I recently completed Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (a partial account of his presidency), and he mentions in his book that although he wanted to reform mass surveillance, it looked a little different once he was actually responsible for people’s safety. I often think about this when I drive past Flock cameras or walk into grocery stores; our leaders seem more enticed by the power of this technology than they are afraid of vague abuses happening in _not here_. It seems like no one sees a cost to just not addressing the issue.
By analogy, I feel that reporting on the dangers of fire isn’t really as effective as reporting on why we don’t have arson laws and fire alarms and social norms that make our society more robust to abuse of a useful capability. People who like cooked food aren’t going to engage with anti-fire positions if they just talk about people occasionally burning each other alive. We need to know more about what can be done to protect the average person from downsides of fire, as well as who is responsible for regulating fire and what their agenda for addressing it is. I’d love to see an article identifying who is responsible for installing these Flock cameras in my area, why they did so, and how we can achieve the positive outcomes desired from them (e.g. find car thieves) without the negatives (profiling, stalking, tracking non-criminals, etc).
An ideal government with total surveillance is the best case. You get the benefits of low crime without the drawback of corruption and ideology. The problem is in practice:
- Large institutions aren’t good at exercising fine control: even if the leaders have truly good intentions, corrupt mid-level employees and inaccurate data lead to bad outcomes.
- Good leaders seem to often pick bad successors, and unless they frequently pick better successors, someone will eventually pick a corrupt one.
- Corrupt leaders seem to be good at ousting or sidelining good leaders, more than vice versa, perhaps because good leaders are less passionate about gaining and keeping power.
Perhaps there are other reasons. Not just ideal governments, but even self-preserving governments don’t tend to last. Hence, although decentralization and privacy are never ideal, they should exist at least for backup, “just in case” (inevitably in practice) the centralized surveillance system goes rouge.
This whole way of thinking makes my skin crawl.
Just like sex, any kind of power exchange needs consent.
This whole idea that people are led or need to be led is wrong. Perhaps some people do but that's their problem, it shouldn't be mine. What politicians are is decision makers, not leaders.
We don't have time to vote on every single law personally, so we appoint temporary assistants who do it for us, based on our preferences. That's how it should work.
These assistants should work for us, not lead us. We should always have the power to override their decisions and to remove and replace them at any time. Of course, making this work in a practical manner, while satisfying constraints such as secrecy of votes, is difficult. I don't dispute that but we should be striving to find ways to get as close to this ideal as possible, not making politics into a career or treating it as a reality show.
And most certainly, these assistants ("leaders" as you call them) should not be picking their successors without our consent.
It also helps make the point of what it means to say “society is breaking down” or “democracy is at stake” or “faith in institutions in decline.” What it really means is that those whom were thought of as leaders no longer have the consent of the followers, who are making their own decisions now- often to ill effect of any strangers around them
*cf servant leadership as one particularly clear conceptualization
And there are a lot of really weird discussions to be had about "consent," too. If we allow unlimited speech, that means that we're all subject to marketing and propaganda, and that's another thing that people are quite vulnerable to. Being convinced to vote via propaganda isn't really a great example of consent. But banning any speech that resembles propaganda is rife with problems.
Anyway, my point is that democracy/voting and free speech isn't necessarily the most free/consented-to form of government. I'm not sure what would take its place, though. I certainly wish I knew.
It seems inherent in your worldview that you lack faith in people to self govern (that is, for a person to govern themselves. Which would explain why you are at odds with the parent. I suggest you read a bit of Jefferson’s ideas of self governance, education, etc. There are tradeoffs as with everything else, I do think based solely on your short commentary here that there may be an opportunity for your perspective to be enriched however
Whether they pick them or you pick them, you still have the same problem.
Bad people often get into office. Politicians lie, major parties both run bad candidates, sometimes voters are of the inclination to just elect whoever they think will mount the strongest assault on the status quo.
Expecting that never to happen is a lot less pragmatic than setting things up ahead of time to mitigate the damage when it does.
This is absolutely a thing and it's a thing because at some point, people notice how little power they actually have.
Every person's opinion is a point in N-dimensional space.
Representative democracy is describing that point (expressing their political opinion) by picking 1 point out of a handful of pre-determined options (parties/representatives). Some countries only have 2 real choices.
That's absolutely insane, no wonder people feel like their vote doesn't matter, they often can't even find a choice remotely close to their real preferences.
The constraints of the office ought to account for that.
Hence the root problem, that we haven't discovered a way to consistently have "good" government, whether it's a dictatorship or democracy. Perhaps with technology, we can invent a better form of government, e.g. a "super-democracy" where people vote on individual decisions (though even today I can imagine issues that would cause).
Until then, the key point I make is that you can have a government where some people ("leaders") do have more power than others, but not enough power for total control. The hopefully-realistic ideal is that the government has enough power to defend itself against an external threat always, and coordinate large projects when functioning well; but not too much so that, when functioning badly, essential internal systems are preserved, and when it's replaced (because as mentioned it will eventually collapse) the transition is minimally disruptive.
You can prohibit the government from doing things it should never do (e.g. mass surveillance) without prohibiting it from doing things it ought to be doing (e.g. enforcing antitrust laws).
The problem is we currently do the opposite: The government is doing mass surveillance but not antitrust enforcement.
Sadly I think there are more highly motivated, extremely selfish and destructive people than there are people who are capable and altruistic.
We're pretty f-ing far from even having to think about those problems.
In aggregate most people do need leadership. The kind of technocratic/managerial approach you suggest has led to the current societal problems we have: a vacuum of real leadership being filled by people willing to do it.
Whether it "should" or "shouldn't" be your problem is irrelevant to the reality.
Note: An ideal government wouldn't define a bunch of victimless behaviour as a crime. Low crime would mean low murder, low car hijackings, etc - things that actually affect people.
Definitions differ person to person, but many things we consider benign today like sexual activities between consenting adults, racial integration, even free travel have at times and in places been considered crimes.
Today, homelessness is often criminalized. As is drug use even among otherwise productive law abiding citizens. Assisted suicide is often criminalized, even for terminally ill and suffering consenting adults.
Something like 98% of humanity partakes of caffeine which is very clearly an addictive drug with one of the higher measures of addictive potential among all drugs in most evaluations. Drug use isn't what drives people to commit crime. Lack of support systems do. Drug use is often a coping mechanism associated with lack of support systems.
This is very clearly articulated in the following study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/98787/
To quote John Ehrlichman, Whitehouse counsel and assistant to President Nixon: “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities”
Disrupted communities lack support systems and further drive folks to criminality as a means of surviving.
Meanwhile, many of the founding fathers and modern political leaders have writtten quite fondly and positively about smoking cannabis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_politici...
> For example the article discusses adultery
Homosexuality and sodomy (i.e. sex without the intent of procreation) are clearer examples of criminalized sexual behavior between two consenting adults. I know some folks who'd like to outlaw them today in the US and they are currently outlawed elsewhere, but I believe what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is their own business.
Not all drugs are created equal, withdrawal symptoms are different.
> Homosexuality and sodomy
They do affect the future population count and this will affect the pension of everyone. They also will result in persons not being born. You can say that this is way less of importance then the right to do whatever you want, but it is not without effect to others.
Not in my experience. I have voluntarily withdrawn from caffeine, opiates (administered by a hospital), and cannabis. All experiences were remarkably similar. When I run support groups for folks who've used drugs, I recommend folks experiment with caffeine withdrawal to gain experience with the process. It requires at least two weeks of cessation.
> They do affect the future population count
Seems that you're assuming homosexual folks would otherwise procreate if forced into heterosexual relationships, which is quite a stretch. I also know quite a few homosexual couples who raise scads of children. And childless heterosexual couples. This argument doesn't hold water.
Cool, my decision to not use caffeine is justified then.
That said, should you find yourself in a health emergency, as I did, and hooked up to a dilaudid drip for weeks, as I was, you may find experience with the symptoms of withdrawal to be quite useful for getting yourself through the worst of it, as I did.
Withdrawal is part of the human experience you don't always have a choice to avoid. Fear, avoidance, and ignorance of it makes potentially involuntary encounters with drugs more dangerous. Besides fueling unnecessarily destructive policy decisions.
Worth a think.
So does abstention.
By your logic, then, if sodomy and homosexuality were illegal, then adults of child bearing age would be legally required to have sex.
Likewise, those unable to participate in conception would be prohibited from having sex.
Anyways I didn't want to discuss that, my claim was that you either think of something as victimless or you think it is a crime. Your data point seams to only fit this claim. To disprove it you would need to find something you consider victimless, but still think it should be a crime.
I agree that people who think drugs, anal sex, or whatever should be a crime, can also rationalize that someone is the victim. They're wrong, of course, but they still think it.
When you said:
> They do affect the future population count and this will affect the pension of everyone. They also will result in persons not being born. You can say that this is way less of importance then the right to do whatever you want, but it is not without effect to others.
It appeared that you were not just stating what those crazy people who think anal sex should be a crime think, but what you thought. That's why you got replies arguing against the idea that anal sex should be a crime. You could have made it clear if you were just stating the views that crazy people have.
Well that's the meaning of misuse, if it weren't bad it wouldn't be misuse. You can only ask whether something is misuse or how bad it is, asking whether misuse is bad is questioning a tautology.
> Why is misuse of drugs bad?
Actually I was replying to this:
> By your logic, then, if sodomy and homosexuality were illegal, then adults of child bearing age would be legally required to have sex.
So I was talking about misuse of sexuality.
> I agree that people who think drugs, anal sex, or whatever should be a crime, can also rationalize that someone is the victim.
Yes that what I wanted to point out. I was merely enumerating examples from the Wikipedia article.
> but what you thought.
I do think homosexuality is bad and unnatural. (No don't tell me it occurs in animals, any behaviour occurs in animals.) I don't think it should be a crime, so I don't think my opinion affects other people.
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If we were to talk about my opinion about drugs in general, I think as to them being bad, they are kind of at the same level as money. You shouldn't become attached to them. They are more dangerous the more likely you become attached to them.
For any specific drug, I find the smell of cannabis to smell dangerous and poisonous in a weird and unexplainable way. I would like it, if this would go away, so I am in favor of banning it again. I also heard of studies indicating a rise in schizophrenia especially among young people (<30) and I don't wish that to anybody, just because someone tries to make money. I also don't think it's smart to do that, if you already have a lack of young people. But I lack the knowledge to check this for soundness.
I wouldn't mind smoking to go away from public spaces, I hate when I'm forced to inhale this. But I can't judge if it is justified.
I think alcohol is grand-fathered in. I also think there are very different kind of alcoholic beverages and also very different kind of usages. There are cultures that regularly drink liquor before eating heavy food, because it has a positive impact on the digestive system, but this is only about a few milliliters, so it is more like medicine. There is also a bit of alcohol in every apple. I think alcoholic beverages are too fundamentally incorporated in our culture, so I would find it sad to see it go away. I wouldn't mind having additional restrictions on harder stuff.
I don't think coffee causes any larger issues. I also think we don't need to discuss restricting access to sugar. Medical appliance of drugs is very restricted and constantly reevaluated.
I wish that large amounts of money would be more regulated, but I don't think we should touch the concept of private ownership. Also fashion or cars are the drugs of many, and now there is a large supply of non-physical drugs, but I don't know any non-restrictive policy that I want to support there.
I don't have experienced any other/harder drug and I prefer it to stay that way.
> Well that's the meaning of misuse
> I do think homosexuality is bad and unnatural. (No don't tell me it occurs in animals, any behaviour occurs in animals.)
Well, friend, that's the meaning of natural. "Found in nature"
Playing word games with one will get you called out in the same way on the other, regardless of your cognitive dissonance on the subject.
> Well, friend, that's the meaning of natural. "Found in nature"
That's one meaning of nature. Other meanings are the nature of X, as in what is an intrinsic motivation or purpose, and natural law, but I guess you don't recognize that as valid concept.
Would you agree to "Killing others is natural"? You wouldn't expect "natural" to have the first meaning there either.
A lot of disagreements boil down to a different usage of a word, so "word games" are not fruitless in a discussion.
If it is important, then I would define misuse of a drug by motivation (high or low) and by application (whether the dose fits the motivation). misuse = low || dose != motivation; And I would say that this is bad, because low motivation doesn't satisfy the harm any drugs causes and a wrong does doesn't achieve the intended outcome.
Killing others is natural. That's a factual statement.
"I would define misuse of a drug by motivation (high or low) and by application (whether the dose fits the motivation)" is indecipherable, and therefore devoid of semantic content. It seems the war on drugs has created a problem of nobody knowing the slightest thing about drugs.
We can start with actually taxing people with multiple piles of Scrooge McDuck money, as opposed to the current approach of cutting social programs that benefit millions of citizens to provide even MORE tax breaks for these "people".
Are you even serious with this?
I assumed you were concerned with all social programs and not just your personal pension, hence the statement. Fixing pensions, while all other social safety net programs get gutted is not the way. Basic breeding by heterosexuals isn't the panacea you seem to believe it is, imo.
The real issue with US population growth is the insane world we live in. It's not "the gays failing to procreate". That's a laughable statement.
WTF would want to bring children into the world when literal criminals, rapists and alcoholics are running things, racism is on the rise and cheered, laws are optional for specific groups of people while abused for everyone else, SCOTUS is a complete parody of a court, Congress is run by wholly unserious people, prices of everything are rocketing up not because of genuine supply chain issues, or similar, but because of plain, old greed and much, much, much more.
Let's not forget that AI is being developed at a record pace to replace jobs, while shafting the working class, instead of being used to uplift everyone.
"The gays" were never the problem and never will be for population growth.
Trying to fix pensions by forbidding homosexuality is laughable yes. There aren't even enough homosexuals for that to matter.
However a standard way to evaluate social norms is the categorical imperative. If everybody was homosexual we would have an issue there. But the only thing I wanted to say is that it does affect people, I didn't want to propose or defend any policy change.
Also I wasn't talking about money. This only gets you a portion of the future economy, the amount of young people decides how much economy there will be.
> WTF would want to bring children into the world when literal criminals, rapists and alcoholics are running things, racism is on the rise and cheered, laws are optional for specific groups of people while abused for everyone else, SCOTUS is a complete parody of a court, Congress is run by wholly unserious people, prices of everything are rocketing up not because of genuine supply chain issues, or similar, but because of plain, old greed and much, much, much more.
I don't live in the USA, so I don't think I should have opinions about your internal issues, but I do think you have a problem with authoritarianism there. But whose country hasn't so who am I to judge. However I do not understand this sentiment. How does it matter if the world is a shit show? When wasn't it that in the large scale of things? That seams to be the exception not the rule. It also completely fails to account, that people tend to have more children in darker times not less. Also how do you improve that world if not by raising children. You won't have any more lasting impact on the way of life of someone than on your children. "Science advances on funeral at a time." I think this applies to everything.
From https://se-legal.de/criminal-defense-lawyer/drug-offences-an... :
> Is the Consumption of Drugs in Germany Illegal?
> Although the acquisition, cultivation and possession, import and export (smuggling), and trade, as well as other forms of distribution of narcotics, are punishable under the Narcotics Act, this does not apply to mere consumption. The consumption of a drug meets the freedom of action and is therefore protected by the German constitution. Colloquially, this is also called “the right to get high”. Any prohibition or ban would be against the constitution and, therefore, is not enforceable. But since the offence of possession is already met by solely holding something in your hands, one of the above-mentioned actions is always going to be equally met when consuming a drug.
It doesn't obviously change anything in practice.
Though it may be that a better society makes fewer people want to smoke.
The argument you used earlier could be applied to literally anything, so if it's valid, literally everything should be a crime. I don't think the argument is valid.
You can't counter-argue that streaming movies is good for society, but growing plants isn't. I think it's the other way around, actually.
Maybe I shouldn't have used a bunch of euphemisms that sound ridiculous when taken literally.
Honestly I am neither a medicine, nor a chemist, nor a psychologist, so I don't feel qualified to discuss anything here.
(Nine Inch Nails - Capital G)
Since governments and laws exist to ensure justice, freedom will always be the price we pay.
Governments mostly exist to coordinate resource usage to out compete other societies.
Some amount of justice and welfare and roads, or whatever other things (varied by society and time period), are what they pay us so that our compliance is mostly voluntary and is therefore substantially more efficient.
You can bicker over exact word choice and the minute, but this general form is how it's always been from the present all the way back into the ancient world.
So, Singapore?
This is a cowardly excuse. It's another way of saying that if you reform mass surveillance you'll be blamed for anything bad that subsequently happens, regardless of whether the mass surveillance would have prevented it. And bad things happen on a regular basis with or without mass surveillance, so then the politically risk-averse move is to not solve the problem you promised to solve and not expose yourself.
Which is cowardly specifically because the candidate's original position was correct. You can solve crimes without mass surveillance, or prevent them by reducing poverty etc. If you do those things then the chances of something bad happening go down instead of up.
And it will still not be zero -- it won't be zero no matter what you do -- but in that case you're only worried about adversarial pundits blaming you for things that weren't your fault, and adversarial pundits are going to do that regardless.
"Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on." -- Larry Ellison (who should not be anthropomorphized)
And Ellison is not even a politician, he doesn't even has any kind of immunity. Meanwhile, EU politicians want to impose Chat Control on everyone except them.
The core issue is that they see themselves as different from us.
Politics should not be a career. It should be something a person does for 5, at most 10 years max and after that they are back to being like everyone else, with 0 benefits (and with potentially more surveillance, I think politicians' finances should be under extra scrutiny for the rest of their lives).
Surveillance makes their jobs easier, so there's a kind of natural tendency towards authoritarianism. We've known about this for a long time, the 4th Amendment was created to put limits on government surveillance.
If you're wondering why the government would allow private businesses to spy on everybody when the government itself isn't allowed to, that's because this allows for the government to effectively bypass the 4th Amendment. The government spying on everybody is against the Constitution, but a private business spying on everybody and selling the data to the government is "legal".
Assuming that he was sincere about wanting reform in the first place (and that's a big if for any book like this! The best you can say for Obama vs. most other politicians, is that he at least likely wrote it himself), what it means was that he was persuaded that mass surveillance was useful. He doesn't say how, or by who, he just vaguely waves at the burden of command.
It's the same "impose a small but poorly defined cost on everybody and act as though it's worth it because it maybe saves one defined life and therefore anyone who wants to call you out has an uphill battle" model you see used by bad people and dishonest comment section types the world over.
Society has no good way to reason about these "it's not much individually but when you do it to all of society it adds the F up" type downsides.
Like if you could save one life per year at the cost of making it take everyone an extra minute per day that's obviously not worth it at the scale of the united states because you're actually losing more life than you're saving.
But replace the "one minute" with something more subjective and nobody calls it out.
Obama didn't swear an oath to safety, but he did swear an oath to protect the constitution. He is an oath breaker and not a man of integrity, but if we choose to trust his excuse then maybe we can forgive him as an individual for being frightened by the horror stories told to him by power hungry three letter agencies, but we should never forgive him as a president for his failure to uphold his oath. Obama studied and taught constitutional law. He knew exactly how important the oath he took was and what would be at risk if the constitution was ignored.
It will always be more "safe" to take people's freedom and control them. Safety is just not an acceptable excuse to take away the freedoms of every American.
If the police need your google search history thats ok as long as they can get a warrant showing they have justification and then perhaps at a delayed time, the account owner should be notified that this happened.
If they need access to your phone, rather than hacking it they should just take it off you and get the password from you.
This limits tracking since this is a fairly disruptive and visible thing and prevents just passive tracking of everyone all the time.
Businesses who use facial recognition for loss prevention should be legally required to only use their data for this purpose and never for marketing and analytics. They must not ever sell the data and delete it within a reasonable time.
1) It does not _prevent_ the most serious crimes. People who are going to murder or rape someone are often not mentally capable or understanding how likely they are to get caught or caring about it in the moment. It might help solve it but there's usually more than enough conventional evidence. And these crimes are typically not what people coordinate with others so surveilling communication does not help much.
2) Stealing? Maybe. I can imagine cameras dissuade some opportunists but then again, shoplifting is reportedly high with self-checkouts and those are packed with cameras. Other kinds like burglars will probably just learn to be more careful with gloves and masks. And surveilling communication does not help unless we're talking organized crime and those people should be competent enough to use encrypted comms even if the major platforms are backdoored.
3) Crimes of opportunity like vandalism. Again, cameras are enough, if they work at all. The extra fraction of idiots who would be caught because they brag only about setting a trash can on fire it negligible compared to the downsides.
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What surveillance absolutely could deter and help catch is organized resistance like staging a protest/riot/insurrection or individuals doing research before an assassination.
And that's why politicians, who are the most likely victims of these crimes, want surveillance. And you might genuinely believe that no current politician in your country deserves to be shot or that the current government should not be overthrown.
But we have to keep in mind that the next government will inherit these systems. Nothing is permanent, no democracy will last forever.
Historically, most countries have periods of freedom and authoritarianism, separated by collapse or revolt. At some point, in your country too, people will need to rise up to reassert their rights again.
It's a matter of when, not if.
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I see where you are coming from and there were times in my life where more surveillance would have helped my side but ultimately, it's a balancing act and surveillance tips the scale in favor of people who already have a lot of power.
Increasing the chance of criminals getting caught does a lot more for dissuading crime than increasing the penalties. Would you litter if you knew there was a 100% chance of getting a $50 fine?
It’s probably the case that politicians also don’t want to be the ones who blocked the data which would have lead to preventing a terrorist attack. And they get more visibility behind the scenes after taking the job.
But the point I am trying to make is that surveillance does not work to stop the crimes people actually care about. Even if your biggest fear is terrorism, surveillance is not gonna stop somebody ramming their car into a crowd. Those who want to create fear have a myriad of ways which cannot be stopped without absolute, total surveillance, which makes any kind of resistance impossible.
I don't wanna live in a society where I have a 10% chance to get caught littering. Not because I wanna litter but because at some point, I might find myself homeless and needing to steal food to not starve. Or I might find myself living in a dictatorship and needing to drone the fucker who's sending my friends/family to a gulag.
Everything has a price. If the price of reducing common crime by 10% reduces the chance of a successful revolution by 20%, then it's not worth it. Because people are only free as long as they revoke their consent. If 50% of the population agree they live in a dictatorship, they should have a way to remove the government, whether by a ballot box or an ammo box.
It somewhat kind of works, which is the problem. The real solution is deeper, and harder, and longer.
Choosing not just your partners but classmates, teachers, colleagues, and neighbors.
First, it's less efficient. But most importantly, it involves making value judgements of other people - identifying those who cause most conflict in society and not consenting to their interactions with us - not consenting to their participation.
And that's a no-go because we're all supposed to believe we're all equal.
I guess though this problem will get solved as most transition to self driving cars over the next 15-30 years.
(Downvote me for “being obtuse” but I’m pointing out unspoken assumption that’s worth considering)
It boils down to one thing that allows these surveillance technologies to exist: public apathy.
Power corrupts.
This is a weird stance.
That seems highly disingenuous or just ignorant. We publicly had this problem starting in the 1990s. The NSA used to have a program that would capture data but then encrypt it and protect it from random access. They discontinued that program and instituted a new one that had zero privacy protections in it.
This was right at the turn when the "war on terror" started. Which was the excuse then used to abandon the better program for the egregious one since it was projected to be better for this particular use case. It's debatable whether that was true or not.
> Flock cameras or walk into grocery stores
Record it if you want. Law enforcement, at any level, should require an actual warrant to access it in any form. This isn't a binary. You can enhance security and privacy at the same time.
You mean to ask questions ? No way. /s
> Phone networks need to know where users are in order to route text messages and phone calls. Operators exchange signalling messages to request, and respond with, user location information. The existence of these signalling messages is not in itself a vulnerability. The issue is rather that networks process commands, such as location requests, from other networks, without being able to verify who is actually sending them and for what purpose.
> These signalling messages are never seen on a user’s phone. They are sent and received by “Global Titles” (GTs), phone numbers that represent nodes in a network but are not assigned to subscribers.
'Fun' fact: "other networks" includes all foreign networks with a roaming partnership. It's possible to abuse SS7 to track people across borders, from half the world away.
this also helped confirm the identity of the 2022 killer in idaho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_University_of_Idaho_murde...
can you elaborate on this a bit? what devices are able to to present themselves as possible base stations? do i need any form of entitlement to participate in the network or not? From past encounters with SS7 and its, uhm, capabilities, it seemed the hardest part would be getting access to the network, albeit not hard really, it sounds like you were hinting at possibly gaining access by participating in the network without any official entitlement, by posing as a base station.
Many of these femtocells, historically, could be trivially altered or updated to participate as literal peers on SS7.
I haven't looked into this for many years but there was a time when operating a certain femtocell granted the owner an enormous amount of leverage on the global telecom network ...
the group:
- dragged its feet on resolving SS7 security vulnerabilities
- repeatedly ignored input from DHS technical experts
- [identified] best practices.. using different filtering systems
- [but] pushed.. to rely on voluntary complianceBut it is highly ironic that these companies specialize in surveillance, tracking, and security, and then have a tendency to leave the data that they steal from others open to the Internet in a very amateurish security lapse that in turn leads to everyone stealing from them.
https://www.lighthousereports.com/methodology/surveillance-s...
Phone networks need to know where users are in order to route text messages and phone calls. Operators exchange signalling messages to request, and respond with, user location information. The existence of these signalling messages is not in itself a vulnerability. The issue is rather that networks process commands, such as location requests, from other networks, without being able to verify who is actually sending them and for what purpose.
These signalling messages are never seen on a user’s phone. They are sent and received by “Global Titles” (GTs), phone numbers that represent nodes in a network but are not assigned to subscribers. Surveillance companies have often leased GTs from phone operators and used them to send unauthorised signalling messages into other networks, benefitting from the fact that the signalling messages appear to be coming from the legitimate operator which owns the GT.
First Wap primarily works via in-country installations of Altamides. In this setup, a government client uses Altamides via an SS7 link belonging to a local phone operator. The local phone operator provides the GTs and Altamides uses these GTs to conduct location tracking domestically and internationally."
So basically the telecoms network itself has no security. Anyone operating network equipment on the telecoms network can see where any phone is at any time.
I didn't know we lived in a world that is this stupid. Great. If you're a dissident you basically cannot have a phone or be around anyone who has a phone.
Femtocells and Fake Base Stations Attackers deploy femtocells — small cellular base stations — or fake base stations, commonly known as IMSI catchers, to intercept SS7 traffic. A modified femtocell can act as a man-in-the-middle, capturing signaling messages between a phone and the network.
Fake base stations mimic legitimate cell towers, tricking devices into connecting and relaying SS7 messages to the attacker’s system.
IMSI catchers exploit a known security vulnerability in the GSM specification, which requires the handset to authenticate to the network but does not require the network to authenticate to the handset. They broadcast a stronger signal than legitimate cell towers to lure mobile phones into connecting. Once connected, an IMSI catcher can force the transmission of the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) and compel the connected mobile station to use no encryption or easily breakable encryption.
For 3G and LTE networks, sophisticated IMSI catcher attacks may involve downgrading the connection to less secure non-LTE network services to bypass enhanced security features. For example, a hacker might deploy a fake base station near a target to capture their IMSI and initiate SS7 queries.
https://www.how2lab.com/tech/mobile-communication/ss7-vulner...
SS7: Locate. Track. Manipulate. [2014] https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6249_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412271...
https://media.ccc.de/v/25c3-2997-en-locating_mobile_phones_u...
For example, this post could have been a product of just probing a particular group of people to understand if they are interested in the subject and what they have to say about it.
That can be done indirectly, by suggesting someone (offering a link or planting an idea) that is already known to be interested in surveillance and prone to share interesting discoveries (in other words, the poster might not even be aware he could be an asset).
Think about the many ways someone could know your interests and how prone you are to react to something and how that could be used. If you are in tech, think about all the silly ways that kind of information can leak publicly.
People often disregard the possibility that they could be an active part of a surveillance network (as an unkowingly asset), instead focusing on more fantastical ideas such as technological hacks or coding wizardry.
Why not HIBP (Have I Been Pwned) style site to check against the database if your number is in?
- Almost everyone has a phone.
- Almost everyone takes their phone wherever they go.
- All SIM-cards have been forcefully (by law) linked to people's identities.
- Almost all people are therefore being tracked.
Reminder that around the same time a joint venture of Nokia+Siemens had been developing and deploying deep packet inspection and surveillance systems in Egypt and Iran. They got called out by human rights organisations and posted an "oops sorry\" press release.
If your device privacy is a mess, mobile ID links you to all the good and bad things you do on a phone.
Had no idea this was part of the tool options, but backbone cell network makes sense.
Other TTPs I’d read about was variations on geo-fenced adserving to phish a mobile ID basically via user interaction or scroll past the ad. Small enough geofence and do it a few times, one could safely figure out the user being the ID. Googling “RTB surveillance” or “DSP surveillance” are ways into the topic.
Scary stuff! Pair that with this tech has been working for years, and is international. Frames a bit differently every action by a public figure - also at risk via the same threat model.
Also long have wondered what data analysis like this is done on technical forums… ran by a VC firm… with a lot of insider context (product market fit?) in the comments.
https://www.giosec.uk/specialist-services---geo-location.htm...
As if their government couldn't just track the smartphone or them via social media already.
Spammers have ruined the free access modern US phone/text allows. So I am one of those minorities not carrying a phone daily.
Political figures being there I somewhat understand, but a Netflix producer? Why would anyone need to track a Netflix producer?
netflix is a crucial tool of narrative control...
they are nowhere near "just producers"...
Even the WAP part of the name makes me wonder[2].
I know I have some futile questions, but why does seem France so untouched? [3]
[1] <https://www.1rstwap.com>
[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol>
[3] <https://i0.wp.com/www.lighthousereports.com/wp-content/uploa...>
As for article, imagine, at those times and for thousands years after in most places humans were still hunting-gathering..
There is mention of fake antenna but I don't think they cover entire country with that, how do they do?
The SMS are intercepted because thru SS7 by tricking the network into thinking the target phone is roaming (3).
(1)https://www.lighthousereports.com/methodology/surveillance-s...
(2)https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/firstwap-altami...
(3)https://www.fyno.io/blog/is-it-easy-to-intercept-sms-a-compl...
For anyone worried, this approach:
1) Breaks the existing phone from receiving WhatsApp messages, so you can notice that behavior
2) Can be prevented by setting up a WhatsApp pin in your settings
Horrifying that nearly banks still require you to use sms as a 2fa and do not offer any other alternative.
Did you really think the US Gov was OK with facebook running the biggest "encrypted" SMS system on earth. LOL of course they already had access to all the messages.
In my country banking applications are tied to your phone via IMEI, SIM and other hardware dependent information available.
Forget getting banking details and use another device without the user knowing, either.
If someone clones your SIM or gets a replacement in behalf of you, your all banking access is blocked until you enable them one by one with your ID card or other means.
One of the banks can use FaceID as a secondary factor, too.
So, other methods are possible. It's an "implementation detail" at this point.
This article answers none of my questions!
https://www.lighthousereports.com/methodology/surveillance-s...
The new reality is that the surveillance state is part of the ride. If you are not a rapist or pedophile then why would you be concerned about cameras in Public anyways? If nobody is trying to smuggle children then why do we keep losing them? These ideas would not get so much traction if they were not a legitimate response to a real world stimuli.
Favouring any argument made by non citizens and/or “the naysayers” tends to be labeled as “Anti” which is a dangerous label
I would assume anyone who has kids would support the idea of tracking programs because it implies a higher level of operational security and access denial. I am truly curious who's voices these are calling for transparency and open security, because they are trying to rape your daughter. Prove me wrong, prove me wrong. I repeat, only a rapist, thief, terrorist or spy would be alarmed about the development of this “Surveillance State” technological paradigm. So when the trolls try to argue Philosophy as some generic excuse to protest scrutiny, take another look. What does he have to hide. What business is it of theirs to speak for you about cyber security or domestic opsec? And in fact who are you to care about that stuff at all either?
