Technology

58860 readers

6930 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

907

Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics (www.404media.co)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

243 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 9 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Unfortunately yes, and I would go even a step further and say a smart phone is a basic necessity. More and more companies and even government services are operating on the assumption that everyone has a smart phone. I have encountered various services where if a person didn't have a smart phone they literally can't use it. I even have personal experience with it.

My landlord uses a company for payments that can only be interacted with via an app on a smart phone. There is no web portal option. There is no option to mail a check. There is no option to setup a direct bank transfer. I was essentially strong armed into it since the place itself was (and still is) better than almost anything else I saw and is a reasonable price.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Android virtual machine? Waydroid?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Are we talking about me specifically or people in general? I'll assume general as I was just relaying a personal anecdote to show that my point/thesis wasn't just a hypothetical as I do know how to get around it in my specific case.

In the general context, that's not a great solution for most people as it is beyond their skill or time set. For the most disadvantaged people just having the ability to have a phone at all and a place to reliably charge it is an issue. There is also the issue is practicality. When I take public transit where I live, the app pulls up a QR code on my phone they gets scanned. I'm not even sure I could fit my laptop screen into the space to scan the QR code if I was emulating Android.

So I guess my thesis here is that systems should be made more accessible and inclusive rather than requiring those in the minority to either have to put more effort in using a workaround to reach functional parity or end up left out all together.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I have encountered various services

For example, some of these services would be... ?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Gov agencies require 2 factor to a cell phone. Land lines dont work and VoIP lines with texting also don't work. The only option is to use snail mail and have sensitive data sent via post office

[–] [email protected] -2 points 13 hours ago

If I were stuck in that position, then I would not hesitate to choose the postage method. That being an option does not comport with the assertion "if a person didn’t have a smart phone they literally can’t use it".