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Texas State Police Gear Up for Expansion of Surveillance Tech
- maxclark 2y agoReminds me a a city in the PNW using outdoor APs to track people. Doesn’t matter if you’re on the free WiFi they still get your movement.
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoYes. Carry a cell sized Faraday bag.
- advisedwang 2y agoKinda defeats the point of having a cell phone tho
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoNot for me. But I grew up without them so…
- advisedwang 2y agoWhat are you doing with a cell phone that doesn't require it to be connected to cellular service?
- WhyNotHugo 2y agoMapping, navigation, listening to music, playing videogames, music instrument tuner. There are plenty of usages which don't require Internet/Cellular. I often walk out of home with an old iPhone which doesn't have a SIM card and it does everything that I need it to. The only thing that doesn't work is browsing the Internet or Messaging.
- eslaught 2y agoYou don't trust your own phone's airplane mode to shut the cell modem off?
- scinadier 2y agoYou do?
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoYes. At certain times.
- michaelmrose 2y agoIt doesn't. The baseband is still active and still responds to towers to a degree.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y agoWould the FCC and FAA permit that?
- michaelmrose 2y agoI don't understand the question. We are talking about the way it in fact works. I'm guessing that nobody at the FAA or FCC has any misunderstanding regarding this fact. Also phones don't meaningfully actually interfere with modern avionics. If your safety on the flight actually depended on hundreds of people clicking a button consistently every time the majority of planes wouldn't make it.
- hypeatei 2y ago[flagged]
- morkalork 2y agoMany cities have scanners that track cellphones via Bluetooth for monitoring traffic congestion.
- Onavo 2y ago[flagged]
- api 2y agoRepublicans/conservatives being the party of small government and individual liberty is kind of dead, if it ever really was serious in the first place. During the Cold War era there was kind of an uneasy alliance between actual-libertarians and conservatives against authoritarian leftism and Marxism. National conservatism and MAGA are kind of an explicit rebuke of that alliance. The model is now more like Orban's Hungary: big government in service of right-wing goals. This shift really started during the Bush II era. I remember seeing the writing on the wall back then that if the right couldn't win its culture war democratically it would abandon democracy, and if freedom meant too many people doing things they didn't like they would abandon freedom. Actual-libertarians are kind of orphaned right now and may become a wing of the Democratic Party... at least the ones who aren't antivax conspiritainment kooks. Those will probably remain permanently orphaned or eventually follow the libertarian-to-alt-right pipeline and become fascists. This is a weird time for small government pro-individual-liberty libertarians. On one hand many things that such people have fought for like drug decriminalization and LGBTQ+ rights are winning, at least in many US states. On the other hand the movement itself is on the ropes being pounded from both the authoritarian left and the authoritarian right, both of which have experienced surges in the last decade or so. Saying you are a 'liberal' in this sense in 2024 is deeply unpopular and will get you attacked from both sides. I think it's anxiety over change. Any time you have a lot of change happening the instinctive human behavior is to grab hold of a big strong (usually) man to protect you. You're seeing this globally right now: Trump, Putin, Orban, Xinpeng, Maduro, etc.
- gcanyon 2y agoI was an actual libertarian once upon a time. The more I read about the actual function of government, structure, and just “civilization,” the less I was able to hold on to my libertarian values. Now I’m a ridiculously liberal democrat, still with some core libertarian beliefs that I think should hold, but which don’t work in practice.
- morninglight 2y agoAll the surveillance is done with American made hardware and software.\s
- hsnewman 2y agoSo glad I left Texas after 65 years.
- moate 2y agoIf you think Texas is the only state/federal law enforcement jurisdiction contracting with these types of services, I have terrible new for you…
- xmzx 2y agoEven all surveillance being equal, Texas has demonstrated it uses its powers in vastly more nefarious ways against marginalized groups, notably women and Latinos and that's just in these past few months.
- wakawaka28 2y agoI'm intrigued. Can you give me some examples of how this is being used against those groups disproportionately?
- selectodude 2y agohttps://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/23/texas-ken-paxton-vote-fraud-investigation/ https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/23/texas-ken-paxton-vot...
- wakawaka28 2y agoSounds like investigating actual crimes. Unless you know for a fact that only Latinos are investigated for these crimes, or they are disproportionately investigated (out of all the people committing such fraud in that jurisdiction), you're looking at it all wrong. But thanks for trying.
- anonfordays 2y agoSo glad I moved to Texas after 65 years.
- dylan604 2y ago"Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products." It's these type of examples that show just how bad tracking and data harvesting is being used beyond the described use by whatever is doing the hoovering of data. The fact this is something that can be sold is beyond ridiculous. If you collect it for internal use is totally different from collecting for the explicit purpose of selling to others.
- advael 2y agoI don't think it's possible to craft regulation such that companies collecting data for "internal use" can't abuse it. It's so easy to create plausibly deniable ways to move data around. In ML research we get a lot of "anonymized" data for example, which is ridiculous because even pretty primitive statistical methods can usually use such data to uniquely identify people, let alone the inference techniques in widespread usage in industry today In theory it could be different, in practice it simply isn't. If we want any kind of privacy law, "internal use" or "legitimate interest" or whatever nonsense the data brokers deploy to pretend there's some way to do this that isn't unethical is a smokescreen and a loophole in every context, and we should ban the harvesting of that data regardless of its intended use
- dylan604 2y agoI'm much less concerned about if 'you collect it, you use it' situations. It's the companies that build an app with a psuedo purpose whose real purpose is to collect data for reselling later. Collecting data for the sole purpose of selling to others should be regulated into oblivion.
- advael 2y agoOkay, so we ban selling data and then people who want it will buy or even fund breaches instead. Massive breaches will likely become more common, because that's how driving valuable stuff into a black market always works, and companies who aggregate data already do a shit job protecting said data and face negligible consequences from regulators or markets for this. Even the press will happily blame the constant stream of leaked data on unnamed "hackers" every single time I also expect to see a shift to buying more "data-driven insights" from big data aggregators, which in practice will mean the same thing as buying the data means now, just with the middlemen rearranged slightly Governments will still be able to subpeona the data in ways that route around human rights and on the rare occasions where this comes to light, "national security" and the need to fight whatever war - whether against a concrete nation or organization or an abstract concept - they believe will most muddy the waters to cite
- declan_roberts 2y ago$1 million a year for 5 years? They probably spend 10x that just on their gmail storage in a year. I was expecting some big scary number or software, but it's pretty boring technology and contract.
- mojomark 2y agoAs a U.S. Citizen who's spent stints in Texas over the course of several decades, while I jave friends there, it's clear that they are following in the footsteps of China. They are welcoming an autocratic surveillance state. Stripping freedom of movement and rights to your own body, one by one. It'd be healthy if they just ceceded. Kind of like the a reverse Taiwan situation. Sorry Chip and JoJo, I think you're about to slip off the USA map, nit that the rest is much better.
- briandear 2y ago[flagged]
- pixl97 2y ago>You can start businesses easily in Texas. You don’t have to get permission to cut down a tree in your own yard like you do in California. Lol, wtf are you talking about. A huge number of municipalities have laws around business regulations and around cutting trees. In addition most new houses in Texas are built in HOA's that have a significant number of rules. >There is a very good reason most tech companies in California are incorporated in Deleware. Taxes and well defined legal law that doesn't change on how a random judge feels on a particular day, and law that is tilted toward business needs. >And freedom of movement? https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/09/texas-abortion-transgender-care-outside-state-borders/ https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/09/texas-abortion-trans... It's leaving the state that said state is looking at punishing you for. You are really sucking up way too much propaganda and respouting it without understanding what you're talking about.
- cmxch 2y ago> A huge number of municipalities have laws around business regulations and around cutting trees > In addition most new houses in Texas are built in HOA's that have a significant number of rules. Both exist in California on top of California regulations. What you don’t have in Texas is all the red tape that is required to build, live in, or rent a house. Not do you have the excessive regulatory apparatus that California has for businesses - whether to hire, fire, or retain talent. > It's leaving the state that said state is looking at punishing you for. Which is done to good people via abuse of California red flag laws. It used to be done via extraterritorial taxation.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41405789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41405789
- kevinventullo 2y agoIsn’t this stuff fairly easy to circumvent as an individual by disabling location services on your phone? There’s still wifi positioning, but at least on iPhone I think that’s opt in. That leaves cell tower triangulation which I believe is only good to within a mile or so, right? I guess if you really don’t want to be found, put your phone on airplane mode or get a burner.
- flanbiscuit 2y agoA mile or so in a big congested city might make it difficult to find someone, but we're talking about spread out rural areas near the Texas/Mexico border where there are less people per square mile. But even the DFW area is huge and spread out. Maybe it's plausible?
- akira2501 2y agoWhat you really want is noise. You want your phone to generate a bunch of additional fake data. So much so that anyone who collects it will have no ability to tease out the real data from the fake data.
- maronato 2y agoWhen your phone downloads stuff, their servers can see your IP. While IPs may not give very specific locations by themselves, the fact that your IP may change as you move around helps a lot to narrow it down. Collect data for a few days to learn schedules, throw in some more specific data purchased from ISPs, other fingerprints, plot it on top of an actual map with roads and buildings, and you’ve got a very good guess of where specific people are, where they live and work, and how they move around. Correlate that with other people’s data and eventually you’ll be able to guess who they live and hang with.
- pnw 2y agoI don't see how this system can track a modern iOS device given Apple's deprecation of IDFA. Likewise, the Wifi MAC address on iOS is randomized by default. The only non-randomized identifier is Bluetooth AFAIK. What am I missing?
- WhyNotHugo 2y agoLast year I downloaded a payment app (Alipay) which required me to sign up. My phone number was pre-filled in the registration screen. Clearly iOS was providing the app with some API to query my current phone number, and was disclosing it without my explicit consent.
- mu53 2y agoBrowser fingerprinting is insanely sophisticated, and I am sure that apps have sophisticated techniques as well. When you pool the data together, it’s easy to correlate. Plus, IMEI numbers can be used by carriers, and that is a very solid identifier per phone. When you operate at that level, tracking is very easy. ATT has been selling this data for years
- advisedwang 2y agoA few possible sources: - malware on phones (even though apps are supposed to only get anonymous information, there are ways to workaround it. For one a app can just ask your name and many people will put it in.) - cell phone companies selling the data (see for evidence they do this https://www.vice.com/en/article/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-dollars-located-phone-microbilt-zumigo-tmobile/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/i-gave-a-bounty-hunter-300-d...) Bear in mind these companies advertising a capability doesn't mean it works on every target.
- FollowingTheDao 2y agoIt seems the place to focus is on the telcos and the cell phone makers. Boycott? But how? Next phone will have GrapheneOS or e/os. But that is just me. Seems like most people don not know about all this or are so locked into to a platform it is impossible to get them to change. The Government is so controlled by corporations we cannot depend on the politicians either. Might be time to just sit back and watch.
- arnaudsm 2y agoMany banking apps won't work on custom roms, which can be painful. Open source OSes are getting cornered. Just like self hosted email servers that are getting blocked by many email providers nowadays
- hellojesus 2y agoThe issue is that a lot of apps are starting to require Play Integrity (used to be SafetyNet). Thankfully my banks haven't made the move, and I happily use grapheneos with a secondary profile that has Google play services installed.
- peepeepoopoo82 2y ago[flagged]
- xyst 2y ago> Cobwebs Technologies, which was founded in Israel in 2014 by three former members of Israeli military special units TX lege been very friendly towards Israel government. Israeli government also has tight controls over who has access to their tech (ie, no sales to non friendly entities). In wake of Roe v Wade repeal, TX “trigger law” on abortion, and Project 2025. We all know this is really going to be used to track “abortion traffickers”. Let’s hope this election doesn’t go that way though.
- beefnugs 2y agoWhat a load of wrong: pegasus was specificly proven to be sold to all the wrong people, even israel enemies
- smrtinsert 2y agoSurveillance will be the death of the cell "phone". What are the arguments for bringing your phone with you? I'm imagining a future where politicized geofencing has observed people gathering together and is prosecuted precisely becaused it was geofenced. It's mindboggling and there has to be other solutions convenience technology that do not sacrifice privacy.
- snakeyjake 2y ago> Tangles is an artificial intelligence-powered web platform that scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark web. Ah. A scam.