# Your rubbish talk contest



## getopt (Sep 2, 2022)

Content removed because not relevant to what followed.


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## ralphbsz (Sep 2, 2022)

This is not only California, but world wide. Matter-of-fact, in many jurisdictions it's much worse, as there nation-state organizations (such as the Chinese intelligence apparatus) have much better access to cell phone carriers.

Underlying this is a very difficult and troubling question: what is public and what is private? The radio waves emitted by a cell phone are pretty much by definition public. Anyone can relatively simply build a radio receiver which detects a cell phone's transmissions (without decoding the encrypted traffic, like voice or data). But there is enough information there to (a) know that a cell phone is present, (b) it's location with reasonable accuracy, and (c) being able distinguish different ones. That is exactly equivalent to me sitting at my front window, looking out at the public road, and seeing people walk by on the sidewalk: I can tell that there is a human walking by, I can tell where they are, and I can distinguish Alfred E. Neuman from Don Martin, just by their looks. And there is nothing preventing me from sharing that data: I can post of Facebook everytime I see Alfred or Don.

Where it gets troubling is this: Now imagine a town where every person sits at their front window, and continuously posts updates of where Alfred and Don are seen. Or say that the police department installs cameras at every street corner, tracking who is walking around where, and storing that (the faces of Alfred and Don are quite easily recognized, so it doesn't take much effort). Given that any private citizen can see Alfred and Don in public, and given that they have a free speech right to talk about that and remember it, why do we think that the police need to be prohibited from doing something that normal people can do? And if that logic seems to apply to optically recognizing faces (with cameras), why does it not extend to doing the same with cell phones and radio receivers?

In the US, a lot of this circles around the 4th amendment, prohibiting "unreasonable search and seizure". Is it a search if a cell phone app or radio receiver sees something that is in the public sphere anyway? Is it unreasonable that various law enforcement agencies (whether local police or intelligence) band together, to get efficiency of scale by bulk purchasing data from efficient commercial vendors?

But even if my hypothetical arguments above sound reasonable: This inexorably leads to a surveillance state. How do we prevent this? Should we poke out the eyes of any person who looks out of their front window? No. Do we need to hamstring the ability of law enforcement to fight crime? That's insane.

Let me tell you a little story. About 4 weeks ago, an ambulance and fire truck came to our neighborhood. All they knew was that a medical monitoring device (one of those high-tech wrist watches) had reported a person falling. The location was inaccurate by about 1/2 km, so they looked at the wrong place, and didn't find any fall victim. The phone number of the person who had fallen was unknown, for reasons of privacy protection. They left again, having been unable to locate the accident victim. About 3 hours later, the wife (looking for her husband when he was late for dinner) found him dead, near their house. In this particular case, it isn't clear that knowing location and identity accurately and quickly would have helped save his life; his injuries may have been too severe anyway. But this (extremely sad) story demonstrates that privacy has a real-world cost. Emergency response and law enforcement exist for a good reason, and they save lives and prevent crime. Finding a compromise between making them efficient and effective, and preventing a 1984-style totalitarian state is difficult. Undifferentiated anger doesn't make it any easier.


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## eternal_noob (Sep 2, 2022)

Resistance is futile.


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## Phishfry (Sep 2, 2022)

This is why I use Flip-phones. No tracking because they have no apps to download.

Enjoy your SMART Phones. Paying extra to be tracked. Who would have thought...

I wonder how much tower data my flipphone leaks.

If I remove my battery will the 'pattern of life' collection still persist?


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## covacat (Sep 2, 2022)

Man creates fake traffic jam on Google Maps by carting around 99 phones
					

A German artist outsmarts Google Maps by using a handcart full of smartphones to trick the app's algorithm into creating a virtual traffic jam.




					www.abc.net.au


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## Phishfry (Sep 2, 2022)

My boss drives 45 miles to work and was bragging about having a Apple Phone and Google Phone and how close they are in time due to traffic backups.

I told him I hate everything he said.

Waze tracks you.
Google Maps tracks you.
Apple Maps probably tracks you.

He has no problem with any of it.


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## Phishfry (Sep 2, 2022)

Even my local paper got in on this one:
Success lies in the secrecy​My post above illustrates this is a false narrative. People don't care.
They have 'nothing to hide'. So they give away their data.








						Virginia-based mass surveillance tool allows ‘patterns of life’ tracking without a warrant: ‘Success lies in the secrecy’
					

Police have used “Fog Reveal” to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices, and harnessed the data to create location analyses known among law enforcement as “patterns of life,” according to thousands of pages of records about the company.




					www.pilotonline.com


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## Phishfry (Sep 2, 2022)

What do ya think the US Navy thinks of maps like these:





						MarineTraffic: Global Ship Tracking Intelligence | AIS Marine Traffic
					

MarineTraffic Live Ships Map. Discover information and vessel positions for vessels around the world. Search the MarineTraffic ships database of more than 550000 active and decommissioned vessels. Search for popular ships globally. Find locations of ports and ships using the near Real Time ships...



					www.marinetraffic.com
				



You can watch the military do training off VACapes in realtime.
Yes they can turn their transponders off.

Same with some military aircraft. Many flights are on flightaware.
Also for towing targets and countermeasures it's all farmed out, FlightInternational or similar.
So you can watch realtime military maneuvers from your couch.
Patterns of military activity. For free.

Drug copter out with the infrared doing circling search patterns. No problem. Path is online.
Free Intelligence.


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## Phishfry (Sep 2, 2022)

Smart? Phones killed the nudist beaches too!









						Is the Internet Killing the Nude Beach?
					

Clothing-optional public spaces seem to be declining in popularity, especially among young people, whose relationship with nudity has been shaped by a lifetime online.




					www.theatlantic.com
				




*But the proliferation of smartphones has made photography harder to police and easier to distribute, effectively dissolving “private public space,”*


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## Crivens (Sep 2, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> He has no problem with any of it.


For these cases, I have two names:
Erich Mielke
Heinrich Himmler

Most get it at the first one. Those who don't get it at the second, I usually keep my distance.


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## ralphbsz (Sep 3, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> I wonder how much tower data my flipphone leaks.


The location of the phone is known to the cell service provider by triangulation, to within about 1/2km or so. That estimate is very rough, and depends on geography. In a dense urban area, just triangulation (without GPS) can be good to less than 100m. In very rural areas, where cell phone transmitters are very sparse (and the phone typically only communicates with one), the inaccuracy can be many km. In areas with very dense transmitters (for example inside buildings, if they have WiFi and cell phone repeaters) the accuracy can be several meters, good enough to guide people to conference rooms. Yes, there have been prototypes of navigation systems that rely solely on triangulation and work inside buildings, where GPS fails. One use I've seen demonstrated was so people in buildings can find the nearest restroom or fire escape.

In the US, every cell phone HAS TO (by law!) contain a GPS receiver, and HAS TO report the GPS location to the phone system when doing an emergency call (the 911 number). It does not have to report that accurate location otherwise, although the phone is free to do so. Interestingly, GPS location is not always all that accurate, in particular in densely populated areas, or inside buildings.



> If I remove my battery will the 'pattern of life' collection still persist?


Obviously not. Duh.


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## ralphbsz (Sep 3, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> He has no problem with any of it.


And if he drives near my house, I will also track him. At least as far away as I can see him. And if he drives the same roads that I take, I will see and track him.

If he has a problem with that, he'll have to kill me, and last I checked, killing people was illegal.

By the way, anyone know who the silver-colored Tesla model S is that has a California license plate "SYSTEMD"? I see it regularly on the way to work. It is not Lennart, because (a) Lennart doesn't live anywhere near me, and (b) I know what Lennart looks like, and the gentleman in this car doesn't look at all like Lennart. No, I have not made the effort to follow that car on public roads (which would be legal!) to see where he works. I know it is a male (from their looks only), but I won't tell anyone what gender the passenger is. Privacy is important, after all. And I might get that person in big trouble with their spouse if I disclose that the passenger wasn't the spouse.


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## Phishfry (Sep 14, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> So you can watch realtime military maneuvers from your couch.
> Patterns of military activity. For free.











						Twitter Trackers Jeopardize Military Aircraft
					

Adversaries no longer need to rely on expensive radars to find U.S. military aircraft. Accessibility of this information demands a review of U.S. military operational security practices.




					www.usni.org


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## ralphbsz (Sep 14, 2022)

In Los Angeles, a rap artist was murdered yesterday. He was eating lunch in a "bad part of town", and his girlfriend posted a picture of them on Instagram. The picture showed the rap star wearing a lot of expensive jewelry. The picture had a geotag in it, or the background or her description gave the location away, and a robber quickly decoded where the rap star was, drove over there, shot and killed the victim, and stole his jewelry. Search the web for "PnB Rock" to find details.


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## Crivens (Sep 14, 2022)

... we need to make "fieldcraft" a part of normal school lessons. This was just plain dumb.


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## bakul (Sep 14, 2022)

The robber could been eating at the restaurant or may have been alerted by someone else at the restaurant who noticed the rapper flash his jewellery, or could’ve been there coincidentally to hold up the restaurant or just eat and noticed the jewelry. Or it could’ve been a targeted killing. etc. Until the killer is caught we can only speculate. Many of these seem more plausible than the robber noticing the rapper’s girlfriend’s social media post and extracting any geo tag from it.


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## Phishfry (Sep 14, 2022)

I know my posts about military ops has little to do with smartphones.

I think the unintended tracking issue is very similar.

Especially coming from DOD. The true birthplace of the internet.
Its like their baby grew up and is now biting at their ankles.



> The information adversaries can derive from unsecured aviation data is far too revealing


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## Crivens (Sep 15, 2022)

Phishfry OpSec is hard these days. Did you know Ukraine is running some honeypots on dating apps? Chances are the pics you send hot ivanka contain exif data with gps. Or landmarks to triangulate your whereabouts with. And then the weather changes to a hard rain.


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## PMc (Sep 15, 2022)

My nav app works entirely offline. Full map of the planet fits in 64GB (and most people don't need the whole planet).


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## Phishfry (Sep 23, 2022)

Loran C never tracked me....








						Loran-C - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




I wonder what navigation system goes into missles attacked by active GPS denial systems..
Read ahead buffer system? Take last good coords and extrapolate?

I know the SR-71 had a celestial system.


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## Phishfry (Sep 28, 2022)

Can the genie be returned to the bottle?








						Senators push to reform police’s cellphone tracking tool sold by Virginia-based company
					

Civil rights lawyers and Democratic senators are pushing for legislation that would limit U.S. law enforcement agencies’ ability to buy cellphone tracking tools to follow people’s whereabouts, including back years in time, and sometimes without a search warrant.




					www.pilotonline.com
				



 I doubt it.

Look at GDPR (which governs how personal data of individuals in the EU may be processed and transferred)
Do Europeans feel this law restored privacy?


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## Crivens (Sep 28, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Can the genie be returned to the bottle?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Not really. Too many get away with ignoring it. But it can be of use to get at middle sized companies. What to do about the too-big-to-jail ones?


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## Phishfry (Sep 28, 2022)

Crivens said:


> What to do about the too-big-to-jail ones?


Letting them issue Sim cards certainly doesn't make me feel better.








						Cloudflare launches an eSIM to secure mobile devices
					

Cloudflare is launching new mobile services, including an eSIM, designed to help businesses better secure employees' smartphones.




					techcrunch.com


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## SirDice (Sep 28, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> I wonder what navigation system goes into missles attacked by active GPS denial systems..
> Read ahead buffer system? Take last good coords and extrapolate?











						Inertial navigation system - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## hunter0one (Sep 28, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> This is why I use Flip-phones. No tracking because they have no apps to download.
> 
> Enjoy your SMART Phones. Paying extra to be tracked. Who would have thought...


Probably going to be my route. I am American, I wonder if my old 3G-only flip phone will still work? Then again, my mom loves for us to use things like Life 360 which tells them exactly where you are and where you've been. I wish there was a FOSS alternative because it is handy to know where your loved ones are but that particular app is dangerous.

Last year I bought a cheap smartphone I knew could be rooted with LineageOS but its already breaking down and I get no service at all so its not really even being used as a phone. There's no saving grace in the world of smart devices.


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## W.hâ/t (Sep 28, 2022)

https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/

You guys might like this guy.
This is for those who doesn't ban youtube...

https://www.youtube.com/c/JordanPetersonVideos
https://www.youtube.com/c/JordanBPetersonClips


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## PMc (Sep 29, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Look at GDPR (which governs how personal data of individuals in the EU may be processed and transferred)
> Do Europeans feel this law restored privacy?


I doubt this is the purpose of the law. It appears the purpose is to suppress free speech and such. Example of the outcome:


			http://www.librelp.com/2013/06/tls-support-for-librelp.html


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