So this is getting to be pretty real and pretty scary. How many of you have actually considered just not using your mobile phone any longer? Turning it off, only powering it on when you need it, and not bringing it when you leave your home?
Within a lot of our lifetimes, this was the norm. Are these devices so useful that put up with carrying a tracking / listening device on us at all time?
When I first heard the advice to ditch your phone when you go a protest, I thought maybe that's a little extreme. But it's a real threat. We already knew post Snowden there is an extensive big brother apparatus. We saw post 911 that all rights can be taken away in the name of counter-terrorism. Now with a government that's operating outside the law and labeling peaceful protesters as terrorists, I don't think we can rely on telcos to protect our identity. The mass surveillance will fingerprint a device, and the telco will know your name so it's not at all an extreme precaution to ditch your phone.
M.I.A.'s clothing brand is looking real good now. There are others but hers was the first I heard about. Seems like the waist bag would be critical for activists.
From the Ohmni website:
"...fabric's work by utilizing the principles of a Faraday cage to block or shield against electrical signals, electromagnetic radiation (EMR), and radio frequency interference (RFI)."
>The material does not say how Penlink obtains the smartphone location data in the first place. But surveillance companies and data brokers broadly gather it in two different ways. The first is from small bundles of code included in ordinary apps called software development kits, or SDKs. SDK owners then pay the app developers, who might make things like weather or prayer apps, for their users’ location data. The second is through real-time bidding, or RTB. This is where companies in the online advertising industry place near instantaneous bids to get their advert in front of a certain demographic. A side effect is that companies can obtain data about peoples’ individual devices, including their GPS coordinates. Spy firms have sourced this sort of RTB information from hugely popular smartphone apps.
Sounds like if you're denying location permissions to shady apps (why would you allow in the first place?), you're probably fine.
I’d like to personally thank the tech billionaires for inflicting a domestic paramilitary force on the US population under the guise of “enforcing immigration”. Now they have access to the same surveillance tools used by the IDF to track and murder innocent civilians with plausible deniability.
The book Means of Control by Byron Tau goes deep into this realm. I thought I knew all the methods and sources and this book opened my eyes to even more goings on.
I suppose I'm showing my age here, but Stingrays/IMSI-catchers have been around and in use for decades by both federal and local governments, and the problem of mass surveillance is not particularly an ICE problem. In my lifetime, the level of surveillance of the population has increased so dramatically that I'm not sure that younger people actually understand what it was like to live in a world where your every move wasn't monitored, recorded, and archived.
Privacy advocates have been fighting this battle for decades, but they have been utterly defeated because, by and large, people don't and can't be made to care about privacy until they learn the hard way (and when it's too late) why it's so important.
"can track phones without a warrant and follow their owners home or to their employer" sounds strangely like what was reported to be happening to Palestinians in Gaza. Penlink is in Israel. I think there is a good chance this tech was developed and used in the ongoing genocide against Palestinians and is now being resold to law enforcement here.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 36.9 ms ] threadDon't let them!
Within a lot of our lifetimes, this was the norm. Are these devices so useful that put up with carrying a tracking / listening device on us at all time?
From the Ohmni website:
"...fabric's work by utilizing the principles of a Faraday cage to block or shield against electrical signals, electromagnetic radiation (EMR), and radio frequency interference (RFI)."
Sounds like if you're denying location permissions to shady apps (why would you allow in the first place?), you're probably fine.
Did you know that women's period was tracked by propietary smartphone apps?
There goes your freedom.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61952794
eh at least it's being seen
Be sure to read their other DHS coverage
ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46534581
https://www.amazon.com/Means-Control-Alliance-Government-Sur...
https://reason.com/2026/01/08/you-have-the-right-to-record-i...
Rules for thee and not for me...
Privacy advocates have been fighting this battle for decades, but they have been utterly defeated because, by and large, people don't and can't be made to care about privacy until they learn the hard way (and when it's too late) why it's so important.