past. NSA would monitor British comms and give it to GCHQ, and GCHQ would do the same for NSA. Completely against the spirit of the law but not technically a violation. Possibly the best answer to close this loophole would be to make it ilegal for law enforcement to possess any data they would not legally be allowed to gather themselves.