Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the world. Abortion clinics, places of worship, and individual people can all be monitored without a warrant.

Privacy advocates got access to Locate X, a phone tracking tool which multiple U.S. agencies have bought access to, and showed me and other journalists exactly what it was capable of. Tracking a phone from one state to another to an abortion clinic. Multiple places of worship. A school. Following a likely juror to a residence. And all of this tracking is possible without a warrant, and instead just a few clicks of a mouse.

  • moseschrute@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    There has to be some way that we could have created the architecture to do everything a phone does without letting a user be triangulated easily.

    I know there is no incentive to do that, but it amazes me how far ahead the security of the web is compared to phone tech.

    Like maybe if phones could authenticate without broadcasting a unique identifier. And maybe they could open a vpn style encrypted tunnel and perform their auth over that tunnel.

    Idk, I know nothing about phones, but it has to be possible.