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It's a false dichotomy. Citizens can have useful smartphones while not being tracked by unwanted actors.

by js8 7mo ago

Lammy 7mo ago
Not with modern cellular and Wi-Fi tech we can't. Base stations literally “steer the beam” to follow you. Precise location spying is essential to the way they achieve such high throughput.
- throawayonthe 7mo ago
  we can't have privacy for mail contents. the post network literally "routes the package" via the address on the box. digging through your mail is essential to the way they achieve such delivery rates
  - Lammy 7mo ago
    Unfortunately also correct: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-ma... “Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States” We Await Silent Tristero's Empire
    - salawat 7mo ago
      That's different. That's only tracking to a granularity of a postally recognized address. News flash, that address isn't you. It's somewhere you probably are at some point, but it isn't you. Cellular network tracking and surveillance on the other hand... You can't really get around that problem without everything being designed with store & forward in mind.
- lo_zamoyski 7mo ago
  This confuses a technology used for the purpose of optimizing the performance of a technology with tracking for the purposes of selling you crap or keeping tabs on your location for unwarranted reasons. Huge difference. The former does not entail the latter.
  - Lammy 7mo ago
    I'm not confusing anything. I'm saying that even if you completely eliminated the latter, your privacy will still be compromised by the former. When “The Government” is the entity wanting to know where you are, it doesn't matter which private company they compel to participate. They will just go for the path of least resistance, and as long as your location data is recorded by something, somewhere, they will get it.
    - lurking_swe 7mo ago
      > They will just go for the path of least resistance, and as long as your location data is recorded by something, somewhere, they will get it. There is the real problem. It’s not a tech issue. It’s a people problem. Most governments don’t actually _respect_ and _serve_ their people. They see them as cattle to be monitored and manipulated.
  - ux266478 7mo ago
    Actually it is physically impossible to have any wireless comms at all without giving away a unique identity that can be tracked. Not unless you're going to replace your phone's radio every time you send some data. Every single transmitter has a unique fingerprint that can be identified relatively easily. It's called Specific Emitter Identification. If at any point a fingerprint is associated with your identity, it's trivial for a state actor to know exactly who and where you are every time your phone transmits something. They don't have to know what you're sending. The electromagnetic spectrum is not a private medium.
    - Retric 7mo ago
      How things are aren’t the only way things could be. A receiver could use a new random ID to call “collect” to a secure third party network which agrees to pay for the base stations bandwidth for every connection. The station then responds to the base station yep ID X’s bandwidth will be paid by vert tel. Obviously, this doesn’t eliminate the possibility of tracking as you’d want the cell to have multiple connections created and abandoned randomly, but it does remove that ID you’re concerned with.
- kelnos 7mo ago
  You're missing the point. Just because it's possible for that tracking to happen, it doesn't mean it has to happen. We could have strong privacy laws. Mobile carriers (and anyone else) could be required to not store this data at all, or at the very least delete it after a short time. We could have mandated surprise audits to ensure this actually happens. We could have significant, company-ending fines for non-compliance. We don't, and that sucks. But it's not a binary choice between "you can carry your phone everywhere" or "you can avoid having your movements stored in a database indefinitely". There are other options that we as a society could choose, if we could get our acts together. Sure, the opsec ideal is that you don't have to trust other parties in the first place. But honestly, for the vast majority of people, that sort of thing doesn't matter, and having strong, readily-enforced privacy laws would be more than sufficient to keep people safe and secure.
  - Defletter 7mo ago
    One problem is that such information can be useful for non surveillance purposes, for example: how they knew certain roads were congested before GPS was the mobile networks. I personally do not see anything nefarious about this, nor would I necessarily wish to see this kind of information as uncollectable. Such things are different from tracking specific individuals, yes, but it's not that different. It then becomes a matter of what, how much, and for what purposes the information can be collected, which can be somewhat moot since the government in all likelihood will give themselves an opt out anyway. None of this is to say that we shouldn't try, or that it's futile, but rather that it's a daunting task: the only way to really defeat this is to not only regulate private entities but also the government itself. And the only way to do that is to make such surveillance political suicide. And the only way to do that is to get the people to care about privacy. Here in the UK, the public has more or less come to accept CCTV cameras being everywhere, with the government now introducing AI face-scanning cameras, which has not been met with much public resistance. And so I do have to echo what @everdrive said: "We've done this to ourselves". Whether it's about convenience or apathy or whatever, we've had the means to object to this and we haven't.
- shimman 7mo ago
  Of course we can, these are all non physical properties of the universe. We can design things to not enable tracking or advertising, we just don't because the public isn't allowed to provide public solutions so we're forced to use malware by corporations that profit off of the malware. Do people seriously forget that humans design with an explicit purpose? That purpose can change you know... edit: needs to be stated that the last data privacy law the US passed was regarding video rentals in the 80s.

It's a false dichotomy. Citizens can have useful smartphones while not being tracked by unwanted actors.

by js8 7mo ago

It's a false dichotomy. Citizens can have useful smartphones while not being tracked by unwanted actors.

Lammy 7mo ago

Not with modern cellular and Wi-Fi tech we can't. Base stations literally “steer the beam” to follow you. Precise location spying is essential to the way they achieve such high throughput.

throawayonthe 7mo ago
we can't have privacy for mail contents. the post network literally "routes the package" via the address on the box. digging through your mail is essential to the way they achieve such delivery rates
- Lammy 7mo ago
  Unfortunately also correct: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-ma... “Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States” We Await Silent Tristero's Empire
  - salawat 7mo ago
    That's different. That's only tracking to a granularity of a postally recognized address. News flash, that address isn't you. It's somewhere you probably are at some point, but it isn't you. Cellular network tracking and surveillance on the other hand... You can't really get around that problem without everything being designed with store & forward in mind.
lo_zamoyski 7mo ago
This confuses a technology used for the purpose of optimizing the performance of a technology with tracking for the purposes of selling you crap or keeping tabs on your location for unwarranted reasons. Huge difference. The former does not entail the latter.
- Lammy 7mo ago
  I'm not confusing anything. I'm saying that even if you completely eliminated the latter, your privacy will still be compromised by the former. When “The Government” is the entity wanting to know where you are, it doesn't matter which private company they compel to participate. They will just go for the path of least resistance, and as long as your location data is recorded by something, somewhere, they will get it.
  - lurking_swe 7mo ago
    > They will just go for the path of least resistance, and as long as your location data is recorded by something, somewhere, they will get it. There is the real problem. It’s not a tech issue. It’s a people problem. Most governments don’t actually _respect_ and _serve_ their people. They see them as cattle to be monitored and manipulated.
- ux266478 7mo ago
  Actually it is physically impossible to have any wireless comms at all without giving away a unique identity that can be tracked. Not unless you're going to replace your phone's radio every time you send some data. Every single transmitter has a unique fingerprint that can be identified relatively easily. It's called Specific Emitter Identification. If at any point a fingerprint is associated with your identity, it's trivial for a state actor to know exactly who and where you are every time your phone transmits something. They don't have to know what you're sending. The electromagnetic spectrum is not a private medium.
  - Retric 7mo ago
    How things are aren’t the only way things could be. A receiver could use a new random ID to call “collect” to a secure third party network which agrees to pay for the base stations bandwidth for every connection. The station then responds to the base station yep ID X’s bandwidth will be paid by vert tel. Obviously, this doesn’t eliminate the possibility of tracking as you’d want the cell to have multiple connections created and abandoned randomly, but it does remove that ID you’re concerned with.
kelnos 7mo ago
You're missing the point. Just because it's possible for that tracking to happen, it doesn't mean it has to happen. We could have strong privacy laws. Mobile carriers (and anyone else) could be required to not store this data at all, or at the very least delete it after a short time. We could have mandated surprise audits to ensure this actually happens. We could have significant, company-ending fines for non-compliance. We don't, and that sucks. But it's not a binary choice between "you can carry your phone everywhere" or "you can avoid having your movements stored in a database indefinitely". There are other options that we as a society could choose, if we could get our acts together. Sure, the opsec ideal is that you don't have to trust other parties in the first place. But honestly, for the vast majority of people, that sort of thing doesn't matter, and having strong, readily-enforced privacy laws would be more than sufficient to keep people safe and secure.
- Defletter 7mo ago
  One problem is that such information can be useful for non surveillance purposes, for example: how they knew certain roads were congested before GPS was the mobile networks. I personally do not see anything nefarious about this, nor would I necessarily wish to see this kind of information as uncollectable. Such things are different from tracking specific individuals, yes, but it's not that different. It then becomes a matter of what, how much, and for what purposes the information can be collected, which can be somewhat moot since the government in all likelihood will give themselves an opt out anyway. None of this is to say that we shouldn't try, or that it's futile, but rather that it's a daunting task: the only way to really defeat this is to not only regulate private entities but also the government itself. And the only way to do that is to make such surveillance political suicide. And the only way to do that is to get the people to care about privacy. Here in the UK, the public has more or less come to accept CCTV cameras being everywhere, with the government now introducing AI face-scanning cameras, which has not been met with much public resistance. And so I do have to echo what @everdrive said: "We've done this to ourselves". Whether it's about convenience or apathy or whatever, we've had the means to object to this and we haven't.
shimman 7mo ago
Of course we can, these are all non physical properties of the universe. We can design things to not enable tracking or advertising, we just don't because the public isn't allowed to provide public solutions so we're forced to use malware by corporations that profit off of the malware. Do people seriously forget that humans design with an explicit purpose? That purpose can change you know... edit: needs to be stated that the last data privacy law the US passed was regarding video rentals in the 80s.