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.

  • WoodScientist@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    22 days ago

    Wouldn’t just keeping your phone in a metal box prevent it from communicating with anything? Keep your phone in a metal box and only take it out when you need it. Only take it out in a location that isn’t sensitive. Or hell, just make a little sleeve out of aluminum foil. Literally just wrapping your phone in aluminum foil should prevent it from connecting to anything. A tinfoil hat won’t serve as an effective Faraday cage for your brain, but fully wrapping your phone in aluminum foil should do the job. Even better, as it’s a phone, such a foil sleeve should be quite testable. Build it, put your phone in it, and try texting and calling it. If surrounded fully by a conductive material, the phone should be completely incapable of sending or receiving signals.

    • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      21 days ago

      A Faraday cage is supposed to be grounded, so aluminum foil isn’t the same thing. Maybe you could turn the phone off, wrap it in foil, and then place it upon a conductive metal surface that is grounded, such as a 240v kitchen appliance

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.worldEnglish
        131·
        22 days ago

        You sure it’s still not phoning home? How do you know “off” is really “off” anymore with a modern phone? It’s not like an old flip phone that you can just pop the battery out. Sure it sounds paranoid, but we’re literally talking about something that used to be the realm of crackpots and cranks - “the government is tracking all of us 24/7!” Well, it seems that’s actually literally the case now.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
          18·
          22 days ago

          Yes. When your phone is off, it is off.

          If you’re paranoid you can buy a faraday bag.

          • WoodScientist@lemmy.worldEnglish
            18·
            22 days ago

            The iPhone remote locator function still works when the phone is powered off. It doesn’t work when the battery is completely dead, but it does work when the phone is supposedly “powered off.” This is irrefutable proof that iPhones at least retain some of their functions even when you’ve “turned them off.”

            • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
              013·
              22 days ago

              This is where paranoia comes into play. That’s Apple’s information. Not anyone else’s. If you believe Apple is selling it to this company and ignoring the phone setting that enables it then use the faraday bag.

              But this company is not getting that information directly. It gets your information from cell tower pings at best, and social media scraping at worst.

          • winterayars@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            3·
            21 days ago

            I don’t want to encourage paranoia here but “off” does not mean “off”. Modern phones are almost never actually “powered down”. If you’re paranoid, turning your phone off is not enough. Leave it behind.

            (Also a gap in your phone’s location history can also be used against you, fwiw.)

          • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            21 days ago

            Yeah, and Alexa/Siri/Google assistant don’t eavesdrop unless you use the magic words to activate them.