cross-posted from: https://pawb.social/post/37731434
A social media and phone surveillance system ICE bought access to is designed to monitor a city neighborhood or block for mobile phones, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow them from their places of work to home or other locations, according to material that describes how the system works obtained by 404 Media.
Commercial location data, in this case acquired from hundreds of millions of phones via a company called Penlink, can be queried without a warrant, according to an internal ICE legal analysis shared with 404 Media. The purchase comes squarely during ICE’s mass deportation effort and continued crackdown on protected speech, alarming civil liberties experts and raising questions on what exactly ICE will use the surveillance system for.
“This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an out-of-control agency. This granular location information paints a detailed picture of who we are, where we go, and who we spend time with,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy project director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media.
This has been the case for a while now. Nothing here is new, they’re just learning how to use these tools and tactics more effectively now. Privacy died in this country after 9/11
The tools are new and scarier than ever.
The strategy definitely isn’t new. 9/11 made it easier to ignore the constitution in the name of safety and use this kind of tech to invade privacy in the U.S., but when you read about the allegations about the Inslaw and PROMIS software scandal that began in the 80s, like what Inslaw/PROMIS was supposed to accomplish (basically it was promoted as an easy button for automation of criminal and court data, allegedly it was even advertised as one day potentially being used to predict crime before it even occured), how the software was sold to other countries and then used to spy on their governments, it’s kind of hard to just ignore the similarities with modern day U.S. government software like Palantir.
It’s also kind of wild to me that despite the very long list of crazy conspiracy theories people link to Inslaw/PROMIS, nobody seems to have ever just pointed out the obvious similarities to Palantir.
My neighbors use this. And, likewise, I used a few geo-location tools to find why my default zip code was always wrong on forms auto-filled by geolocation.
turns out my phone’s IP address is geolocated at the Bothell Police Department. I made sure that there wasn’t an substation or whatever right there but nope Bothell Police Department and Public Courthouse is where my the world thinks my phone is located.
Can’t even use the simple conveniences of the internet because of surveillance.
Nice, I just tried iplocation.net, and it thinks I’m in Denver, CO. Which is cute, as my VPN goes thru there, at the moment. And then I jumped on my magick razor scooter, and now I’m in Vancouver, BC. Perfect.
Hmm, the article also says Webloc can use GPS and WiFi data, which gets around VPN, I think. Anyone know a work around for Webloc, Penlink, and Tangles? Alas leaving the device home / elsewhere may be the only/ best solution.
Additionally blocking location data gathering may be useful to some degree, on some phones.