The global surveillance free-for-all in mobile ad data
Atlas Data Privacy Corp. is suing Babel Street for violating New Jersey's privacy law, highlighting risks of mobile location data tracking for law enforcement and raising ethical concerns about commercial data brokers.
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A recent lawsuit highlights the growing concern over the accessibility of mobile location data, which has become a tool for surveillance beyond government use. Atlas Data Privacy Corp. is suing Babel Street, a technology company that provides services allowing users to track mobile devices based on location data collected from various apps and websites. This tracking capability raises significant privacy issues, particularly for individuals in sensitive positions, such as law enforcement officers. The lawsuit stems from allegations that Babel Street's services violate New Jersey's Daniel’s Law, which protects the personal information of law enforcement and government personnel. Atlas's investigation revealed that Babel Street's platform could track individuals' movements, including those of police officers and their families, leading to harassment and threats. The case underscores the risks posed by commercial data brokers who aggregate and sell mobile advertising data, enabling almost anyone to conduct surveillance on others. The implications of this technology extend to various societal issues, including the tracking of vulnerable populations and the potential for misuse in politically charged environments. The lawsuit also raises questions about the legality and ethics of using such data without consent, particularly in law enforcement contexts.
- Atlas Data Privacy Corp. is suing Babel Street for violating New Jersey's privacy law.
- Babel Street's services allow tracking of mobile devices using location data from apps and websites.
- The lawsuit highlights privacy risks for law enforcement personnel and their families.
- The case raises concerns about the broader implications of commercial data brokers in surveillance.
- The use of mobile advertising data for tracking poses ethical and legal questions.
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21 commentsBut I don’t think anyone can honestly say the right amount of regulation is zero, which is what we have now. It is absolutely bonkers to me that anyone off the street should be able to gather such highly granular data about any other person as long as they can pay.
Right after I crossed the border from Austria, my U.S. cell phone started lighting up with spam SMS messages. At first, it was from the local cell phone carrier welcoming me to .cz. A few minutes later, a message from T-Mobile letting me know I was roaming in another new country. Then a few minutes after that, SMS spam for hotels, then restaurants, then casinos. All of this in a time before "smart" phones.
I'm not surprised to see it's gotten so much worse.
There are very few reasons in my mind that anyone, especially law enforcement, would need this "feature" and they're all pretty dark.
[0]:https://jeffmorhous.com/block-ads-for-your-entire-network-wi...
Also a video for those more YT inclined: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCA24qJBG8Q
This in turn would lead to an industry that hunts for evidence on a contingency basis.
The reaction to that idea taught me a lot about incentives.
If you've gone one step further and disabled location access for apps and disabled the global ad id, it would seem difficult to do the searches described.
The article refers to "25 percent of Apple phones". Is that just legacy phones running older versions of iOS prior to removal of IDFA?
Location tracking of phones is out of control (arstechnica.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41930818
Related comment:
486sx33 8 hours ago | next [–]
About 2 years ago, an isp we use for one of our operations in Canada called R… which is also a media company and an advertising company… came to us and said hey! We have this amazing new technology , all you do is geofence your competitors and then we will retarget anyone who visits their location with your web ads for as long as you want! Since they are also the isp for mobile data , they just force replaced ads for the targets web browser. (Basically they inject ads)
They also made it clear their system is not at all dependent on your phone location services or even your advertiser ID, since they are the isp and the cell provider they just use your SIM ESN to track you. ( cell towers know where their users are, with better accuracy than ever now )
It worked, but it’s darn scary. This has been around for awhile.Welp, that's the final straw I needed to nuke that fucking GasBuddy app from my phone. Goddamn I hate them so much
People used to risk their lives to try to erase much less data.
eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_bombing_of_the_Amsterdam_...
And that's why I gave my mother my iphone and went back on the wasteland that is Android.
She, as a normal person, doesn't understand all of these and go with the default settings. With apple it means she has 75% chance of being protected, with Google 80% chance of being tracked.
Me, as a nerd, i know about advertising id and I even root my phone to have afwall firewall.
This is why Google is just bad, they always technically allow you to do the right thing but it's buried under a ton of sub menu and convoluted settings. On purpose of course, their goal is to make money.
The developer got kicked out of the Play Store for bogus reasons, and had to continue to develop it as an externally funded effort. Support him, buy a pay what you want license, and give him a couple bucks for it if you value open source software like this.
(I'm not affiliated with the project, I just love the app and it runs on all my degoogled devices)
Additionally, degoogle your phone by installing an open source ROM like GrapheneOS [4] or LineageOS [5], and install only the most essential apps on your phone.
There's also App Warden [6] which audits installed apps, by scanning them for malicious libraries and adtrackers. It's based on the dataset provided by Exodus Privacy [7] where you can search for Apps or their APK identifiers and find out what kind of fingerprinting libraries they're using. For example, this is what the Facebook App uses behind the scenes [8].
Don't install gapps and neither the google play services. If you want an app store for the convenience of updates of open source apps, there's also f-droid [9], a libre app store for Android.
Additionally you should keep in mind that every app that needs google play services to run is spyware, by definition of what these services offer as APIs. Websites that require you to install their app to "verify" you are usually spying on your activity.
[1] https://openwrt.org/toh/start
[2] https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/dns/adguard-hom...
[5] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
[6] https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AppWarden
[7] https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/
[8] https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.faceboo...
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We made surveillance capitalism the default method of financing every free-at-point-of-use service on mobile devices before we understood what that meant, and people now have zero perception of the worth of mobile-based software. People happily pay for desktop software but the decades of everything on a phone being free by default despite the economics of that making no sense have made it borderline impossible to sell software to people for their phones.
At the same time government has been completely asleep at the fucking wheel with regard to any regulation to protect consumers. Consumers shouldn't have to know the "tradeoffs" of free software, they shouldn't need to vet vendors of software on app stores for privacy policies. People should be protected by default. This "informed consumer" garbage is why we can't get anything done in a regulatory sense because these companies will make the argument that users consented when talking to any layperson user of MyFitnessPal will have you understand they really did not within 5 goddamn minutes.
Could people read terms of service? Yes. Do they? No, because people have shit to do and nobody aside of an activist or someone with an interest in it is going to read 110 pages of terms of service each from the 50 services they're currently using and it's unreasonable to suggest that they should, and that's JUST the reading, even if they read it, do they understand it? Because most people according to a stat I saw recently about the United States read at about a sixth grade level, which is going to be a struggle to get through any legal document. And 4% apparently are completely illiterate.
I don't mean to rant here but this pisses me off so much. Our entire society is constructed around a set of assumptions about people who are at least some level of educated, with decent english literacy, who have the time and energy to dedicate to managing these various things, and yeah, if you're that theoretical person, you can probably do quite well for yourself in the United States. But what if you aren't?
What if you're one of the millions who have to work three fucking jobs to survive and don't have time to read the terms of service for twitter, and just want to relax? What if you're illiterate? What if you're disabled in some way that impedes your ability to read, or your ability to understand what data harvesting is or means? Does your inability to meet the standard I've outlined above just mean you're fodder for the scummy business alliance, ready to be taken advantage of at every single turn by everyone who can, because it's more profitable that way even if it means you will be broke, exposed, and/or otherwise exploited at every single turn and probably have a pretty miserable life?
I am long tired of living in a society that is clearly, bluntly, at every turn designed for companies to live and thrive in and not people. I'm tired of people being hung out to dry because "freedom." Nobody needs or wants the freedom to be recklessly and hopelessly exploited to the ends of the goddamn earth, and I'm sick of pretending there's no way for us to know that difference.
/rant
Philosopher kings would fit it at the political level.
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