ICE just bought new tool to monitor hundreds of millions of smartphones. Experts say it’s dangerous
ICE buys tool to monitor millions of smartphones. Experts say it’s dangerous
You know the saddest part of this? ICE paid for that. If I made something that blocked that tool from working or even just made a knockoff that does the same thing, they would just seize it.
So that company has more rights and protections than actual humans do.
And that’s considered okay.
Citizens United strikes again.
Non-expert opinion: it's dangerous.
They were already dangerous when Trump told them to stand back and standby. They became significantly more dangerous when he deputized them and instructed them to wear masks and avoid being identified while they rounded up opposition. They became even more dangerous when Doge gave them access to everything the government knows about citizens to improve the effectiveness of their harassment and intimidation. They need became more dangerous when they arrested blue-state politicians for asking questions and nothing came of it. And yeah... the better their tools get, the more dangerous they become.
But simplifying this to "experts say it's dangerous" under sells reality so badly.
1/6 helps galvanized thier base, when the charges were all just slap on the wrists.
Paragon’s “zero-click” Graphite program can quietly invade the mobile phone of its target and extract its contents, even from encrypted apps.
How? Screen scraping? That would involve installing malware on each phone.
Looks like they use 0-day exploits to indeed install spyware on targets
Meta shared information with WhatsApp that led them to identify, mitigate, and attribute a Paragon zero-click exploit. On January 31, 2025, WhatsApp sent notifications to approximately 90 WhatsApp accounts they believed were targeted with Paragon’s spyware, including journalists and members of civil society.
I hope there’s some technological way we can use to foil these attempts to violate citizens’ privacy en masse.
It's called GrapheneOS
I’m aware of GrapheneOS, but I don’t know how their tracking works, so I also don’t know if GrapheneOS can offer enough protection.
Alternative OSes surely do have better privacy than Android, but that's probably not sufficient. On Smartphones, there runs not a single CPU like on a laptop, but more like 5 computers and only one of them is controlled by the OS. For example, there is a baseband processor and a radio modem. And the SIM card is a computer. And part of these can be controlled remotely (have you ever wondered how your phone automatically re-programs it parameters when you change providers?).
And then there are gaps in authentication in the radio prozocol: Your phone / SIM card authenticates against a radio tower so that the right phone user pays the bill. But the phone has no way to detect a rogue mobile tower...
Its honestly going to get to the point where to rid yourself from The Eye of Sauron you'll have to make the data centers defunct.
I mean, yes, that's how it works. Humans are not stupid, not always outright violence is used where it's optimal, but if it were never optimal it wouldn't exist.
I've also started getting interest in early Soviet cinema, its political component is, maybe counterintuitively for us now, that the most decently-looking revolutionary ideology is anarchism, except it doesn't work, and those movies are full of direct or hidden polemic with various kinds of anarchism in advocacy of bolshevism. And that polemic is still relevant.
People well-versed in Soviet ideology actually just love being approached with anarchist positions, including even ancap. That's what they want to argue with, and the general positioning of problems is similar with various kinds of anarchism. While the rest of political ideologies they treat as something long discarded and not interesting to discuss. I repeat, Stalinists who know something about Stalinist ideology, won't respect a fascist, but will be just happy to explain to an anarcho-capitalist how their ideology is an improvement on anarchism.
So, returning to violence, there are situations when limitations on violence, formally perfectly consistent, are limiting only violence against one side.
but Palintir, thiel is already in the hands of LEO. his obsession with AI is on par with the other techbros, but hes been obfuscating it pretty well.
I wonder if theres a way for us to watch the watchers.
I wonder if Anonymous can dox ice agents.
Does Nokia still make a solid feature phone?
My biggest use case for a smartphone is MFA for work, so if I can convince them to give me a yubikey instead, I'd be interested.
Alternatively, you can carry a phone only for 2fa with no internet connection. I think there are tokens that have the totp screen on them too
Gestapo. They’re going to start kidnapping and killing whoever they feel like soon
I wonder when is EU gonna open up to US Refugees, right now they aren't gonna take an American's asylum claim seriously, I have yet to see any American actually been able to obtain political asylum in any western democratic country.
Remember: ICE are not people.
They also are buying the NSO group
Good thing if you don't do crime, you have nothing to hide!
Forgot the /s?
They’re making up crimes that’s what Nazis do read a history book
And it’ll never ever be used against law-abiding, tax-paying, god-fearing, naturalized citizens ever—hand over heart, fingers crossed.
2 microseconds later...
Nano
One micropenis later
It shouldnt even be used on people who arent any of that.