Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the world. Abortion clinics, places of worship, and individual people can all be monitored without a warrant.

Privacy advocates got access to Locate X, a phone tracking tool which multiple U.S. agencies have bought access to, and showed me and other journalists exactly what it was capable of. Tracking a phone from one state to another to an abortion clinic. Multiple places of worship. A school. Following a likely juror to a residence. And all of this tracking is possible without a warrant, and instead just a few clicks of a mouse.

  • SplashJackson@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    13 days ago

    So why abortion clinics in the title if it can track people anywhere? Do they think abortion clinics are the most popular destination for the majority of people? Why not put pizza joint im the title? Or sex club? Bath house? Dairy farm?

    • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      Because right now’s political climate is about how abortion is being billed en masse as murder, and people are having to go to other states to get abortions (even for miscarriages), so the states that bill abortion as murder want to be able to prosecute the women. So there are a lot of fears that states will be tracking women through tools like this, and it turns out the fearful were correct.

      • SplashJackson@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        13 days ago

        You really wanna piss people off, tell them their bosses are using it to see if they’re actually going into the office or not

      • SplashJackson@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        13 days ago

        Yeah, I could, but it’s a perfectly valid line of conversation to critique a post’s title.

        There’s a reason we have the saying, “Always judge a book by its cover, and judge a response by it’s grammar”

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          13 days ago

          Yeah, I could, but it’s a perfectly valid line of conversation to critique a post’s title.

          I don’t think laziness is a valid line of criticism. I also find it strange to critique a title separate from its intended context.

          we have the saying, “Always judge a book by its cover, and judge a response by it’s grammar”

          I don’t think that’s a very common idiom. It seems to imply that pedantry is more important than substance.

          • SplashJackson@lemmy.caEnglish
            0·
            13 days ago

            It seems to imply that pedantry is more important than substance.

            It’s certainly more common; I mean, we’re on a social media platform that incentivises it.

            For the vast majority of people DooM scrolling these days, they want a quick dopamine hit. And influencers want those upvotes in quantity, not quality.

            Knowing that the defacto message of a given post is its headline, we need to have a conversation about proper standards and dark patterns.

            Click baiting isn’t the kind of baiting for which I came to the internet, and it doesn’t keep me coming again, so why put up with it?

            • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              12 days ago

              Lol, you can’t confirm it’s click bait unless you read the article…

              None of your critiques are valid, as the substance of the article is congruent with the messaging in the title.

              You’re just being lazy.

              • SplashJackson@lemmy.caEnglish
                0·
                12 days ago

                I’m not just being lazy; I’m providing justification for my laziness. We should be calling out clickbaiters and other manipulators, not taking them as part and parcel to online discourse

                • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.eeEnglish
                  0·
                  12 days ago

                  But your “justification” is based on feels…

                  The article goes into great detail supporting the substance of the title, meaning it’s not click bait or manipulation.

                  You are the one attempting to manipulate people by claiming that the title is something it’s not.

                  • SplashJackson@lemmy.caEnglish
                    0·
                    12 days ago

                    I think you mean to say, my “feels” are based on justification!

                    Btw abortions rock, I’m responsible for my fair share, but I think using clickbaiting as a weapon is bad, even when it’s for good causes. There’s a reason we have the Jenova Convention, after all