Carrier sales of phone-location data is illegal, FCC plans punishment
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
> lawmakers in November accused[1] the FCC of failing to protect consumers’ privacy, and said that major wireless carriers were disclosing real-time location to data compilers without consumers’ consent or knowledge. The information could be obtained by companies including bounty hunters, the lawmakers said in a letter.
> [1]: https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycomme...
> -- as reported by Bloomburg
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/wireless-...
The FCC really has become just a lobbying goat under Pai. Yikes.
Who could’ve predicted that, given he was a lobbyist for Verizon.
More importantly they have influence because some group has a moneyed interest in legislation. This can give them the resources to do the above regularly. They might hire legal counsel to sue governments. They may be able to lend support to pet projects and gain support for their own goals.
The money certainly doesn’t hurt, though.
Although individual contributions are limited in theory, bundling allows vast contributions in practice. For example, a CEO can persuade senior execs to donate the maximum to a candidate. Or someone can host a fundraiser at their home (or wine cave) and "encourage" many acquaintances to attend. They get credit with the politician for the total raised.
Finally, Political Action Committees can take unlimited contributions from anyone so long as they don't "coordinate" with a politician's campaign. In practice they can of course be very helpful to a candidate's campaign, and lobbyists will use that to influence.
This is presumably due to all transactions outside of the US requiring chip, but those in the US only requiring swipe.
This was quite alarming.
But true enough on the unmanned gas stations.
This has nothing to do with them being able to get your location from their app.
Bounce over to this comment on another front page post for another great example:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States
Like if you don’t trust the government to follow their own rules then why do the rules matter?
Edit: start with Hayden. They admitted exactly how it all works and what the judges allowed. Read up on the many EFF lawsuits that were shut down.
0 effective difference.
However, it is still not the same as the phone company selling location data. They have EVERYONE's location data for all time; it is not like they have to 'turn it on' for you and then are only able to spy on you going forward. They just have all of it, all the time.
The difference is that a stingray is like one cell tower being able to spy on people... the phone company is ALL THE CELL TOWERS being able to spy on you... and not only being ABLE to, are just always doing it no matter what, for everyone.
Make the cell connections a secure protocol, instead of something any asshole with an antenna can spoof & create a portable "cell tower".
> Make the cell connections a secure protocol, instead of something any asshole with an antenna can spoof & create a portable "cell tower".
A single carrier likely couldn't do that without coordinating with other carriers (as a client roams to a new net).
On its merits, the accusation of hypocrisy is also a non-sequitur: from "one bad thing is stopped" never follows "all bad things are stopped". The implied expectation is impossible to fulfill.
It's also unhelpful, politically, in a way that this thread, HN generally, or even "the internet" are full of: If everyone is always assuming the worst while expecting the best, it removes all incentives for anyone in power to behave honorably. After all, if you're going to be accused to be corrupt and/or incompetent anyway, why even try?
As a parallel statement:
> So it's okay for defense contractors to sell tanks to the government but not commercially? I'd love to see a legal analysis of that argument.
The government, Democrats and Republicans, basically do whatever corporations want, so this action is surprising and welcome.
I would say the former is a much more widely held belief, although we have no way to know if the latter is actually happening.
Likely explanation is the wealthy and powerful have a personal interest here. Consider the security nightmare that phone tacking poses for high wealth individuals.
It's the only reason in my mind the government should have access to that info, and it's a damn good one
Where's the opt-out button on my device to ensure my 4th Amendment right is exercised?
Oh, right. It's forced. "Freedom".
Plus, it's probably arguable as to whether or not your cell providers' location data on you constitutes a "search" or not. Unless E911 works by transmitting your devices' GPS readings from its own hardware to authorities, but even then I am not sure since they are doing so as a middleman. IANAL
Also, you might wait but I'm not sure that most folk in distress would agree with you.
That's exactly how it works:
> When the cellular phone detects that the user is placing an emergency call, it begins to transmit its location to a secure server, from which the [Public Safety Answering Point] can retrieve it. Cellphone manufacturers may program the phone to automatically enable GPS functionality (if disabled) when an emergency call is placed, so that it may transmit its location.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_transm...
I don't see where the article addresses that point. While it has some resemblance, seems like a different issue covered by different parts of law.
Ask the FCC if they believe sharing to government is legal.
Certainly to resolve customer billing disputes, I'm sure.
https://www.eff.org/cases/hemisphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record
http://epic.org/privacy/nsa/Section-215-Order-to-Verizon.pdf
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VZ
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TMUS
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/S
Looks like only Sprint and T-mobile are down, and only slightly (2%).
hint: it's all of them
Alternativedata.org
The company office would have to operate according to the same rules as a prison. Employees on arrival are security-checked the same way prisoners would be when they arrive for the first time. Rules about talking between cells, and device use, are the same as a prison. Once you get to your prison office, and you have your prison clothes on, you can work on paper.
I think this should be an existing prison. If a company wants to instead hire prison guards and do renovations to make their existing office work like a prison, I could be flexible to that.
Presumably all the employees would rather quit than work in prison. Sounds okay to me.
Presumably all investors would pressure the CEO to avoid getting the company put in prison because it would be a real productivity problem. Sounds okay to me.
i'm not sure what our excuse is, however.
Fines should presumably start small and have a graduated structure to prevent the "just a business expense" approach from becoming a viable one.
The current regulatory problems are due almost entirely (IMO) to lack of active enforcement; why care what the penalty is if you know it won't happen to you regardless?
Why? If I drive drunk and a cop pulls me over, lack of knowledge is no defense. As the head of a company, why is a lack of knowledge of the goings-on of the company a defense? If you don't know the goings-on when you are in a position to, at the very least that should be categorized as criminally negligent.
Now if the mayor pushes for the crime or doesn’t put policy forbidding the crime, that is a different story.
Also: beware what you wish for. Criminal law may allow your bloodlust to be satisfied. But it’s just as likely that the higher burden of proof it requires, and various other differences such as the 5th amendment, make prosecution difficult or impossible.
"Fine" is a euphemism for market price. If the profits outweigh the fines and the poor PR can be controlled in a timely manner, then they'll do it every time.
I think income-based fines are illegal under ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ though, in the United States, (not a lawyer), so maybe that won’t fly.
The first case is a far far bigger privacy concern to me, and seems to be what mobile networks were doing. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are doing the latter.
Geolocation information shouldn't be considered a desirable dataasset to hold onto as a monetizable asset at all at the level of granularity that enables individual resolution.
Disclaimer: I work at Google.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...
But Google created the entire damned infrastructure and environment which makes precisely that effect possible, no matter how thinly you slice the hairs on what it is you call the practice.
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
That's why I consider it splitting hairs.
> if you are unable to make that distinction then you aren't aware of the terrifying scale and specificity of the data provided by other industries.
I am aware of the difference, and you're right, it's terrifying. But it's no less terrifying that Google can still do this.
/s
The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
They don't exist in international waters.
Data is the cash cow that lets them sell ads. Why would they give away the cash cow and cut themselves, the middlemen, out of the picture?