Senators Push To Reform Police's Cellphone Tracking Tools (apnews.com) 39
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. From a report: Concerns about police use of the tool known as "Fog Reveal" raised in an investigation by The Associated Press published earlier this month also surfaced in a Federal Trade Commission hearing three weeks ago. Police agencies have been using the platform to search hundreds of billions of records gathered from 250 million mobile devices, and hoover up people's geolocation data to assemble so-called "patterns of life," according to thousands of pages of records about the company.
Sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC, Fog Reveal has been used since at least 2018 in criminal investigations ranging from the murder of a nurse in Arkansas to tracing the movements of a potential participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The tool is rarely, if ever, mentioned in court records, something that defense attorneys say makes it harder for them to properly defend their clients in cases in which the technology was used. Panelists and members of the public who took part in the FTC hearing also raised concerns about how data generated by popular apps is used for surveillance purposes, or "in some cases, being used to infer identity and cause direct harm to people in the real world, in the physical world and being repurposed for, as was mentioned earlier, law enforcement and national security purposes," said Stacey Gray, a senior director for U.S. programs for the Future of Privacy Forum.
Sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC, Fog Reveal has been used since at least 2018 in criminal investigations ranging from the murder of a nurse in Arkansas to tracing the movements of a potential participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The tool is rarely, if ever, mentioned in court records, something that defense attorneys say makes it harder for them to properly defend their clients in cases in which the technology was used. Panelists and members of the public who took part in the FTC hearing also raised concerns about how data generated by popular apps is used for surveillance purposes, or "in some cases, being used to infer identity and cause direct harm to people in the real world, in the physical world and being repurposed for, as was mentioned earlier, law enforcement and national security purposes," said Stacey Gray, a senior director for U.S. programs for the Future of Privacy Forum.
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Yes, and if the Republirats were behind this action, you'd be all for it. I think its funny how one side is always wrong, but if your side does it, its right.
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Yes, and if the Republirats were behind this action, you'd be all for it. I think its funny how one side is always wrong, but if your side does it, its right.
Both sides are wrong when it comes to Bill of Rights violations. Have been for a long time. Snowden didn't color his report with red and blue marker. Don't assume so damn hard, cheerleader.
That said, time will tell how this administration abuses 80,000+ IRS agents who for some reason have a shoot-first-audit-later budget now. Wonder how "random" those audits will turn out to be.
Maybe put down the pom poms to avoid making it worse. Slavery was absofuckinglutely horrific, but I can't imagine pitting brot
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Jeez, how stupid are you? The IRS having guns? How about "the IRS hasn't been able to audit rich people for years, because the GOP cut their budget, and now they will audit them" sound?
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The GPs stat of 87,000 new IRS agents, along with 4500 guns and 5 million rounds of ammo, isn't pulled from a dark smelly place, unlike your moronic non-observation. They spent over $700,000 in ammo alone this year.
By all means, stupid. Step right up and justify the arming of the IRS, while Common F. Sense moves to disarm them:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]
You don't need a fucking SWAT team to audit citizens. Not even rich ones. Regular old-fashioned auditing works just fine. Just ask Wesley Sn
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Your comment is good and perceptive. However, it is diminished by name-calling. So I am commenting instead of modding you up.
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It is a rather ridiculous measure for the party that passed a bill authorizing tracking devices to be made mandatory in cars.
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I thought guns and ammo made your pp hard?
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No chance. (Score:3)
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.
And this will be used by Republicans to say that Democrats are "weak on crime" which is why they will most likely oppose it. The fact that they get money for looking the other way, excuse me, campaign contributions has "nothing to do with [their] decisions."
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Yep. Meanwhile, the GOP is actively pro-crime, as long as it's done by white people. And preferably well-off or rich white people.
Pay no attention to the ACTUAL problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not that law enforcement has access to this data. The problem is that corporations are allowed to collect it in the first place.
Of course, this is by design.
The government can't collect this kind of data without violating the Constitution. However, nothing in the Constitution or any other federal law prohibits corporations from collecting whatever they want.
Since the government (and by extension, law enforcement) can get pretty much any data they want with a subpoena (or a National Security Letter, if they don't feel like getting one of those pesky warrants), they turn a blind eye and let the corporations collect whatever they want, our rights be damned.
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Corporations must collect data to do what they do. For example, my company is a mortgage company. We are literally required by law to collect lots of personal information about borrowers, including things like SSN, income level, marital status, credit score, detailed race and ethnicity information, etc. Possessing the data in itself isn't a privacy issue, but when the data is misused, that is where the problem comes in.
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Of course you are. It would be highly illegal (and pretty dumb) to loan someone money without collecting that data.
But are you collecting their geolocation data, browsing history, and all the other tidbits that corporations collect in the pursuit of targeting ads, and then selling that data to anyone willing to pay for it without the consumer's knowledge, let alone their consent?
If not, then you're just doing your job.
If so, then sorry, but you're part of the problem.
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Corporations must collect data to do what they do. For example, my company is a mortgage company. We are literally required by law to collect lots of personal information about borrowers, including things like SSN, income level, marital status, credit score, detailed race and ethnicity information, etc. Possessing the data in itself isn't a privacy issue, but when the data is misused, that is where the problem comes in.
Down under in Australia a massive data breach of a major telco is making a splash, primarily because said telco retained detailed personal information well past the time required for it's use - validating the person is who they say they are when creating an account.
Personal information should be culled as soon as it is no longer required.
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That's easy to say, hard to do. When exactly is data no longer required?
As software engineers, we understand the difficulty of getting good requirements. We tend to get just the top line, as in, "information should be deleted when it's no longer required." But when you dig into the weeds of that statement, it becomes clear that "when required" is difficult to nail down, and involves itemizing all of the uses for that information.
In my mortgage business, for example, when do we stop needing personal data? On
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It's a gray area. What data does a company "need" in order to do business?
Apple is now admitting that they "need" to collect a lot of data from users. https://www.reviews.org/intern... [reviews.org] Some of the data maybe they do actually need, and some of it they may only "need" in order to make more money. To a business, what's the difference?
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And how much of that data is actually necessary to evaluate someone's ability to make pay off a mortgage of $x dollars at $y percent interest, over $z years? Just from the data points you mentioned in your post, I count 3 that are irrelevant and one that is questionable.
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It doesn't matter if those data points are required to evaluate someone's ability to pay a mortgage note. Mortgage lenders are governed by the Fair Housing Act, which requires lenders to track ALL of those data points. https://www.hud.gov/program_of... [hud.gov] In addition, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act requires lenders to collect and report these and all kinds of other data points. Here's the document that lists the actual data points that must be reported. https://s3.amazonaws.com/cfpb-... [amazonaws.com]
And you thought lender
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The fact that the overcollection of data that is not relevant to the task is mandated by some pinheaded bureaucrat doesn't change the fact that the unnecessary data is irrelevant and should not be collected. All it means is that said bureaucrat has overreached and should, himself, be terminated and, I would argue, prosecuted.
This is doubly true of financial institutions, as that industry has engaged in quite a lot of shenanigans of late that range from simple incompetence as stewards of our data (Equifax)
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Oh, it's way above the heads of "some pinheaded bureaucrat." It's literally the law. If our mortgage company doesn't collect and report the data, we lose our license, and our business is shut down. That's how it works, right or not. State regulators do not mess around with noncompliance with HMDA and NMLS data reporting.
Hardline to walk (Score:2)
Part of me is grossly offended by this overall practice because we clearly cannot opt out. On the other hand, corporations sharing information with the police is how some serial killers have been captured decades later.
The main difference being a relative turned over their own dna but clever to match samples and find relatives to hunt down a serial killer.
It's probably best to "ban" police from using fake cell towers but they'll do it anyway and just find some other way to show how they got the criminal.
Cop
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Obviously a surveillance state is far more effective at identifying criminals and prosecuting them. One problem is built into the definition of "criminal", which is notoriously fluid. Not every criminal is a violent killer, running from the law and menacing society at every turn. Some of them are, for example, teenagers who had no business having a child, then traveled to another jurisdiction to deal with a problem that should never have been any goddamn concern for
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Many parts of our reality are absolutely unacceptable and yet here we are. We already do live in a surveillance state and you are already accepting it right now. Tell me how that is not going about your business and hoping for the best.
I suppose you could one of those people that has no cellphone, doesn't use the computer/Internet (clearly you do), off grid, etc, but we both know you are not. Neither am I.
So don't think you aren't already living in "unacceptable" conditions, by your standards. Conditions ar
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Solving the wrong problem (Score:3)
They should ban the gathering, or at least the long term retention, of all that data.
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