18 ms·
LocationSmart Leaked Location Data for All Major U.S. Carriers in Real Time
- nickthegreek 8y agoAnyone know of the minimum and maximum accuracy of the cell phone triangulation methods are? This article states that they were getting results from within a few hundred yards to 1.5 miles And the scariest thing me in the article (besides being able to bypass the auth) is that they were able to send several requests and track movement in near real time. Did they really not have a request limiter in place?
- nneonneo 8y agoNo request limiter, but the API was kind of slow (few seconds per update). The API returned an accuracy value, but we found it was often underestimating the accuracy (i.e. when it said "3000m", we were getting closer to 500m).
- c22 8y agoFor whatever it's worth, this service was unable to find any location for my phone that only connects over 2g, but had no problem tracking my 4g phone with startling accuracy.
- joewee 8y agoThere are limited towers / carriers who support 2g. Less data to triangulate I would assume.
- c22 8y agoThis is true, but I suspect something else might be going on. LocationSmart said it couldn't find the location of my phone at all, but even if I'm visible to only one tower it should at least be able to narrow it down to the location of that tower.
- bitexploder 8y agoThere is coarse and fine location.https://androidforums.com/threads/question-regarding-the-course-and-fine-location-providers.262850/ https://androidforums.com/threads/question-regarding-the-cou... -- generally you will get a coarse location. Carriers can often get a precise location by querying the phone and enhancing the coarse (cell tower triangulation) with a GPS reading. Fine location is not going to be available on all handsets. It will be accurate to like 30 meters. Older handsets or those on 3G may not provide fine location.
- bigiain 8y agohttps://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/911-wireless-services https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/911-wireless-services "Phase II E911 rules require wireless service providers to provide more precise location information to PSAPs; specifically, the latitude and longitude of the caller. This information must be accurate to within 50 to 300 meters depending upon the type of location technology used."
- nneonneo 8y agoHi all, I'm the researcher who found the bug. I started looking at it after I saw the earlier HN posting about Securus and LocationSmart. Happy to answer questions and provide any additional context.
- bhaile 8y agoWas this able to be done programmatically? Like POST a set of numbers and get back their location data. Wonder how long this was open for any bad actors to exploit.
- nneonneo 8y agoYes, that's exactly what I ended up doing - I had a little script that took a phone number and spat out a Google Maps page.
- cazum 8y agoWould you mind paste-binning/gist/posting the script? I'd be interested in seeing exactly how easy it was. I was playing around with the site last night but couldn't get anywhere.
- nneonneo 8y agoI've posted a full writeup here: https://www.robertxiao.ca/hacking/locationsmart/ https://www.robertxiao.ca/hacking/locationsmart/
- x0x0 8y agoWas this in any way protected or did you just watch network requests in your browser, see an endpoint, and curl it? I'm not diminishing your discovery, just wondering if it was utterly trivial to use...
- nneonneo 8y agoI modified a request in a fairly predictable way and bypassed the consent stage. See the full writeup here: https://www.robertxiao.ca/hacking/locationsmart/ https://www.robertxiao.ca/hacking/locationsmart/
- gcbw2 8y agoWhat honest purposed TelCos would have to even sell this data? all of them replied saying "we will cut clients not following the program guidelines"... what are those guidelines?! and why is that arbitrary for the companies to decide, and not mentioned anywhere on the consumer agreements other than some vague "we may share your data with whoever"? This sounds like Cambridge Analytic for TelCos.
- kevcampb 8y agoProviders who uses these services need to agree to follow guidelines such as obtaining opt-in, sending notifications to devices being tracked with option to opt-out by replying with STOP, etc. The guidelines are not enforced or audited.
- rhacker 8y agoI wonder why the opt-in wasn't performed by the telco itself!!! I'm just learning about this whole thing now and I'm very upset.
- wlesieutre 8y agoRight, if the cell company says user consent is required it ought to text them "X is requesting permission to track your location, reply YES to allow" And provide a straightforward mechanism of checking what has had access, what still has access, and a way to revoke it.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoWell, most of the clients of this service are law enforcement. "The FBI is requesting permission to track your location, reply YES to allow"? Yeah, that's not going to happen. But as I read the article, the location data is only at the resolution of which cell tower they're connected to. Doesn't 911 get better location info than that?
- 8y ago
- ucaetano 8y ago> LocationSmart’s home page features the corporate logos of all four the major wireless providers, as well as companies like Google, Neustar, ThreatMetrix, and U.S. Cellular. Funny how they removed the corporate logos they had on their website from yesterday to today: Yesterday: http://web.archive.org/web/20180516060611/https://www.locationsmart.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20180516060611/https://www.locati... Today: https://www.locationsmart.com/ https://www.locationsmart.com/
- hadrien01 8y agoAll the images still exist on their website: https://www.locationsmart.com/cms/resources/ https://www.locationsmart.com/cms/resources/ Look for 't-mobile' or 'verizon'
- nneonneo 8y agoOh wow, I can't believe they left all their CMS resources on open listing...that's quite a find. Their website reports that the "trylocationsmart500x250-w500h250.png" file, which is a screenshot of an older version of the vulnerable website, was uploaded 2016-09-14 22:20. This means that the vulnerable site was probably available since at least September 2016.
- jessaustin 8y agoIt seems less and less likely that this firm has ever hired any knowledgeable security person...
- yorwba 8y agoI think this image symbolizes their approach to security very well: https://www.locationsmart.com/cms/resources/privacysecurity.png https://www.locationsmart.com/cms/resources/privacysecurity.... Just put a lock on top, even if it's not actually securing anything.
- che_shirecat 8y agowell they're definitely getting a comprehensive, free-of-charge penetration test now
- uptown 8y agoSeems improbable, but I really wish Apple would get into the carrier business.
- yosito 8y agoIIRC, Apple has the cash but I doubt they'd be any better in terms of protecting consumer data.
- duskwuff 8y agoTo avoid this sort of information leak, they'd have to build out their own cell infrastructure. This would be prohibitively expensive, even for a company with as much money as Apple. Operating as a MVNO wouldn't help; the parent carrier can still collect data from their customers.
- jonas21 8y agoI dunno... Apple could, for example, buy T-Mobile and their network for ~$50B [1] and still have a $230B pile of cash left over [2]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=TMUS https://www.google.com/search?q=TMUS [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/01/apple-earnings-q1-2018-how-much-money-does-apple-have.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/01/apple-earnings-q1-2018-how-m...
- confounded 8y agoDoes anyone with telco experience know if MVNO's can set their own policies in this regard? It seems like there's room in the market. (Ask HN about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17088252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17088252)
- saagarjha 8y agoI think they've mentioned before that they're not interested in entering this space.
- rolandog 8y ago> Also, by law wireless companies need to be able to ascertain at any time the approximate location of a customer’s phone in order to comply with emergency 911 regulations. Would it be unfeasible to only track once a 911 call is placed?
- jessaustin 8y agoSure, but the meetings held to decide how these things work are well-populated with people who find the concept of a "right to privacy" confusing.
- bigiain 8y agoBut they seem to be _super_ switched on about how much shareholder value they can create by monetising the data.
- rossdavidh 8y agoWell it would probably add a bit of time, and there are also cases like someone is kidnapped, the phone is still on them, but obviously we can't ask them to opt in right now. Not that any of that would justify having a system to sell your location, but presumably they thought they had it locked down so that consent was required (which it apparently was for XML version of the API).
- bigiain 8y agoRemember they need to know which cell(s) you're within range of to get inbound calls to you. It's not like the networks send a message out via every cell tower on the planet asking if $rolandog{'mobile_number'} is listening every time you get a call or text. Whenever your phone is switched on, it regularly contacts the tower it's got the strongest signal from and says "Hi, it's rolandog's phone here, if you get a call for me, this is where I'm hanging out! kthxbye"
- pasbesoin 8y agoWe are going to have to look hard at contract law versus the Constitution and its amendments. All sort of contractual gags that keep people from commenting on bad and sometimes malicious behavior. Because it's the only way to get the job they're trained for, etc. Companies insisting on the contractual right -- in small and seldom-read print buried within a sea of other print, for an "everyday" purchase -- to essentially violate the 4th Amendment (I'm thinking; maybe I've got that wrong) against unreasonable search and seizure. I guess that right was targeted against the government, but it seems it should apply to these government-size corporations and multi-nationals, as well. Selling us what has become an essential service; try living most people's lives in the U.S. without a cell phone. And hey, we know governments are making use of those data, as well. A typical government ploy; purchase data from a private, third party that the government is not allowed to directly collect, itself. Sorry, that "scrubbing" indirection shouldn't disqualify it from constitutional protections. Divide and conquer. Whereas solidarity actually requires some privacy and wiggle room, to function effectively and autonomously in the real world.
- ellius 8y agoYou already hit this point but: the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights, is about defining a legal structure of government. We can all agree that privacy is a "universal right," but neither history nor legal precedent supports that interpretation unequivocally (even with regard to the government specifically; you can read some really interesting Constitutional history about the "right to privacy" and how it arose as a concept in the late 1800s; Brandeis's "The Right to Privacy" is a fascinating historical document"). The only true remedy to this problem is laws enacted by Congress. We need to stop talking about this in a wishy-washy idealistic way and start talking about realistic, precise, and legal solutions, which means enacting specific laws.
- jacquesm 8y agoThe USA voted in favor of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of human rights. It contains an item about privacy being an essential human right.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoI certainly don't encourage it, not least because it's illegal, but there is only one way I see this getting fixed. Someone publishing the location data of members of Congress and federal agencies' heads,revealing sensitive information, e.g. an undisclosed meeting or repeated visits to an unexpected embassy or overnight stays with a young, good-looking aide.
- jacquesm 8y agoWhy would the aide have to be good looking or young?
- LeoPanthera 8y agoIt's shallow, but it makes better PR when you're trying to scandalize middle America.
- tlrobinson 8y agoWell, at least it did until they elected a president who had an affair with an adult film star, among other things.
- gowld 8y agoAffairs with older, ugly people are well scandalized.
- rukittenme 8y agoBecause Congress fucks enough old people as it is? I'm kidding. On a more serious note, being young makes it appears as though the congress-person is taking advantage of an "impressionable" employee. Being good looking makes it look like the relationship only exists because of the congress-person's rank.
- always_good 8y agoBecause they're more fuckable, thus someone is more likely to take a risk to fuck them.
- 8y ago
- state_less 8y agoThis sort of mass tracking shouldn't exist and it certainly should be illegal to sell this data. Anyone who is capable of tracking (e.g. satellite companies, cell companies, etc...) should be required to immediately report any request to access this sort of data. If it's a government, force them to publicly give reason and use that to scope the investigation. Our technology makes this possible, our culture doesn't have to.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago"Publicly" won't fly. But "let's see your warrant"? Yes, that should be workable. I'd like to see that become the standard corporate behavior. I'm pretty sure that won't happen, though...
- state_less 8y agoI don't see how publicly won't fly. If for the sake of an investigation, they need discretion, that should have a reveal time or reveal condition that is not too broad. For example, "When the investigation is complete or two years, whichever is shorter." Then match up requests (including rational in the form) and responses. Requests outside that are illegal.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoSure, I could go with two years. Even that's probably too long. But publicly announcing the tracking requests at the time they start? Announce to the suspect that they're being tracked? That's a bit of an unreasonable handicap to an investigation. A warrant is not an unreasonable handicap. No warrant? No data. If you don't need the data bad enough to get a warrant, you don't need the data bad enough to get it.
- bitexploder 8y agoTechnically you have to explicitly opt in. But software has bugs, sometimes trivial ones.
- discussedbefore 8y agoRelated discussions over the past week-ish: US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17069459 Service Meant to Monitor Inmates’ Calls Could Track You, Too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17046632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17046632
- nneonneo 8y agoI have now published a writeup here: https://www.robertxiao.ca/hacking/locationsmart/ https://www.robertxiao.ca/hacking/locationsmart/ Hopefully this answers some of the technical questions about the exploit :)
- fixermark 8y agoExcellent writeup, and thank you for both sharing the details and summarizing the relevant context.
- rnd463856 8y agoDoes anyone know if opting out of CPNI sharing with your carrier prevents location information from being shared with companies such as LocationSmart? See: https://www.verizonwireless.com/legal/notices/customer-cpni/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/legal/notices/customer-cpni/
- gergles 8y agoNo, your device location is not CPNI. Generally, only things that appear on a detailed phone bill are CPNI.
- fixermark 8y agoDavid Brin becomes more and more prescient as time goes on. https://books.google.com/books?id=wg4XBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA336&dq=0738201448&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjeuezM1Y3bAhUQy1kKHaz3B9AQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=0738201448&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=wg4XBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA336&dq=0...
- dredmorbius 8y agofBrin presumes it's possible to look up, and that disclosure is equally significant to both the powerful and oppressed. The historical record doesn't support this.
- fixermark 8y agoI was referring specifically to the inevitability of observation technologies leaving outside their controllers' grasp and becoming increasingly ubiquitous.
- dredmorbius 8y agoTechnology's existence needn't make its use inevitable.
- fixermark 8y ago... but as Brin observes, these tools are powerful. And the groups that exploit them will tend to become the powerful groups (because information is power). So given that these tools, even when abused, don't lead to the kind of wanton destruction nuclear weapons do (that trigger our primal survival instincts), the odds of everyone on the planet generally refraining from accessing surveillance technologies when available are low, and those that do so will tend to become more powerful (and therefore spread the cultural meme that "hey, this stuff is okay in moderation").
- codedokode 8y agoThe question is why cell carriers provide data on users' location without their consent. I don't understand how this can even be legal. It is the same thing as if a bank would sell their customers' bank card numbers and SSNs.
- gowld 8y agoIt's legal because there's no law prohibiting it.
- vkou 8y agoIt's legal because this in the United States, it's considered the carrier's data, not your data. And they can sell their data however the hell they please.
- codedokode 8y agoSo for example, if dreadful foreign hackers would establish a fake marketing company, sign agreement with LocationSmart (or telecoms directly) and spy on government and military officials to gather compromising information for the next election cycle, this would be legal too? Sounds nice for foreign hackers.
- vkou 8y agoWhen journalists, or American political parties do this, we call it journalism, or campaigning, so... I'm not sure what the problem is. Is it the fact that's done by a foreigner? Yet, we allow American branches of multinationals, or domestic companies owned by foreigners to directly influence politics and politicians, so I'm still not sure where the issue is. If you don't want embarrassing scandals from your preferred political party sinking their chances at winning elections, perhaps it should stop having embarrassing scandals? No, surely, the fault is in the people publicizing them...
- rectang 8y agoOr heck, if you just want to rob somebody's home, this service lets you know when they're away.
- codedokode 8y agoBy the way, I wonder, could a foreign state use these location services for spying on government and military officials and other interesting people? For example, create a fake marketing company and buy data for "targeted advertising".
- nneonneo 8y agoI don’t believe the buggy API was ever restricted just to US IPs, so anyone in any country could have been tracking US phones since the API came out (in Jan 2017 or earlier).
- HashThis 8y agoDo all carrier customers get hurt by this? If I don't use LocationSmart, does it impact me? What products use this that expose me to this?
- staplers 8y agoWhat products use this that expose me to this? Per the LocationSmart website: "95% of all wireless devices" so basically the entire population's location can be tracked in real-time by anyone willing to pay for this service. Insurance companies, your boss, etc.
- sixothree 8y agoOk. So what does one average person need to do in order to purchase?
- dredmorbius 8y agoThis also means that even if you cannot be tracked directly, you may be tracked by others you travel or associate with. A Catalan seperatist was arrested in Europe this way.
- rubatuga 8y agoOne of the few news articles that make feel a bit nauseous. What’s stopping organizations from doing warrantless tracking?
- bitexploder 8y agoThey would have to exploit this consent bypass flaw. So, if they were willing to exploit this but, nothing.
- 8_hours_ago 8y agoAre there any US carriers that have been confirmed to not share location data with 3rd parties such as LocationSmart? LocationSmart boasts on their website that they can get the location of 95% of the cell phones in the US... how can I be that 5%?
- bitexploder 8y agoTurn your phone off. :) Seriously. There is no other option. Only niche local providers won't share with these types of companies.
- 8_hours_ago 8y ago> Only niche local providers won't share with these types of companies. That is what I am looking for! Do you know where to find those providers?
- bitexploder 8y agoUS Cellular and Metro PCS maybe? Only two that spring to mind.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoA bit naive to believe that the soft power button or airplane mode disables periodic tower pings. A removable battery and shielded bag would be the minimum precaution.
- bitexploder 8y agoPhones wake up about every 30 minutes or so when "powered off". Explicitly to report loction and perform background chores. So you are right. Even the removable battery is suspect. A foil/metal lined bag does the trick. Or a chip bag: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.popularmechanics.com/technology/amp13953308/electrician-turned-chip-bag-into-faraday-cage/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.popularmechanics.com/techno...
- klik1 8y agoPosting under an alternative account for obvious reasons. Bad API's used in IoT are a huge vector for attack and too few companies in the mobile first world have a bug bounty program. I found a similar problem with an API for an app that comes default installed on most android phones I've purchased (think smart phone as a TV remote). I reported it and got no response. Their homepage claims the app is being used for 10's of millions of smart devices like A/C, TV's, Fridges, Microwaves, etc. The vulnerability allowed full account access.
- djsumdog 8y agoIf you've made every attempt at responsible disclosure and have gotten no response, it's probably more irresponsible to not do a full post on it. Then again, that of course gets into murky water and it's best to at least try to get legal council or work with a responsible disclosure website. IANAL.
- klik1 8y agothe gist of the vulnerability was an expectation that nobody would ever find their origins if they had some crazy hostname: "asuhdfo8a7ys8dfas.website.com" type of setup. In front of this origin they had a server that did auth and auth only. If your auth worked at the edge, the request was sent to origin. The problem is I found a specific input that caused an error dumping a stack trace that contained the origin hostname. I took the original request and replayed it directly at the origin. To my surprise the response was the same as going through the auth server. Then I changed the user id some integer that wasn't mine and got information back. Then I quit playing with it and sent an email. This leaves me in a weird spot because I was fuzzing them looking for details when I was fully aware they did not have a bug bounty program. Why did I do this? Because I was using the app myself, I'm a security guy, and had read about a cool exploit with the uber app. It only took about 5 minutes of setting up burp proxy for my phone with ssl and 5 more minutes of auditing to find an input that dumped the stack trace.
- hinkley 8y agoSays the guy giving away the ending of The Expanse in a science thread.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 8_hours_ago 8y agoI just wrote to my senators and representative in congress, and I urge everyone else to do the same. It is unacceptable that our personal information is so easily sold to 3rd parties by our cell phone carriers, with no way to opt-out.
- coastal-fiesta 8y agoMind pasting the letter you wrote?
- 8_hours_ago 8y agoThis is what I sent... feel free to mention any issues you see with it which may help other people. Hello XX, I am concerned about the security of my cell phone location information. Yesterday, a vulnerability was found that leaked the real-time location of 95% of the cell phones in the US. That is unacceptable. US cell phone carriers including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon share personal information, including phone numbers and real-time location of cell phones, with companies such as LocationSmart, who then resells the information to other companies for marketing and other purposes. Carriers to not provide a way for users to opt-out of such sharing. This is completely legal under the current Electronic Communications Privacy Act. LocationSmart claims that they will not share the gathered information without user consent, but the definition of consent is vague, and that doesn't protect the public from security breaches. I understand that carriers need to have location data to comply with emergency 911 regulations, but it is unacceptable that they are able to share it with 3rd parties who may use it for dubious purposes, and may have lax security standards. We need to have laws that protect the privacy of cell phone users, and do not allow carriers to sell personal information to 3rd parties. Or, and the very least, customers should be able to opt-out of such sharing from their carriers. For more information on the vulnerability found yesterday, please see: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/tracking-firm-locationsmart-leaked-location-data-for-customers-of-all-major-u-s-mobile-carriers-in-real-time-via-its-web-site/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/tracking-firm-locationsm... Please contact me if you have any questions. Thank you, XX
- coytar 8y agoHaving not fully woken up this morning, I read & assumed the title as "LocationSmart Leaked Location Data for All Major U.S. [Aircraft] Carriers in Real Time" and freaked out a bit :) Anyone else?
- quickthrower2 8y agoI thought the same. Although this would be impossible right?
- mysterypie 8y agoOh, man, what a missed opportunity to make the average Joe Sixpack become aware of cellphone tracking and surveillance. If the researcher had queried every single cellphone number in the United States (for as long as the API kept working) and then published the location of every cellphone in the USA, then laymen might care. When someone can query the list and see his own personal information being broadcast, they will understand. When they can look up any cellphone and pinpoint the location of their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, boss, children, or neighbor, they might get an inkling that privacy isn't such a stupid thing to worry about. I guarantee that by next week, this whole thing will be forgotten and nothing will have changed because privacy and surveillance are too abstract for most people -- they need to see all their personal information that's being collected. I admire the researcher's integrity for exposing it the right way (reporting it to CERT and the company itself), but going full Snowden would have had so much more impact on getting better privacy-preserving laws and technology.
- neuralk 8y agoIf the researcher had done that -- queried every cellphone and published it -- I fully expect they'd receive the same treatment from law enforcement that weev and Aaron Swartz got, if not worse
- gruez 8y agoscrape and publish the data over TOR. problem solved.
- kridsdale1 8y agoJoe Sixpack won’t browse it then
- amatecha 8y agohaha, oh they would when countless major news orgs carry the story!
- 8y ago
- pietroglyph 8y agoThe scariest thing is that you can still buy this data legally. No vulnerability required.
- sixothree 8y agoWhat is the process like?
- iampims 8y agoyeah, I'm also curious what the process is to buy this data.
- pietroglyph 8y agoHere's an example (It is through geofencing, and I read my parent comment as a bit misleading. Sorry about that.): https://www.locationsmart.com/solutions/proximity https://www.locationsmart.com/solutions/proximity
- graeme 8y agoOP, the NYT is interested. Reporters email here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17089692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17089692
- nneonneo 8y agoThanks for the pointer.
- odammit 8y agoI didn’t follow how it is that LocationSmart gets access to an unaffiliated person’s phone location in the first place.
- amatecha 8y agoSlightly disconcerting (though unsurprising) to see insurance companies are customers of LocationSmart: https://www.locationsmart.com/company/customers https://www.locationsmart.com/company/customers I kinda had no clue 3rd-party services like this existed, and assumed realtime cellphone location data was only available to law enforcement in emergency situations... Cool..
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cavisne 8y agoSomething I wonder reading this, hopefully some wireless experts can answer. In theory does locationsmart even need to onboard all telcos for this? Most smartphones have the hardware to talk to all telcos now, and in emergency situations they can roam onto other networks. Do lte devices ping other networks or do they only ping on the spectrum of their particular network? I’ve heard stories of how telcos track down things like broken fridges etc that are adding noise to their network (and buy the owners a new fridge) so clearly they have the ability to track things that aren’t part of their network.
- CBdd 8y agoT-Mobile and other carriers sell customers a service that uses this information to track other phones ON THE SAME ACCOUNT. The actual service is provided by a third party that, I assume, is privy to all customers tower contacts and thus the location. By the way, the service is usually accurate within 50 feet although I have found some bloopers where it was off by 500 feet.Each result even tells you how accurate it likely is.
- seanieb 8y agoAre data-only SIM's trackable in the same way as normal SIM's?
- wadkar 8y agoYes. Data only sims are just like your regular simcards except you pay to NOT make any calls from it. The rest everything works the same from a technical point of view.
- beezle 8y agoSo..300 mio connected devices, 2 bytes for location, some compression, 2 samples a minute -> 1 GB per min or about 1.5 TB per day. Thats easy storage for NSA, wonder how many years of data they have on everyone? Don't think for a minute they don't have an exception for the permission requirements
- bastawhiz 8y agoTwo bytes for a location? If you're going to store latitude and longitude, you'll want to do it with signed fixed-precision numbers. Four decimal places if you don't care about accuracy too much plus up to 180 above and below zero. That means you'll need 26 bits (25 bits to store the data plus one bit for sign), and that covers one half of latitude and longitude. You'd need 52 bits to store a full set of coordinates, and since we're not barbarians we can round that up to a nice even 64 bits (I don't think there's anything relevant you can store in 12 bits...maybe carrier ID?) Then you need to identify what device it's for, that's another 32 bits if you're being conservative. I'll ignore timestamp, since you could infer that from the location in the data store (assuming you have nice even 30s intervals), but it would otherwise be a bonus 64 bits. That's 10TB, but also pretty useless because you've got a giant pile of u32s. If you were going to do this for real, you'd probably store the user's location with full precision for the first sample, then simply have diffs with a precision that assumes, say, the device isn't going to move faster than the speed of sound. The index is likely going to be pretty massive, and you'll constantly be reindexing because you're getting new data all the time (with a cardinality of 300M). Even then, you're probably looking at something that's triple or quadruple that size. Let's say 40TB. That's only 14.6PB/year, which is not unreasonable storage for the government. But then you need to consider other things: - You're ingesting 600M data points per minute. If you're only getting the minimum (96bits/user), that's over 7GB/s. - But of course, it's probably not in a binary format (in the article, it was JSON and XML). Make that 50GB/s. - Now you're parsing XML and JSON. That's not free when you're parsing 600M documents/minute. You'd likely have a pretty damn big server farm to ingest all this data. - Your carriers need to be able to send that data to you, so they need to be equipped to (collectively) deliver 50GB/s of encoded location data; not to mention be able to dump the latest record for every customer in their location database twice per minute. I wouldn't bet money that the government cares enough about every last device in the country to rig together such a big system only to keep track of where my grandmother's Jitterbug is. It's nonsensical to think that they couldn't just send an API request to AT&T or Verizon and be like "Hey guys, where's John Doe's phone been in the last week?" That's almost certainly more practical and cost effective in every way.
- Sephr 8y agoI found LocationSmart's pricing info: https://www.locationsmart.com/cms/resources/locationsmartpricingdirect2016.pdf https://www.locationsmart.com/cms/resources/locationsmartpri...
- smsm42 8y agoAfter all the brouhaha with the Cambridge Analytics dataset, that only revealed data that people voluntarily submitted to a public service - I wonder if there's a congressional hearing about a service that allows to track anybody owning a cellphone (which is pretty much anybody) anytime, anywhere, with no recourse or opt-out? With heads of AT&T and other companies being interrogated by Congressmen, at least? And if not, why not?
- ssss11 8y agoNot so smart then.
- voctor 8y agoMaybe this is not a security vulnerability, but a feature, intentionally put here as a backdoor. This would not be the first time such behaviours are observed.
- zizek23 8y agoYou don't wake up suddenly in a totalitarian state. Total surveillance is one step away and once the infrastructure is in place it will be used. Commitment to basic values of privacy and human rights has been reduced to posturing against others and denial about what is happening at home. Untill there are proper protests and pushback the creep will continue and the useful idiots and the ignorant will continue to muddy the waters and dilute the threat only to slink back into the woodwork once the real consequences become visible. And with all encompassing surveillance even organizing protests and dissent will become difficult without the kind of sacrifices most people are unwilling to make. Just today there is story of a guy getting a knock on the door from the police [1] a few hours after posting about eating mushrooms on facebook. [1] https://munchies.vice.com/en_uk/article/gykbe3/cops-show-up-at-foragers-door-after-mistaking-morels-in-facebook-post-for-shrooms https://munchies.vice.com/en_uk/article/gykbe3/cops-show-up-...
- crtasm 8y agoI'm loving the Do Not Track header in your python script. Great work!
- kuon 8y agoI don't think the general public will care. I tried to warn people about security/surveillance for a while but people don't seem to care. I even used http://www.insecam.org/ http://www.insecam.org/ to show people their children might end on the Internet, they just say "I don't have a camera" in my house. But they are not grasping my point, which is that technology is invasive to a point no one imagined before. Soon the facial camera of your fridge used to authenticate new food order you make through amazon will be on insecam if are not careful. And of course, the most dangerous thing, is not accessing a camera, microphone or location at time T, but it's the whole history, years, even decades of history of your every move. Nobody is perfect, don't tell me you'd never be at a place you shouldn't have been. Information is power, those with access to that information will control the society as a whole.
- JepZ 8y agoSo we pay the carriers and they sell our locations to 3rd parties anyway? I can't think of any business for which it should be reasonable to make additional money by selling the users data. If a service is for free, I can understand that somehow the bills have to be paid and that selling data is an obvious option here. But if you paid for a service you normally don't expect the service provider to sell your data anyway. That kind of business should be illegal IMHO.
- aftbit 8y agoHow do I opt out of T-mobile sharing my location data with 3rd parties without a court order?