RevecoursLisa
404 MediaBREAKING: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has bought access to a surveillance tool that is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data from hundreds of millions of mobile phones.
Mark R. Stoneman@404mediaco I hope they drown in or choke on the data. (I don't know which metaphor works better.)
FediThing 
Just remembering all those tech fans from the 2010s when privacy fans started complaining about data leakage/harvesting in apps and devices: "You're worrying too much, when would an authoritarian government ever get into power? It could never happen here."
7heoLeaving that here for people to remember to leave their trackers at home:
A FOSS ROM will not necessarily save you: while qualcomm's XTRA daemon runs in userspace and not as a firmware as previously reported, it might very well be included in a FOSS ROM (like the stock Fairphone one).
Of course, this says nothing about trackers in any proprietary blob firmware, which are definitely a possibility (and a more advantageous one on many respects).
Andres@7heo @404mediaco This says it's in the OS, not the firmware. Clearly occurring in some Free Software OSes, but it's not a given that it will happen in all of them (and Graphene apparently fixed it?)
@Andres4NY @404mediaco this is correct, and I actually remember now, my bad for posting wrong information, and thank you *very much* for allowing me to correct myself. I will edit the incriminating post. 😇
That being said, all we know is that this particular tracker is in userspace. This does not invalidate the possibility of trackers in firmware (be it blobs coming with the OS or even microcode).
@7heo @404mediaco Absolutely something to be vigilant about. We need more FOSS alternatives that aggressively check for this kind of thing..
@Andres4NY @404mediaco absolutely. I have such a project on my todo list.
I just hope to get to that point before I die. 😅
Noel KellyThis solidifies what I've been thinking recently.
At some stage I'll go back to pre-1996 phone arrangements. A landline and a beeper*. The beeper is why I resisted a mobile until 1996, I realised how intrusive on attention mobiles** would become.
* work related, week nights, 1 week in 4. I'm retired, work related no longer exists.
** a device with a SIM, as opposed to a PC/laptop/tablet with LAN access. One tells where you are, the other say whether you're at home or not.
Peter Lichota@404mediaco
Haaaaa Hahahaaaa... And those fucking MAGAt fools were convinced into believing that Bill Gates developed a tiny micro-chip to put into the covid vaccine to ummmmm,,,, TRACK THEM!!..... Hahahahaaaaa!!
Haaaaa Hahahaaaa... And those fucking MAGAt fools were convinced into believing that Bill Gates developed a tiny micro-chip to put into the covid vaccine to ummmmm,,,, TRACK THEM!!..... Hahahahaaaaa!!