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Comment by golem14 | Hacker News Reader

I think your is statement is inaccurate to the point of being intentionally misleading:

Many devices, when running, and in some cases even if turned off but connected to their battery, will ping cell towers (maybe even BLE/Wifi) and get triangulated by the network infrastructure (such as cell towers) without actively broadcasting the GPS location.

That's why I don't quite understand why the gubernment needs to have finer grained data (esp around the US/Mexican border). Precision location info would only be needed if you need to track people in densely populated areas.

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That location information is not available to apps or ad networks without user consent. The government can access it from the carrier with a warrant, but that's not what we're discussing here.

Carriers have also sold customer location data, no search warrant required. Though we can rest assured that the FCC has slapped the carriers' wrists with the utmost seriousness.

And sold it to not just the government but anybody _claiming_ to be a bounty hunter (and some other professions).

Couldn't you just maintain a list of cell tower IPs and figure it out with traceroute?

Cell towers are not working at the IP level, so no

IP doesn't handle roaming very well. If you got routed onto the internet directly from your local cell tower, then your connections would drop whenever you switched to a different tower, which is somewhat suboptimal. Cell networks handle it at a lower level and route your traffic through a central location which serves as the origin of your IP traffic. Geolocate your IP while on cell data and you'll probably see something pretty far away from where you are. My phone's IP address at the moment is about 400 miles away from the actual phone.

I think that's very much what is discussed in this whole thread.

Cell-site location information (CSLI) is not available to apps or adware and is protected by the Fourth Amendment.

It was freely sold up until a handful of years ago

Yes, but it is available to the gubernment ? Especially this gubernment?

You may want to look into the Third Party Doctrine.

If the government wants to tap your phone they need a warrant. If they want to buy it from a willing seller like Verizon they don’t.

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