How the US Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps (vice.com) 40
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard at Vice: The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app that has more than 98 million downloads worldwide. Others include a Muslim dating app, a popular Craigslist app, an app for following storms, and a "level" app that can be used to help, for example, install shelves in a bedroom. Through public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis, Motherboard uncovered two separate, parallel data streams that the U.S. military uses, or has used, to obtain location data. One relies on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate X. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and special reconnaissance, bought access to Locate X to assist on overseas special forces operations. The other stream is through a company called X-Mode, which obtains location data directly from apps, then sells that data to contractors, and by extension, the military.
The news highlights the opaque location data industry and the fact that the U.S. military, which has infamously used other location data to target drone strikes, is purchasing access to sensitive data. Many of the users of apps involved in the data supply chain are Muslim, which is notable considering that the United States has waged a decades-long war on predominantly Muslim terror groups in the Middle East, and has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians during its military operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Motherboard does not know of any specific operations in which this type of app-based location data has been used by the U.S. military. The apps sending data to X-Mode include Muslim Pro, an app that reminds users when to pray and what direction Mecca is in relation to the user's current location. The app has been downloaded over 50 million times on Android according to the Google Play Store, and over 98 million in total across other platforms including iOS, according to Muslim Pro's website.
The news highlights the opaque location data industry and the fact that the U.S. military, which has infamously used other location data to target drone strikes, is purchasing access to sensitive data. Many of the users of apps involved in the data supply chain are Muslim, which is notable considering that the United States has waged a decades-long war on predominantly Muslim terror groups in the Middle East, and has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians during its military operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Motherboard does not know of any specific operations in which this type of app-based location data has been used by the U.S. military. The apps sending data to X-Mode include Muslim Pro, an app that reminds users when to pray and what direction Mecca is in relation to the user's current location. The app has been downloaded over 50 million times on Android according to the Google Play Store, and over 98 million in total across other platforms including iOS, according to Muslim Pro's website.
killed by whom? (Score:5, Informative)
and has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians during its military operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq
Hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by Taliban, ISIS, ISIL, etc, but no, the US military's count is not nearly this high: https://twitter.com/UNAMAnews/... [twitter.com]
Re:killed by whom? (Score:4, Informative)
U.S. military body count of civilians is indeed in the hundreds of thousands in last 3 decades, cherry picking a year doesn't change that truth
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Please cite your source
Re:killed by whom? (Score:4, Informative)
you mean like this and similar? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Why do you question what is widely known? The USA invaded and waged war on a nation that didn't attack it and were no threat.
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This isn't a game of golf, guys. You can kill just *one* person and it can be a heinous crime. You can kill thousands (as the US has unquestionably done in its history) and it could arguably be the lesser of two evils.
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Please explain how getting in unnecessary war, causing hundreds of thousands of civilians to be killed and then as bonus causing ISIS/ISIL to be created, is "lesser evil"?
Hint, it isn't. The USA is doing great evil with its stupid wars against those that didn't attack it.
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I don't have to, because I didn't take any position one way or the other on the justification for US actions and their connections to ISIL. I'm just pointing out that body count alone isn't a basis for deciding who is better or worse.
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" I'm just pointing out that body count alone isn't a basis for deciding who is better or worse. "
On average, violence by those in a position of authority/superiority is worse, is it not?
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If you want to use terms like "on average" I'll have difficulty responding, because it's asking for precision in a situation where there's a lot of gray. I'd say they both tend to be bad, but the scale of state violence is much greater. But in some instances -- say NATO intervention in Kosovo -- state intervention can do some good. By the same token not every insurgent group is necessarily a terrorist one.
So I guess *on average* ISIS is worse than the US, because from my perspective none of their violenc
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I agree with most of what you wrote.
"So I guess *on average* ISIS is worse than the US, because from my perspective none of their violence has any rational justification."
I don't know from where and from what kind of take you assume a perspective, is it safe to say it's not as an Afghan, Syrian, or Iraqi?
I assume and I don't doubt they see the US presence, its allies, and the bombs raining down on them, as the source of all the violence, suffering and death.
Correction (Score:2)
"I assume and I don't doubt they see the US presence, its allies, and the bombs raining down on them, as the source of all the violence, suffering and death."
I assume, and don't doubt most of them see, the US presence, its allies, and the bombs raining down on them, as the primary or major source of all the violence, suffering and death."
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I'm an American who is a racial minority. So I have a certain skepticism of American self-congratulatory esteem.
Here's the problem with ISIS: they think they're an instrument of God's will. Most of the evils America has done have been under similar pretenses. Someone who is pursuing rational self-interest will do some bad things, but someone who thinks they're the hand of destiny is capable of any depraved act.
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I agree.
The extremism of groups rises as military oppression stretches over time, or intensifies, or both. These groups leaders will use more and more, and soldiers will be more and more receptive to, religion or religious motivations and extremism. Culminating today with groups like ISIS.
The US army has a similar problem. As soldiers question more and more the rational behind their actions, a rising percentage of them, along with more and more of new recruits, are motivated by religious concerns or are sup
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Yes, pretty much it is. You should not be killing human beings, if you are killing more human beings than anyone else, then yes, you wear the crown for the greatest evil, as simple as that. That you have the power to kill more that others, and choose not to use that power in other ways, that they choose blowing to pieces, men, women, children, babies, grannies and gramps, their pets and various wildlife, mangle their bodies with horrendous wounds leaving them to die in agony the organs torn and laid bare an
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"Yes, pretty much it is"
Yes.
Your comment.
one sided deal ? (Score:3)
It's kind of a one sided deal, why ?
Military gets location from civilians : OK
Civilians gets location from military: Not OK ?
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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amen.
middle east offroading dating apps (Score:2)
Introducing these interesting offroaders who move assets for the community to a hellfire missile is the CIA/DOD job. As these winners get x number of dates in the afterlife this may be exa
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Unfortunately the incompetents in DOD have no idea if they're going to "some cave full of munitions" or delivering solar powered radios to be sold in the local market, nor do they care. They have the go-ahead to blow anyone they want to smithereens since some nebulous link to "secret terrorist cells" can be manufactured after the fact if they get the wrong group. Sometimes I wish there really were a Hell so that these bastards could be sent there for a few millennia.
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Unfortunately the incompetents in DOD have no idea if they're going to "some cave full of munitions" or delivering solar powered radios to be sold in the local market, nor do they care. They have the go-ahead to blow anyone they want to smithereens since some nebulous link to "secret terrorist cells" can be manufactured after the fact if they get the wrong group.
Care to provide provide some information to support this or is this just your opinion of how the military operates? I'm guessing from your attitude you've never been in the military so I guess you're basing your opinion on something factual that you read somewhere. I'm curious what facts you have.
Your attitude is equivalent to the stupid assumption that every police officer carries a throw away weapon to justify shooting anyone they want.
Your statements tarnish the thousands of military members and po
Re: Whatever... (Score:3)
Can you show a source for the research you claim shows hard-wiring towards a certain political position. Not that I am denying this finding, simply generally interested in the methodology behind this conclusion.
Unneeded Info. (Score:3)
The apps sending data to X-Mode include Muslim Pro, an app that reminds users when to pray and what direction Mecca is in relation to the user's current location.
And it needs to send data to X-Mode for what? User location? Mecca Location? Time of day? Seems the phone if it's any kind of modern should already have all the needed information without calling in a mother-ship.
Re:Unneeded Info. (Score:5, Informative)
It presumably sends that info for advertising and resale purposes. The product probably don't fully realize what using a free app means in terms of who is paying for what.
Cops are doing this too (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is a fairly simple fix that somehow most people seem unable to conceive of; turn the frelling location services off. I really don't understand why most people leave them turned on unless they're visiting an unfamiliar city.
They did it with license plates (Score:2)
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Buy Vs. Build (Score:1)
So the U.S. military buys this information. But the Chinese military builds their own(TikTok).
What do the Russians do?
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So the U.S. military buys this information. But the Chinese military builds their own(TikTok).
What do the Russians do?
They steal it from the Americans and the Chinese...
Duh!
Quoran app (Score:1)
I know of another Quran app. Made by friends of Putin.
They also offer some Mail apps that will deliver your mail through their servers. Also 100+ mio downloads.
When our polish employees was made aware, they preferred google watching rather than Putin.
Servers were moved fro Russia to Holland last time i checked.
At least that sort of logging is not âoelegalâ in Apple App Store. So it is mostly an Android problem.
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Actual terrorists already knew this and turn location services off as soon as they acquire any new phone. It honestly surprises me that not everyone does this as a matter of course, except that an awful lot of people are too stupid to know how to read a map.