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It's unbelievable that at&t / verizon / tmobile / uscellular / sprint would freely make this available to overseas companies / just anyone, no? Or am I wrong?
by x0x0 12y ago
It's unbelievable that at&t / verizon / tmobile / uscellular / sprint would freely make this available to overseas companies / just anyone, no? Or am I wrong? I mean, those companies are scum, but damn.
Verint, which also has substantial operations in Israel, declined to comment
for this story. It says in the marketing brochure that it does not use
SkyLock against U.S. or Israeli phones, which could violate national laws.
But several similar systems, marketed in recent years by companies based in
Switzerland, Ukraine and elsewhere, likely are free of such limitations.
At The Post’s request, telecommunications security researcher Tobias Engel
used the techniques described by the marketing documents to determine the
location of a Post employee who used an AT&T phone and consented to the
tracking. Based only on her phone number, Engel found the Post employee’s
location, in downtown Washington, to within a city block — a typical level
of precision when such systems are used in urban areas.
But apparently SS7 -- the network-to-network connection -- freely lets you query anyone's last cell tower. Un-fucking-believable.
- bzz01 12y agoI've seen these talks from CCC few years ago, tried that myself (on myself) and SS7 only gave MSC id, which is wayy more coarse than cell tower level -- like, 1M customers per MSC (still a privacy concern of course). But that city block level location thing seems like it is something more sophisticated.
- shard972 12y agoIf you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.
- symfrog 12y agoI have seen this sentiment posted often when privacy concerns are raised. It implies a deeply flawed notion that as long as you don't have anything to hide then the privacy violations are not of concern. In reality the systematic break down of privacy and systematic increase of power to those who are committing them eventually leads to oppression and near total control. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/stasi-files-revisited-the-banalities-and-betrayals-of-life-in-east-germany-a-659708.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/stasi-files-revi...
- SeanDav 12y agoThis is naive in the extreme. Your online opinions and other data are potentially stored forever and trivially accessible to anyone. Have you ever expressed an opinion about politics, religion, terrorism, abortion or anything potentially divisive? Well in 10 years time the laws could have changed and those legal, innocent remarks you made 10 years ago could potentially land you in a lot of trouble. What is legal and normal now may be illegal and dangerous later and the then government could go back and look for "troublemakers" by examining old data to check for subversive comments. Good luck explaining your comments from 15 years ago when you get dragged off to a secret court for "terrorist" behaviour based on comments and opinions of many years ago. What about supposedly innocent tracking data. Suppose you had to visit the dentist several times in quick succession and suppose your dentist office was located very near to a known terrorist cell. Now you are in a database of people to watch. Several years later you have to make repeat visits to some other location which by sheer coincidence is near another terrorist cell. You are now a hot hit and this triggers a series of events starting with the IRS doing a full audit on you and your friends /family potentially followed by much worse. This is not science fiction but easily plausible. The more data you have, the easier it is to establish causal relationships which are not real, but could have real consequences when some government or other organization takes an interest in you.
- atmosx 12y agoI guess you leave the door open when you go to the toilet, because after all, you have nothing to hide.
- inportb 12y agoI can appreciate your point, but this is a poor analogy. There are people who do exactly that which you find objectionable, and cultures in which it is perfectly acceptable.
- azunds 12y agoHaven't you heard of Russian toilets? http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/02/article-2550427-1B25997500000578-502_634x445.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/02/article-2550427-1B...
- jodrellblank 12y agoMay I have your Amazon, and Paypal login usernames and passwords, please? Unless you've got something to hide that you're worried about...? Clearly, hiding anything is evil and people hiding anything are isomorphic with terrorists. :|
- ss7 12y agoThere are dozen of companies providing services in this space. Many online credit card transactions are verified these days by doing a location lookup on the SS7 network, correlating the card holder phone location with the card holder current IP address (where the transaction is coming from). Just one example: https://www.google.com/patents/US20130030934 https://www.google.com/patents/US20130030934 . SS7 is still the wild west, just like the Internet was in the early 90's or telecom was in 2600Hz era. Everything and anyone on the network is trusted blindly.