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Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics (www.404media.co)

submitted 1 month ago by otter@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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.

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[+] Spitzspot@lemmings.world 107 points 1 month ago (21 children)

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[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (12 children)

Or - OR, right, everyone can turn off location and WiFi on their phones.

It's true the cell ping is always going, but that's a different thing and definitely not what this tool is using to track people. Odds are good it's using facebook or some other cancer to perform this evil.

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Odds are good it’s using facebook or some other cancer to perform this evil.

You really need to read the entire article. Turning off your WiFi and deleting Facebook isn't going to fix this.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It's a good start tho

This sort of surveillance is only possible because of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Location data is sometimes used to build profiles on device users and better target advertisements to them. Much of that advertising relies on a MAID, the unique advertising ID, on a phone. The MAID acts as the digital glue between a device and its associated data.

But that same underlying system, of Google and Apple linking a unique identifier on the phone to a user’s activity, allows Babel Street and others to build their mass monitoring products. In many cases, a device’s MAID is also displayed inside Babel Street.

So periodically refresh / replace your ad id as well.

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