404 Media, along with Haaretz, Notus, and Krebs On Security recently reported on a company that captures smartphone location data from a variety of sources and collates that data into an easy-to-use tool to track devices’ (and, by proxy, individuals’) locations. The dangers that this tool presents are especially grave for those traveling to or from out-of-state reproductive health clinics, places of worship, and the border.
The tool, called Locate X, is run by a company called Babel Street. Locate X is designed for law enforcement, but an investigator working with Atlas Privacy, a data removal service, was able to gain access to Locate X by simply asserting that they planned to work with law enforcement in the future.
With an incoming administration adversarial to those most at risk from location tracking using tools like Locate X, the time is ripe to bolster our digital defenses. Now more than ever, attorneys general in states hostile to reproductive choice will be emboldened to use every tool at their disposal to incriminate those exerting their bodily autonomy. Locate X is a powerful tool they can use to do this. So here are some timely tips to help protect your location privacy.
Well, if this is going to be used by shitty people, we should use and abuse it to the absolute hilt.
If privacy is dead, it’s dead for everyone. Not just good people living their lives.
Any phone that spends Sunday morning at a megachurch? Let’s see what massage parlors or whose houses they spend time at. Let’s see where they are during that “business trip”.
I mean, now that we know the addresses of people like Nick Fuentes and Matt Walsh, we should be able to figure out everywhere else they go too.
If we want to find the addresses of other notable fascists, just keep track when/where they’re seen publicly until you figure out which device on the map is theirs, then see where they go at night.
Pretty much, yeah. Not only that, you can cross-reference it with other fascists if they ever deny knowing each other. Or cross-reference it with police, but I repeat myself.