Cell phone network operators need to know your location in order to route traffic to the correct tower in order to reach you, and that is not changing anytime soon. Same principle for WiFi beamforming.
To get maximum data throughput, modern communications systems measure how the channel (ie. environment) changes the radio signals and then reverses those changes in the receiver. (search term: channel estimation). So it's inherent that a modern communications system is modelling its environment. A primary way communications systems become better is to increase the sophistication of their environment model.
Once the model becomes sophisticated enough, the only difference between a radar and a communication system is which information you choose to extract: the information the environment imprinted/modulated on the radio signal/carrier (ie. the model of the environment) or the information the transmitter imprinted/modulated on the radio signal/carrier (ie. the message). The first is radar, the second is communications. There is no technical reason why you can't extract both.
A pen can be both a writing implement and a deadly weapon. But until someone decides to use it as a deadly weapon, it's not one. Luckily we don't typically hear people explaining the anatomy of soft tissues in the human neck when talking about pens.
The problem is that this information is inherent to a communications system. It can't be separated. Communications is pervasive, so channel information is pervasive. How does one control something that is pervasive?
It's a Catch-22: Do we implement a surveillance apparatus to prevent people from accessing the channel information that can be used to build a surveillance apparatus?
thats the wrong question - simply remove all barriers that prevent consuners from inspecting inner working if their devices, and attach large statutory compensation in case a consumer privacy is violated.
Dont know if its still around.
But that's obviously false. They can know which tower to route your traffic to by the simple fact that that's where your traffic came from.
They know where you are because you broadcast simultaneously to all of their towers, but that's not something they need.