That's the job of the FBI - to investigate domestic crimes. But, why do private organizations so willingly participate in the tracking ecosystem? I suppose they're in the, "you have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything illegal" camp! Hopefully they understand that they have the most to lose.
It's just business. Buy (your data) for a dollar, sell for two. It's all legal and the data brokers are mostly unknown or already-hated companies so I'd say they have nothing to lose.
I wonder if we can still buy burner phones for cash at Mondo Mart
Differential identification means you can be singled out based on profiles. Even if you don't have any accounts, big tech companies still have shadow profiles, and those shadow profiles can be linked to your offline identity, such that everything you've done that's been recorded, and everything you've done in (temporal, physical, or digital) proximity to other people who do have accounts results in a record of activities.
Sure, you can get a burner, but you have to make sure you never use it anywhere near anyone you know, that the sim is obtained anonymously, that you're never imaged by any of the ubiquitous cameras, etc. Merely having it powered on provides enough metadata to establish a shadow profile, and it's nearly impossible for a person to secure two separate identities. There's also the superman problem - the burner phone would only ever appear when anonymars is missing, and vice versa, creating a real and exploitable pattern if anyone like the FBI wanted to root around in your life. All they'd have to do is query which shadow profiles match the temporal gaps correlated with your disappearance from tracking.
There's really no escaping it. The only fix is legislation - outright banning mass surveillance, with lethal corporate penalties and long prison terms for C-Suite responsible for violations. Short of that, we live in a world that is implicitly compromised and insecure unless you have nation state level resources.
There's also the superman problem - the burner phone would only ever appear when anonymars is missing, and vice versa, creating a real and exploitable pattern if anyone like the FBI wanted to root around in your life. All they'd have to do is query which shadow profiles match the temporal gaps correlated with your disappearance from tracking.
This is nonsense. By your logic, people go 'missing' any time they are not using a computer, whether they're reading a book, in the shower, or asleep in bed.
It's not useful in a vacuum, but one of many degrees that can be combined to create a unique profile of you.
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I can't tell if these The Wire references are deliberate or a coincidence.
No doubt.
You can buy eSIMs that aren't linked to your identity at https://www.phreeli.com/
You can buy almost anything for cash.
Hell, I can get you a toe by three o'clock this afternoon -- with nailpolish.
Your German girlfriend will not be happy about it. Give her "halbe Pfannkuchen"!
No it is not the job of the FBI to to conduct mass surveillance of citizens.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
What if an investigation is based on finding the same specific people near another specific person that they're tracking, but they only know about the one person, not the others.
And by doing this they stop a terror attack?
One more thought - if they buy just data for specific people related to an investigation, the seller of the data is tipped off. If they just buy all the data, then there is no potential tip-off to the target.
You can justify anything and everything, including torturing random innocent civilians for information, under the guise of preventing terror attacks. Which is why it is a bullshit excuse.
You get a "geofence warrant." They exist and are ubiquitous. You then go to Google or any other provider and you demand the data for a specific location in a specific time window. You then use the data to capture criminals. Any other data would not meet the standards of evidence and probably couldn't be used in court anyways. It's only function is for "parallel construction."
Then again, what I _really_ want is for the FBI to prevent crime. If their only solution is to let crime happen and then use a giant dragnet to put people in jail then they are less than worthless... they are actively dangerous to democracy.
I agree with this route too.
They can get a warrant.
And by doing this they stop a terror attack?
Fuck off. This is just trying to manipulate people with fear of undefined bad thing.
What if we put cameras and sensors in every home? What if we require groups of three or more to register their gathering with the government?
What if we could torture someone to have a chance at stopping a terror attack? What if we could torture someone to find where they stashed a stolen car? What if publicizing the errant torture of innocent people is bad for public morale, so we outlaw publishing stories about it?
When does it stop?
These are basic philosophy of law questions but I tend to stand on the side of liberty from an ever more powerful government.
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For profit organizations are legally required to maximize shareholder value. Many of them will abuse the spirit of the law in order to squeeze profits where others won’t.
The FBI is violating the spirit and original intent of the 4A by creating an entire industry out of the “3rd party doctrine” bypass to the 4A. That doctrine was whole cloth created by SCOTUS and Congress has been too happy to avoid credit or blame for it to not enshrine it in statute.
>For profit organizations are legally required to maximize shareholder value.
No:
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...
If something is bad when it's done illegally, it's worse when it's done legally, and even worse than that when it's done dutifully.
> But, why do private organizations so willingly participate in the tracking ecosystem?
Because it makes them money and that's literally the only thing they care about. They'd do anything for money and the only reason they ever don't do something is because it either wouldn't make them money at all, or it would cost them more money than they'd make.
It's also not new. The FBI has kept dossiers on people of interest and people in positions of power since it was founded. Easier now of course, which is a concern.
If this kind of surveillance is part of their job, why are they constitutionally forbidden from doing the surveillance themselves?
Haven't they been tapping phones since their conception?
Lemme give you an example.
Many retail sites have a "find a nearby" store function. They often outsource this to a third party...for something as silly as geolocation and geographical lookups. This third party is the one that offers its services for a discount but also siphons up your location data to sell.
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How Legal Punishment Affects Crime: An Integrated Understanding of the Law's Punitive Behavioral Mechanisms (2025)
"This article explains what these 13 potential effects of punishment are and how they have been theorized. It further reviews the body of available empirical evidence for each of these mechanisms."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47266997
Am all for it if law enforcement were held to the same standards. Plenty of cases where LE murder is simply not enforced. Thus LE becomes a haven for those seeking impunity and ability to nefariously track anyone.