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Privacy Businesses Government

Motorola, Known For Cellphones, is Fast Becoming a Major Player in Government Surveillance (nbcnews.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the whatever-floats-the-boat dept.
Jon Schuppe, reporting for NBC News: The surveillance tools have been installed in schools and public housing, deployed on roads and public transit, and worn by police officers. They've been developed by an array of technology firms competing for government business. And many are now owned by a company seeking to grab a bigger piece of a booming market. Motorola, a brand typically associated with cellphones and police radios, has joined the race among tech firms to deliver new ways of monitoring the public. Since 2017, the Chicago-based tech company -- now known as Motorola Solutions, after Motorola spun off its mobile phone business -- has invested $1.7 billion to support or acquire companies that build police body cameras; train cameras to spot certain faces or behavior; sift through video for suspicious people; and track the movement of cars by their license plates.

By consolidating these tools within a single corporation, and potentially combining them into a single product, Motorola Solutions is boosting its stature in the surveillance industry -- and amplifying concerns about the government's growing power to watch people almost anywhere they go. "Your privacy is more protected when information about you is scattered among agencies and entities. When all that is unified under one roof, that sharpens the privacy issues," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union, where he researches technology's impact on privacy. "I don't know exactly what kind of synergies a company like Motorola Solutions might get from assembling all these pieces, but in general it's a scary prospect."
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Motorola, Known For Cellphones, is Fast Becoming a Major Player in Government Surveillance More

Motorola, Known For Cellphones, is Fast Becoming a Major Player in Government Surveillance

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  • US companies have found there is more money to be made in being evil...well government sanctioned evil anyway.

  • Might as well... (Score:3)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @07:46PM (#59263456)
    They weren't making any money making cell phones. Might as well go all in on the police radio side.

  • We are living in a post-privacy world (Score:5, Interesting)

    by risc8088 ( 876186 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @07:54PM (#59263476)

    If you are in a vehicle heres the ways you can be tracked:

    1. Your cellphone
    2. Traffic cameras
    3. Tire pressure monitoring (TPM) radio signal (mandatory)
    4. Vehicle GPS
    5. Vehicle WiFi
    6. Vehicle Bluetooth
    7. Vehicle diagnostic RF
    8. Satellite imagery
    9. Dash cams from other vehicles

    Did I miss anything?

    Anyway whats the point of all this tracking? Well one could argue security, and profit. Do the benefits outweigh the cost of privacy? I guess we'll find out! :D

    • Yeah, #2 was supposed to be ???. And everyone knows #3 is always profit.

      I don't know what all the rest of these steps are about. How am I supposed to get rich like that?

    • Re:We are living in a post-privacy world (Score:4, Interesting)

      by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer.earthlink@net> on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @08:22PM (#59263560)

      If you are in a vehicle heres the ways you can be tracked:

      1. Your cellphone
      2. Traffic cameras
      3. Tire pressure monitoring (TPM) radio signal (mandatory)
      4. Vehicle GPS
      5. Vehicle WiFi
      6. Vehicle Bluetooth
      7. Vehicle diagnostic RF
      8. Satellite imagery
      9. Dash cams from other vehicles

      Did I miss anything?

      10. License plates
      The cameras are useful to see the plates but it's difficult to transfer a car description accurately by text or voice without a license plate. Pick most any model of vehicle and factory paint color and there will be many matching that description in any sufficiently large population. This gets more difficult with the large number of vehicles that share a common body style, and manufacturers that change little to nothing on the body style and paint choices for years.

      It's not illegal (yet) to strip your vehicles of these electronic tracking systems but a failure to have a license plate will make your vehicle stick out and get you stopped for questioning.

      11. Vehicle cell phone, although this might just be an extension of #4 and #1 as GPS alone isn't much of a tracking problem as it only receives. To get your position known means transmitting this somehow, and a car with a phone in it will have GPS to comply with E911.

      Anyway whats the point of all this tracking? Well one could argue security, and profit. Do the benefits outweigh the cost of privacy? I guess we'll find out! :D

      Those who exchange freedom for safety deserve neither, to paraphrase a certain Dr. Franklin.

      The government is not under any obligation to provide for your safety. Thinking that the government makes you safe is foolish and dangerous, for many reasons. Those that want safety can try to get it from the government, then they will get a surprise when the government doesn't uphold their end of the deal.

      • It is illegal to remove the TPMS system from your car: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nh... [nhtsa.gov]

        Most vehicles made after 2007 in the USA are broadcasting a unique identifier at about the 315 mhz range and can be tracked because its not mandated to be encrypted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        I agree with your #11

        I think at this point when it comes to privacy people either have their heads in the sand or are ignorant. Or maybe people just don't care anymore. I mean people face-tweet every detail of their lives to

        • It is illegal to remove the TPMS system from your car

          Where is that stated in the PDF you gave? I didn't read the entire thing but did some keyword searches and went over some sections I thought might be relevant. I found nothing to back up your claim.

          Then again, even if it is illegal then how is anyone going to enforce this? Would anyone bother to enforce this?

          then a big event will happen that will make society realize that action needs to be taken

          Action? You mean like removing license plates?

          If people remove their license plates, and I'm thinking this just might happen, then I'm thinking it would be less about privacy but more about too high

          • Removing license plates is an interesting idea and would be pretty effective especially against local law enforcement in non urban areas. Once drones saturate the sky and this information is relayed and available to them effectively then I don't think license plates will even be necessary though.

            I think this is a consumer product but it gives the general idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        • "when it comes to privacy people either have their heads in the sand or are ignorant."

          Or perhaps people just realize they live in a tyrannical police state, and prefer not to be tossed in the gulag.

          Let's see - what happened to National Hero Edward Snowden? Oh yeah, he's still stuck in frozen Russia unable to return home without getting immediately disappeared into a torture camp.

    • I grew up in the private world. So far post-privacy means it's easier to catch criminals and the scum bags who make life bad for the rest of us. Red light runners, people who destroy private property, etc. My next car is going to have a dash cam

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Agripa ( 139780 )

        I grew up in the private world. So far post-privacy means it's easier to catch criminals and the scum bags who make life bad for the rest of us. Red light runners, people who destroy private property, etc. My next car is going to have a dash cam

        I grew up in a world that lacked civil assets forfeiture. But law enforcement still preyed on civilians; it just was not documented as well.

        I have no problems with individual dash cameras. I have a problem with ubiquitous surveillance.

    • Have you seen person of interest watching it again after a few years. ...

    • YOU caused this. Deliberately!

      There always have been, are, and will be, dicks and totalitarian assholes.
      But you started to take them seriously, letting them do their thing, and even *openly proclaiming their dominance over you*!

      You either don't get the mind games *at all*, or you are a true born gloveling SM slave.

      As a German, I am always reminded that this was how the Nazis came to power too. There was just nobody going 'NO! Bad Nazi! You don't get to do that!" and most just going "Oh well, the Nazis win.

      • Welcome my son
        Welcome to the machine
        Where have you been?
        It's alright we know where you've been!

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • More or less, aint it so?

  • All the good parts of Motorola have long since left the building. RIP. I'm gonna pour a 40-ouncer on my Mac Quadra.
  • PRISM brands?
  • I mean, if you are so stupid you don't at least use a burner phone, don't you kinda deserve to be caught?

  • Motorola was in the public safety space first. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @09:56PM (#59263804) Homepage Journal

    Police radios, that sort of thing. The "Motor" in "Motorola" refers to a *motorcar*; they developed an early car radio back in the 30s, then adapted that for police use. They were a well-known brand in the government radio communications space in the 1960s, familiar in police, fire, and other dispatch type applications. That's why Motorola's iDEN cell phone system from the early 90s had a "push to talk" feature -- it was designed to be sold to their walkie-talkie users.

  • Motorola sold off their cellphone business to Lenovo (I call 'em Lenovorola.) Interestingly, they have continued the business model completely, down to continuing to unlock bootloaders.

    • If I remember correctly, after the 2010 Motorola split, Google bought Motorola Mobility and subsequently sold them to Lenovo.

      Google ended up with most of Motorola Mobilityâ(TM)s patent portfolio, while Motorola Solutions ended up with Mobilityâ(TM)s debt (as part of the split agreement) and Lenovo eventually ended up with the Mobility husk.

      • It may be a husk, but I'm super happy with my Moto X4. If it had a battery door it would be the perfect budget phone.

  • 6800..68000 one?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Known for these cell phones?
    https://www.motorolasolutions.... [motorolasolutions.com]

  • What do you believe, a Motorola phone was? (Or any other one.)

  • old (Score:2)

    by sad_ ( 7868 )

    "Motorola, a brand typically associated with cellphones"

    must be old or something, the first time i heard of motorola was when they were a kick-ass cpu producing company.

  • Not the first thing that comes to mind ever for Motorola.

  • Motorola has always been a primary player in the public service sector, mainly communications systems for police, fire, etc. Now they've branched out and offer state of the art ALPRS (Automatic License Plate Recognition Systems). Other automated video identification systems are a natural outgrowth.

    They, like other companies have discovered there's big bucks in enhancing government's digital Panopticon.

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