Tag: smartphones

AMERICAN PHONE-TRACKING FIRM DEMO’D SURVEILLANCE POWERS BY SPYING ON CIA AND NSA

IN THE MONTHS leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two obscure American startups met to discuss a potential surveillance partnership that would merge the ability to track the movements of billions of people via their phones with a constant stream of data purchased directly from Twitter. According to Brendon Clark of Anomaly Six — or “A6” — the combination of its cellphone location-tracking technology with the social media surveillance provided by Zignal Labs would permit the U.S. government to effortlessly spy on Russian forces as they amassed along the Ukrainian border, or similarly track Chinese nuclear submarines. To prove that the technology worked, Clark pointed A6’s powers inward, spying on the National Security Agency and CIA, using their own cellphones against them.

Virginia-based Anomaly Six was founded in 2018 by two ex-military intelligence officers and maintains a public presence that is scant to the point of mysterious, its website disclosing nothing about what the firm actually does. But there’s a good chance that A6 knows an immense amount about you. The company is one of many that purchases vast reams of location data, tracking hundreds of millions of people around the world by exploiting a poorly understood fact: Countless common smartphone apps are constantly harvesting your location and relaying it to advertisers, typically without your knowledge or informed consent, relying on disclosures buried in the legalese of the sprawling terms of service that the companies involved count on you never reading. Once your location is beamed to an advertiser, there is currently no law in the United States prohibiting the further sale and resale of that information to firms like Anomaly Six, which are free to sell it to their private sector and governmental clientele. For anyone interested in tracking the daily lives of others, the digital advertising industry is taking care of the grunt work day in and day out — all a third party need do is buy access.

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Biden administration admits to giving free cellphones to illegals

On Wednesday, the Biden administration revealed that illegal immigrants entering the United States are handed smartphones when they arrive.

Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Jen Psaki about the attempt during today’s news briefing.

“Our team in Texas is saying that you guys are starting to give smartphones to border crossers, hoping that they’ll use the phones to check-in or – uh – to be tracked. Which part of that is supposed to ‘deter’ people from crossing illegally into the states?” asked Doocy.

Well,” replied Psaki, “I think you of all people – since you’ve asked me a range of questions on this topic over time – would recognize that we need to take steps to ensure that we know where individuals are and we can track – we can check in with them.”

Psaki went on to describe the three types of technology that the administration is using to track illegal immigrants: “Telephonic is one of them, which uses a participant’s voice to create a biometric voiceprint during the enrollment process. And when the participant has a check-in call, their voice is compared to the voiceprint.”

“SmartLink, which is another option, enables participant monitoring via smartphone or tablet using facial-matching technology to establish identity.”

“And Global Positioning System monitoring is of a participant’s location and movement history, using satellite technology through an ankle bracelet.  This is all part of our effort, as individuals come into the United States and individuals who are entering who will proceed to immigration proceedings, to monitor and track where they are.”

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Barack Obama Backs Internet Controls to Grapple with the ‘Demand for Crazy’

Government regulation and control over the internet can defeat a “demand for crazy” through the spread of incorrect messages, former President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

Obama, 60, spoke with Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg at an event hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and the magazine.

“I do think that there is a demand for crazy on the internet that we have to grapple with,” Obama said, before adding a mix of regulation and industry standards are needed to address the issue.

Obama lamented how misinformation plays out across the U.S., accusing those who say President Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election as guilty of falling for conspiracy theories.

He called out “a systematic effort to either promote false information, to suppress true information, for the purpose of political gain, financial gain, enhancing power, suppressing others, targeting those you don’t like.”

The former president blamed smartphones for accelerating “an erosion of accountability norms and standards in political life” from 2010 onwards.

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Creepy Bill Gates Threw Millions at New Technology of Under-Skin Nanoparticle QR Code, to be Scanned by Smartphones

Last year it was revealed that Pentagon scientists working in a secretive united created a microchip to be inserted underneath the skin, that can detect Covid-19 before the body exhibits symptoms.

60 Minutes interviewed retired Colonel Matt Hepburn, an army infectious disease physician, who spent years with the secretive defense advanced research projects agency or DARPA, working on technology he hopes will ensure COVID-19 is the last pandemic.

“Dr. Hepburn showed us a few current projects, some sound like they’re from an episode of “Star Trek.” Consider a ship like the USS Theodore Roosevelt — hobbled last year when 1,271 crew members tested positive for the coronavirus. What if everyone on board had their health monitored with this subdermal implant, now in late-stage testing. It’s not some dreaded government microchip to track your every move, but a tissue-like gel engineered to continuously test your blood,” 60 Minutes host Bill Whitaker said.

Dr. Hepburn told 60 Minutes that the microchip is like a “check engine light.”

The segment aired on “60 Minutes.”

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Postal Inspectors Have Used iPhone Hacking Tools Hundreds of Times

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) owns sophisticated hacking tools that can breach iPhones, and has used them hundreds of times over the last several years, according to USPIS records.

Law enforcement’s use of hacking tools such as Cellebrite and GrayKey has attracted considerable attention in recent years, particularly following reports that the FBI used the Israeli-based Cellebrite to help access the iPhone belonging to San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook—though there has since been reporting to the contrary. More recently, records obtained by Vice Motherboard last year revealed how police departments use GrayKey.

The use of such tools by the USPIS, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service, is disclosed in its 2019 and 2020 annual reports, but has gone largely unpublicized until now. The Epoch Times has also reviewed an internal Postal Service letter, which shows that one technician in the USPIS digital evidence unit used GrayKey to crack more than 150 iOS devices—iOS being the mobile operating system for the iPhone.

Altogether, the records suggest that the USPIS has cracked hundreds of iPhones—generally thought to be one of the most secure commercial phones on the market—as well as other devices.

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Police Caught Stealing Money from Innocent People To Secretly Buy Tech to Spy on Citizens’ Cellphones

The Boston Police department has been robbing citizens of their cash — many of whom were never accused of a crime — to buy surveillance technology off the books, to spy on citizens.

As their report points out, an August investigation by WBUR and ProPublica found that even if no criminal charges are brought, law enforcement almost always keeps the money and has few limitations on how it’s spent. Some departments benefit from both state and federal civil asset forfeiture. The police chiefs in Massachusetts have discretion over the money, and the public has virtually no way of knowing how the funds are used.

Boston cops have stolen so much money that they are secretly buying more expensive gear to seemingly get better at stealing money. According to the report:

[I]n 2019 the Boston Police Department bought the device known as a cell site simulator — and tapped a hidden pot of money that kept the purchase out of the public eye.

A WBUR investigation with ProPublica found elected officials and the public were largely kept in the dark when Boston police spent $627,000 on this equipment by dipping into money seized in connection with alleged crimes.

Because this spy equipment was bought with funds stolen from citizens, not even the Boston city council knew police had it.

Boston city councilors interviewed by WBUR said they weren’t aware that the police had bought a cell site simulator. Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who represents Mattapan, Hyde Park and Roslindale, said, “I couldn’t even tell you, and I don’t think anybody on the council can necessarily tell you … how these individual purchases are made.”

Only because ProPublica obtained the documents, does anyone know the department is using stingray devices to spy on citizens. So much for transparency.

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Americans get warning they’re being watched digitally

Americans are getting a warning that they are being watched digitally, whether they agree to the spying or not.

The warning is coming from the Rutherford Institute, which has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a dispute now pending before the Supreme Court, in Hammond v. U.S.

The warning is that “Americans are being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals. “

The Rutherford Institute said it is “challenging the government’s unconstitutional practice of warrantlessly tracking people’s location and movements through their personal cell phones in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

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Your Next Smartphone Could Have an “Always-on” Snooping Camera

Qualcomm Technologies recently announced their newest high-end smartphone processor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. This processor has a very controversial feature — it has always-on camera capabilities and will be used in high-end Android smartphones that will be released early 2022.

Qualcomm Vice President of product management Judd Heape  said the following about the new always-on camera capabilities of the processor: “Your phone’s front camera is always securely looking for your face, even if you don’t touch it or raise to wake it.”

Qualcomm touted the new always-on camera during their Snapdragon Tech Summit.

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Popular ‘Family Safety’ App Busted Selling Precise Location Data On Millions – Including Children

After the Cambridge Analytica / Facebook scandal and the ensuing ‘reforms’ within the tech industry to reign in wanton data harvesting by predatory app-makers, one might be left with the impression that the practice had been reined in.

Yet, a deep-dive investigation by The Markup revealed that a popular family safety app used by 33 million people worldwide, Life360, has been selling data on the precise locations of children and other family members to around a dozen data brokers, who have in turn sold data to “virtually anyone who wants to buy it.”

Two former employees of Life360 as well as two individuals formerly employed by data brokers Cuebiq and X-Mode revealed that the Life360 app “acts as a firehose of data” for shady info brokers in an industry which has “few safeguards to prevent the misuse of sensitive information.”

When confronted with evidence, Life360 founder and CEO Chris Hulls had no qualms about his business model, telling The Markup: “We see data as an important part of our business model that allows us to keep the core Life360 services free for the majority of our users, including features that have improved driver safety and saved numerous lives.”

Selling data has become a crucial component of Life360’s revenue, jumping from $693,000 in 2016 to $16 million in 2020, comprising around 20% of its revenue that year, not including an additional $6 million from a partnership with Allstate’s Arity. While the company reported a loss of $16.3 million last year, Life360 – which is publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange, has plans for an IPO in the US.

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Urgent Google warning for millions of Android users: These symbols mean someone is watching

Google is warning millions of Android users when apps might be spying on them.

The new feature alerts users when the microphone or camera has been activated.

It’s very similar to a warning that already exists on Apple’s rival iPhone.

The Google feature was added to phones in the latest Android 12 update. So if you don’t have that, you won’t be able to see it.

The new indicator appears in the top right corner of the screen.

You’ll see a camera or microphone icon when an app attempts to access either.

It prevents apps from surreptitiously listening in — or even watching through your camera.

You can also see a rolling log of which apps have access your camera, microphone or location — and when.

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