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

submitted 4 weeks 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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[–] TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 10 points 4 weeks ago (8 children)

Unfortunately yes, and I would go even a step further and say a smart phone is a basic necessity. More and more companies and even government services are operating on the assumption that everyone has a smart phone. I have encountered various services where if a person didn't have a smart phone they literally can't use it. I even have personal experience with it.

My landlord uses a company for payments that can only be interacted with via an app on a smart phone. There is no web portal option. There is no option to mail a check. There is no option to setup a direct bank transfer. I was essentially strong armed into it since the place itself was (and still is) better than almost anything else I saw and is a reasonable price.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 0 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Android virtual machine? Waydroid?

[–] TonyOstrich@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Are we talking about me specifically or people in general? I'll assume general as I was just relaying a personal anecdote to show that my point/thesis wasn't just a hypothetical as I do know how to get around it in my specific case.

In the general context, that's not a great solution for most people as it is beyond their skill or time set. For the most disadvantaged people just having the ability to have a phone at all and a place to reliably charge it is an issue. There is also the issue is practicality. When I take public transit where I live, the app pulls up a QR code on my phone they gets scanned. I'm not even sure I could fit my laptop screen into the space to scan the QR code if I was emulating Android.

So I guess my thesis here is that systems should be made more accessible and inclusive rather than requiring those in the minority to either have to put more effort in using a workaround to reach functional parity or end up left out all together.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 1 points 4 weeks ago

Fair points, misunderstood indeed.

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