When you tell your phone to stop sharing your location, you expect it to honor your request, don't you? Unfortunately, that hasn't been entirely true with Android as of late.
Since the beginning of 2017, Android phones have been collecting the addresses of nearby cellular towers—even when location services are disabled—and sending that data back to Google. The result is that Google, the unit of Alphabet behind Android, has access to data about individuals’ locations and their movements that go far beyond a reasonable consumer expectation of privacy.
A Google spokesperson stressed that the tower info, known as Cell ID codes, wasn't being used and was tossed out as soon as it was received. The company had been "looking into" using the data to speed up message delivery. Also, Google has promised to end the behavior. Android phones will stop sending Cell ID by the end of November. Trust Us.
Police Use of ‘StingRay’ Cellphone Tracker Requires Search Warrant, Appeals Court Rules
A “StingRay II,” made by the Harris Corp., can redirect cellphone calls away from cell tower antennae and capture their identifying data and location. Police use them to find people. Some argue that that’s an invasion of privacy.
A device that tricks cellphones into sending it their location information and has been used quietly by police and federal agents for years, requires a search warrant before it is turned on, an appeals court in Washington ruled Thursday. It is the fourth such ruling by either a state appeals court or federal district court, and may end up deciding the issue unless the government takes the case to the U.S. Supreme Court or persuades the city’s highest court to reverse the ruling.
‘Stingray on Steroids’:Texas National Guard Spent Hundreds of Thousands on Stingray Equipment
The Texas National Guard last year spent more than $373,000 to install two of its DRT 1301C “portable receiver systems” in two RC-26 surveillance aircraft.
Unlike older stingray devices, the DRT 1301C are capable of capturing all of the content transferred from a user's device, Austin attorney Scott McCollough who serves on the board of the Austin chapter of Electronic Frontier Foundation told the publication.
Similar to controversial stingray devices, DRT’s systems—nicknamed “dirt boxes”—mimic cellphone towers, connecting to every smartphone within a specific area. Because they connect with all smartphones, it’s nearly impossible to avoid collecting private data from people who aren’t suspects, but just happen to be in the target area.
At one point the surveillance planes reportedly operated under a front company named Air Cerberus, but have since been converted to military registrations, which generally mask their flight routes and unique tail numbers. Asked whether the militia force had the authority to obtain warrants for arrests or surveillance, a Texas National Guard spokesperson told the Observer, “Our current supporting roles do not include arrest or law enforcement authorizations.” (... didn't answer the surveillance question)
In a 2014 story, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the U.S. Marshals Service had been secretly using "dirt boxes" from a small Cessna aircraft to locate fugitives. Equipment and training was supplied by the CIA, but some officials inside the U.S. Justice Department were concerned that the activity was illegal.
AP Uncovers More Than 100 FBI Spy Plane Flights, Originating From Shell Companies Located In Virginia
The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas. At least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, were mentioned in a federal budget document from 2009.
... Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they’re not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is used in only limited situations.
“These are not your grandparents’ surveillance aircraft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. Stanley said the flights are significant “if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft.”
Secret Cameras Record Baltimore’s Every Move From Above
Since January, police have been testing an aerial surveillance system adapted from the surge in Iraq. And they neglected to tell the public.
Since the beginning of the year, the Baltimore Police Department had been using the plane to investigate all sorts of crimes, from property thefts to shootings. The Cessna sometimes flew above the city for as many as 10 hours a day, and the public had no idea it was there.
A company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, based in Dayton, Ohio, provided the service to the police, and the funding came from a private donor. No public disclosure of the program had ever been made.... If a roadside bomb exploded while the camera was in the air, analysts could zoom in to the exact location of the explosion and rewind to the moment of detonation. Keeping their eyes on that spot, they could further rewind the footage to see a vehicle, for example, that had stopped at that location to plant the bomb. Then they could backtrack to see where the vehicle had come from, marking all of the addresses it had visited. They also could fast-forward to see where the driver went after planting the bomb—perhaps a residence, or a rebel hideout, or a stash house of explosives. More than merely identifying an enemy, the technology could identify an enemy network.
But, if a cop shoots a citizen the tape gets accidentally erased.
... McNutt often says that when he stares into the computer monitors, the dots moving along the sidewalks and streets are mere pixels to him. Nothing more. If anyone else wants to project identifying features onto them—sex, race, whatever—that’s their doing, not his.
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Cypher: The image translators work for the construct program - but there's way too much information to decode the Matrix. You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead. - Matrix - 1999
This Shadowy Company Is Flying Spy Planes Over US Cities
For six straight days in the middle of March, a small twin-propeller plane flew over Phoenix. Each evening, it picked two or three spots and circled for hours, flying at more than 17,000 feet. The plane was loaded with sophisticated surveillance equipment, including technology developed by the National Security Agency to track cell phones.
In June of last year, that same plane spent three weeks circling daily over Wilmington, North Carolina, carrying a state-of-the-art “persistent surveillance” camera that can monitor a large area continuously for hours at a time.
The Phoenix and Wilmington flights are among dozens tracked by BuzzFeed News that were flown by companies run by an obscure, Oklahoma-based private equity fund called Acorn Growth Companies. Acorn’s planes serve as the US military’s “A-Team” for aerial surveillance in Africa, including tracking suspected terrorists’ phones from the air. In the US, the planes sometimes take part in military exercises — as they were in Phoenix — helping troops practice raids on targets using the same phone-tracking technology.
At other times, Acorn serves commercial clients. The Wilmington flights, according to the company that made and operated the persistent surveillance camera, were run for two reasons: to demonstrate the technology’s value for traffic surveys, and to track vehicles going to and from retail outlets. This “commercial intelligence” would allow businesses to understand where their customers are driving from. The idea was to give retailers clues to help their marketing, so they can target mailings or other efforts to lure in customers from neighborhoods where people tend to shop at competing stores.
Acorn’s planes also circled regularly over Oklahoma City, flying from their home base of Wiley Post Airport. In 2013, when the FAA was considering closing the airport’s air traffic control tower, the city’s Department of Airports cited the company’s “classified defense contracts” to argue against the plan: “The defense contracts with Commuter Air Technology require 4 - 6 daily flights in and out of Wiley Post Airport,” it wrote in a memo to the FAA. “The closure of the control tower may prohibit these operations and cause the loss of these defense contracts.”
In 2016, the US military paid Commuter Air Technology more than $20 million to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in Africa. This surveillance “is conducted in full coordination with the host nations,” said Robyn Mack, a spokesperson for US Africa Command. Some countries wish to "manage their citizens".
Acorn’s diverse activities in these and other cities raise questions about how much data is being gathered from ordinary people who come under the visual and electronic gaze of sophisticated spy planes — and how that information is being used. ...
... Surveillance Aircraft are registered to the cities of Mesa and Phoenix in Arizona, the sheriffs of Orange and Los Angeles counties in California, and the Ohio State Highway Patrol. In July of last year, the Ohio plane showed up above Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, where it watched for “suspicious persons in immediate proximity to secure areas”
FCC Plan Would Give Internet Providers Power to Choose the Sites Customers See and Use
Federal regulators unveiled a plan Tuesday that would give Internet providers broad powers to determine what websites and online services their customers can see and use, and at what cost.