Wait until they find out what "anonymous" data phones are uploading to the big tech companies who happen to own application platforms and mobile operating systems.
If you carry a radio based tracker on your person you will be tracked. This information will eventually be abused. It's not a hard conclusion to come to, and one supported by too many repetitions of abuse in both sensible and not sensible nations to disregard... but somehow it is (disregarded). Cell phones are just too useful for people to acknowledge what they are and what the solution is: stop carrying a radio tracker or at least leave it turned off most of the time.
So, what's the best way to fight back, personally and collectively? Yes, yes—we need legal measures against this sort of thing—but are there tracking mitigation measures that known to be effective on mobile devices? Is there a way we can dilute this commercially-available data to poison the well, as it were?
The talking point that private industry is tracking you as well is tired, and ostensibly smart people should stop trotting it out. Meta and Apple can't arrest you or secret you away to a foreign country -- at least not yet. That makes the distinction a difference.
> This is exactly how Russia built its surveillance state. It began with the quiet centralization of telecommunications data, followed by the rollout of SORM, which gave the government mass interception and geolocation powers, and ended with the targeted use of those capabilities against political opponents, journalists, and civil society. Immigrants, ethnic minorities, and marginalized groups were the first targets—people with little power to resist.
While I agree with the overall premise, but to best of my awareness (and I worked at an ISP in Russia in '00s) those statements are not entirely accurate.
SORM is Russia's Room 641A, except that it's legislated and all done in the open. It started way before telecom consolidation (which started mid-'00s, when large enterprises with strong government ties started to absorb smaller companies) and initially crept in slowly. At first smaller telcos were able to step around the requirements and just promise to cooperate "if something" (essentially, looking up flow logs and/or running tcpdump after being served a proper warrant).
AFAIK, SORM's first targets were mostly CSAM distributors and people who leaned towards neo-nazi views to various extents. That's how it was legitimized in the eyes of those who knew about it: look, FSB is going against pedophiles and nazis, yay! Don't know about journalists or minorities.
Shit started to hit the fan with mid-2010s rapid acceleration towards authoritarianism, when mandatory censorship and drastic expansion of online surveillance became a law.
And mass/non-targeted phone tracking is a relatively modern development in Russia, mostly post-pandemics.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadICE is buying a software tool that analyzes information purchased from commercial data brokers to track people.
To be fair this has been happening at least since 9/11 under both parties.
While I agree with the overall premise, but to best of my awareness (and I worked at an ISP in Russia in '00s) those statements are not entirely accurate.
SORM is Russia's Room 641A, except that it's legislated and all done in the open. It started way before telecom consolidation (which started mid-'00s, when large enterprises with strong government ties started to absorb smaller companies) and initially crept in slowly. At first smaller telcos were able to step around the requirements and just promise to cooperate "if something" (essentially, looking up flow logs and/or running tcpdump after being served a proper warrant).
AFAIK, SORM's first targets were mostly CSAM distributors and people who leaned towards neo-nazi views to various extents. That's how it was legitimized in the eyes of those who knew about it: look, FSB is going against pedophiles and nazis, yay! Don't know about journalists or minorities.
Shit started to hit the fan with mid-2010s rapid acceleration towards authoritarianism, when mandatory censorship and drastic expansion of online surveillance became a law.
And mass/non-targeted phone tracking is a relatively modern development in Russia, mostly post-pandemics.
Just be another crop for the police state.