Secret Service Tracking People’s Locations without Warrant – Source: www.schneier.com

Who? • November 21, 2024 7:29 AM

Because users agreed to an opaque terms of service page…

This one is the very reason I do not have a smartphone. We have no control over them. The core at this problem is not terms of service being opaque, it is that we have only two choices: accept them or install nothing (and “nothing” here means exactly that, all smartphone “apps” are tracking code specialized on stealing anything they can from us while tracking our movements).

No, the problem is not some apps having obscure terms of service; the problem is that there are no privacy-friendly alternatives for most of these apps. We need a healthy ecosystem, with privacy friendly smartphone operating systems and apps that allow us work without compromising our privacy.

…and then it enters in the game the “certified” operating systems running on the modems of those smartphones. Operating systems running on small computers inside our phones that are able to dump any range of memory on the device and can be accessed from cell towers using digital certificates whose private part is stored in the modem firmware.

Thinking on it twice, the problem are not the apps either. It is the entire industry, working together with TLAs and governments around the world to run massive spying networks on citizens.

There is even a branch of business now built on it: private corporations whose business model is developing spyware for governments targeting dangerous terrorists (let us say security experts, journalists, academics, human rights organizations and so on) and data brokers.

A truly Orwellian nightmare, it isn’t?

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