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.

  • @[email protected]English
    2•29 days ago

    Counterpoint - the only reason I didn’t degoogle earlier was because my phone simply didn’t support Lineage or Divest. Chances are that whatever budget Chinaphone you have would be in the same situation. Now I bought a Pixel specifically with the intent of installing a privacy-preserving OS, but for a while most I could do was ADB-disabling Google services.

    Unlike installing Linux, chances are high that a degoogled OS wouldn’t work on the hardware you already have.

    • OptionalEnglish
      0•29 days ago

      Oh it took me a solid month of trial and error, scrolling through xda and other forums reading every how-to and watching plenty of vids and I finally got it to work. But it was not even fun. Yes starting with a Pixel is better, but f* teh googlez.