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Discussion (103 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Yet these jackholes can just snag it whenever because, ya know, profit. That is obviously insane. Our corporate culture has driven our society insane with normalized greed. The unholy alliance of tech and marketing is largely to blame.
Nothing in the article suggests the cause of this is "greed". The protocols are vulnerable and various shady companies have been set up to exploit it, but that has nothing to do with "greed", any more than the fact that there are shady hosters for spammers[1] are caused by "corporate culture has driven our society insane with normalized greed"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletproof_hosting
that just sounds pointless, won't they be dead by that point anyways?
It's all about power, anyway. The NSA doesn't need a warrant at all. When the police want to get an alleged criminal they can get a warrant in minutes. But when it's your life in danger, it takes hours. The purpose of a system is what it does.
The NSA doesn’t need warrants in many cases because they can get the information they need from the government’s own databases. I’m not an expert, but as far as I know, if they need someone’s location from a phone company they do need a warrant or to prove there were exigent circumstances, which is why they just get shit from data brokers. Some politicians want to close that loop hole but most either don’t, or don’t care enough. Some, shockingly, even want to reform FISA.
Silicon Valley and global communications infrastructure has been compromised by Israel. Quoting TFA:
> This analysis identified 4G infrastructure associated with operator networks based in Israel, the United Kingdom, and the Channel Islands. Notably, in prior public reporting these same countries have been linked to CSVs targeting mobile users.
> Israel has long been a focal point in the global surveillance industry, with multiple companies developing and exporting advanced spyware, cellular communications interception, and monitoring technologies.
NSA employees have used multi-billion dollar American surveillance assets to spy on women they're infatuated with. There's even a cute term for it, LOVEINT.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/loveint-nsa-letter-disclo...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/nsa-staff-used-spy-tools-spouses-...
People aren't able to imagine the ramifications of pervasive surveillance because there never has been such pervasive surveillance in human history. And humans are terrible at predicting how this is going to change things. Especially, with LLMs in the mix.Unless a very strict line is maintained for privacy across the board; the world that's coming will be many, many custom, tailor-made hells co-existing as tumors off of the back of state and corporate surveillance infrastructure.
And what pray tell do you do if you don't have anyone to report it to inside the government? Reports like that can easily get blackholed.
The future black markets are going to be filled with all sorts of illegal "private comms" devices to give us our privacy back. I am sure there are sci-fi novels with this theme.
If you're going to use technology to illegally spy on millions people, at least do it with some professionalism and restraint. Bastards.
> many, many custom, tailor-made hells co-existing as tumors off of the back of state and corporate surveillance infrastructure.
We already live in this world. Most of the conversations here on HN are naturally America centric, and the situation with the rest of the humans on the planet is secondary. The more distant, the less interest.
For most of that world, please for help are sent via stomach churning amounts of appeals on via WhatsApp. The hope is that someone knows someone at a platform to get them help.
Something like being having your non-consensual intimate imagery shared, means you are pretty much done. Since a majority of people live in nations with more conservative mores (on average) than the west, this means an absurd number of lives ruined.
Fraud, pig butchering scams, are examples of outright crimes. Tech isn’t much better when it comes to customer support. You want to recover your account, or reach a human? Good luck.
I’d love to hear a counter argument for this position: Tech platforms are as valuable as they are, because they do not pay the support costs they incur.
It was irritatingly difficult to avoid because it seemed he could look up her SIM card by name and then get her location no matter what (new SIM, new phone)
Anyone who reports this kind of thing to the police just sounds irrational and crazy and gets ignored.
I once asked someone on the security /investigations side if you are logging what everyone is doing can't you easily find when folks are looking up stuff unrelated to their job? Their answer: we'd have to fire over half the people here - everyone is constantly looking up people's PII - celebrities, friends, enemies, etc. it's almost considered a unofficial perk of the job. This was from one of the largest US Telco carriers circa 2010. Maybe things have changed, hopefully.
I'll let you know when I finish laughing.
This is 100% false. You can serve up all the evidence on a silver platter the the police will ignore it. I know, I've tried, specifically in a stalking case. They don't care.
I don’t remember the exact circumstances of how they got a confession years later, I think bragging, but he did get convicted and the Telco eventually fired him, which stopped the stalking.
Or maybe federal law enforcement, who are also abusing these surveillance systems to stalk their exes?
Or perhaps intelligence agencies, who are also abusing these surveillance systems to stalk their exes?
Did I mention they're all friends with each other and usually help each other and cover for each other?
Most simple criminals get away with their crimes. Anyone with any level of sophistication does as well.
It’s impossible to avoid unless you simultaneously move to a new house / apartment when you get your new phone, and never bring the new phone to any previous low-traffic location you brought the old phone to.
- Very few people have legit business cases requiring access to enriched network telemetry, at least non aggregated.
- Of which, only a handful have any reason to see the MSISDN in clear.
- Of which, none can get access to clear CRM data.
- Lawful interception and emergency services use completely separate paths, exposed via user interfaces that aren't available to employees.
And obviously, a simple email to the data governance and privacy office would be taken extremely seriously.
Also why not simply switch to a different phone operator?
So putting aside the fact you’re a reasonable person, anyone who works themselves up to a similar seniority and job description in a Telco as you, could in fact do exactly what the article is saying is an issue for the victims.
FYI: from the fact it's hard (not impossible) to see the data mentioned and it's possible (not guaranteed) that the caught offender would be punished is a VERY long way to "you lie".
Theirs was anecdata, yours is anecdata but you're additionally rude.
If you live in a country where you cannot trust law enforcement then there isn't much your telco can do. But specifically, these surveillance tools are not available to us.
What is this based on? I used to work for a data governance and privacy vendor that supplied data for audits. Tons and tons of customers asked us to fudge their data.
This is after the Delve scandal, where the hottest tech compliance company was completely fraudulent and numerous other hot tech companies also had completely fraudulent audits.
This is not a reasonable assumption.
The likelihood a random employee could run a quick SQL join to stalk someone based on their name is zero.
The data is cross-referenced with other telcos, other SIM cards, Wi-Fi hotspots (anonymous public hotspots are outlawed), street cams, and many other databases, so it's basically impossible to avoid being tracked.
Probably inevitable to become the norm everywhere in the world.
nice deflection there, ofc bad russia! you did surely notice that this article is about the uk? oh, and (big surprise!) israeli cell and surveillance companies ...
Yes
> and that data ends up available on the black market for anyone to purchase, for a fairly modest fee
Probably not. Those DBs are fake most ( all ? ) the time.
Seems like Ukrainians assassins targeting Russian VIP's would be the most compelling motive for a crackdown.
Or perhaps Mr. Putin provides a feed of "currently in favor" VIP's to the black market folks, who know better than to sell intel on anyone on that list?
“Contact Us
Do you have more information about surveillance vendors that exploit cellphone networks? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email[]”
I am the exception and believe in privacy, and I've not used a Meta app since I tested Facebook/WhatsApp back in 2010 and soon uninstalled them as I don't want a digital portfolio to be developed on me for advertisers. Same with Google, they can whistle for my personal information, but they won't get it!
I'm sure surveillance companies have an even easier time buying data from Meta/WhatsApp so that's even more worrying as people use different ISPs so 95% of people won't be traced by any one ISP, but Meta and Google have the location information of anyone gullible enough to use their services.
Source? Seems unlikely given that both android and ios has location permissions and keeps track of whether it's used. Non-consensual (ie. you're not specifically using some location sharing feature or whatever) is very likely to be caught and cause a publicity shitstorm.
Needless to say, I know plenty of technical people who don't care about it.
The cost of opting out is very high.
"Mark of the beast"-- you want to participate in society, you need it.
why are they good at these kind of things - security, hacks, surveillance, 0-days?
The genocide they're undertaking does place that industry in a whole new light, of course.
https://citizenlab.ca/research/uncovering-global-telecom-exp...
The goal is dominance and control of the poor by the rich.
Cops and agencies trying to change this, (buuhuuu someone bought anonymous SIMs in bulk and sold them on darknet)
Surprisingly, there was major public pushback, pretty unlucky for cops.
Make no mistake, the people of Gaza and Lebanon are being used as guinea pigs for highly invasive surveillance technology that could easily be pointed at any of us if we step out of line.
And yes I said people of Gaza, not tellhullists as they’re referred to in Zion.
1. Gaza: a testing ground for Israeli military technology - https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-testing-ground-is...
2. Gaza “laboratory” boosts profits of Israel’s war industry - https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-laboratory-boost...
3. Gaza Becomes Israel’s Testing Ground for Military Robots - https://archive.is/P6mAQ