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cyanydeez parent
i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd.
lagadu
The fascist government won't need you to enable tracking, they can have the corporation that makes your OS silently gather it and give it to them, or simply have the phone carrier do it, again silently to the one carrying the device.

We're already all carrying a tracking device with us, willingly.

leptons
The government can also just set up their own cell tracking towers, cut out the middleman.
danudey
Or just mandate that the telcos do it and make it illegal to tell anyone about it.
ruined
why would they need to do that? that's just how cell towers work. the government can and does also buy the location data on the market like anyone else.
cyanydeez OP
yeah, the important part is that the government via third party surveillance gets much of the domestic spying they need without "technically" breaking the law, even though if they directly did any of the activities they would be breaking the law.
david_shaw
> i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd.

The phones (GPS) and cell networks (towers) have your location anyway. The article -- and what the parent comment was talking about -- is social location sharing.

Although citizen tracking is a valid concern, turning on "Find my Friends" isn't going to make you any more vulnerable.

Rebelgecko
IIRC some of the social location sharing options have sold data in the past, eg Life 360 (I think they still sell data but claim that they've started making it aggregated/anonymous)
fsflover
> turning on "Find my Friends" isn't going to make you any more vulnerable

There's definitely a huge difference between actively sending your location to a third party all the time and passive, often illegal data collection by the cell towers that can be stopped whenever you need by switching off the modem.

stavros
I have location services off, so at least my phone doesn't usually have my location, and neither does Google.
lazide
That is wildly optimistic.
svachalek
There are still various Google processes that likely still gather your location, and certainly your phone carrier does.
stavros
I don't think Google does if location services are off.
xethos
I wouldn't trust that. Google considered that an app-level setting previously, not a choice the user made to deny location data to Google. That kind of attitude is likely to have seeped into the organization, and "We know better" / "The user expects location to work for this even with GPS off" is quite likely still the prevailing attitude.

At the very least, trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. Google has lost my trust, and assumptions of good faith have evaporated.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/14/google-lo...

https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=37523992

b59831 (dead)
decremental (dead)

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