<story><title>Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/09/cops-wanted-to-keep-mass-surveillance-app-secret-privacy-advocates-refused/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>choeger</author><text>So how does that work? I install some app that &amp;quot;needs&amp;quot; location data to function and in the EULA I &amp;quot;consent&amp;quot; to that data being sold. Police then buys this data via several proxies. So far so &amp;quot;told you so years ago&amp;quot;. But how does police use that data? How do they associate account IDs from all these apps to real persons? Is that data collected and sold as well, e.g., via the payment processing? Do they use the email address as key?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>News-Dog</author><text>When you power up a mobile&amp;#x2F;cell phone, the handset transmits a handshake to all mobile&amp;#x2F;cell bases it can hit.&lt;p&gt;Handshaking between mobile&amp;#x2F;cell phone and mobile&amp;#x2F;cell bases continues somewhere between every 10 to 20 minutes.&lt;p&gt;Data exchanged include; IMEI [1], IMSI [2], and both handset transmit power level, receiver power level to each mobile&amp;#x2F;cell bases databases.&lt;p&gt;Coupling both the mobile&amp;#x2F;cell bases databases and the locations topographical data allows RDF [3].&lt;p&gt;So even if you have location data turned off, you can still be tracked.&lt;p&gt;[1] International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) : &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;IMEI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;IMEI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) : &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;International_mobile_subscriber_identity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;International_mobile_subscri...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] Direction Finding (DF) (aka) Radio Direction Finding (RDF) : &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Radio_direction_finder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Radio_direction_finder&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Cops wanted to keep mass surveillance app secret; privacy advocates refused</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/09/cops-wanted-to-keep-mass-surveillance-app-secret-privacy-advocates-refused/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>choeger</author><text>So how does that work? I install some app that &amp;quot;needs&amp;quot; location data to function and in the EULA I &amp;quot;consent&amp;quot; to that data being sold. Police then buys this data via several proxies. So far so &amp;quot;told you so years ago&amp;quot;. But how does police use that data? How do they associate account IDs from all these apps to real persons? Is that data collected and sold as well, e.g., via the payment processing? Do they use the email address as key?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>charles_kaw</author><text>&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;K-anonymity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;K-anonymity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it only takes a few pointed datapoints to deanonymize a person. They are weaponizing this concept.</text></comment>