Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the world. Abortion clinics, places of worship, and individual people can all be monitored without a warrant.

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.

  • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
    42·
    22 days ago

    That won’t work. But if you install the ROM without gapps or closed source software, you don’t have to worry about these issues.

    • Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      22 days ago

      Having just done that for the first time I feel confident in saying anyone who’s still using facebook or Xitter or tiktok or whatever - is not going to do that. I wish they would but that’s an order of magnitude more technical than where they are.

      • EngineerGaming@feddit.nlEnglish
        2·
        22 days ago

        Counterpoint - the only reason I didn’t degoogle earlier was because my phone simply didn’t support Lineage or Divest. Chances are that whatever budget Chinaphone you have would be in the same situation. Now I bought a Pixel specifically with the intent of installing a privacy-preserving OS, but for a while most I could do was ADB-disabling Google services.

        Unlike installing Linux, chances are high that a degoogled OS wouldn’t work on the hardware you already have.

        • Optional@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          22 days ago

          Oh it took me a solid month of trial and error, scrolling through xda and other forums reading every how-to and watching plenty of vids and I finally got it to work. But it was not even fun. Yes starting with a Pixel is better, but f* teh googlez.