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.

  • @WoodScientistEnglish
    14•1 month ago

    The solution is to subscribe to these services. Then create a website that offers real-time tracking information, freely to the public, of the most wealthy and powerful people in the country. Every Congressperson should have their location shown freely available to all in real time. You could call it “wheresmyrep.org” or similar. Literally all of them tracked like animals in real time, freely shown for any and all to see. Let them live in the fish bowl they’ve created for us all.

    • @dohpaz42English
      6•1 month ago

      We’re kind of seeing that with those private jet trackers. But that’s not changing anything except getting those accounts banned from social media.

      • @WoodScientistEnglish
        6•1 month ago

        I think those just need to move to have their own independent sites instead of basing their operations on social media. Ultimately what they’re doing is entirely legal, but it’s way too easy for some asshat billionaire to pull some strings to get them pulled from a platform.

        • skulblakaEnglish
          1•30 days ago

          Yep. Spin up your own website and throw a couple YouTube ads out into the world. We’ll have legislation drafted making this illegal before your first server bill comes due.

    • @T156English
      3•1 month ago

      Although we already know what would likely happen if someone did that. It would just be made illegal to track the locations of congresspeople (and only congresspeople), like it was made illegal to do so during the BLM protests.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•30 days ago

      When supreme court justice kavanaugh was followed by protesters he had a hissy fit and said they couldnt do that. But it’s totally fine to spy on everyone with a phone and expose their medical data.

      These hypocritical fuckheads deserve exactly what you are proposing and I’d fucking love to see it happen.

      We could even say it’s to protect the children… make sure certain politicians who have expressed interest in legalizing child marriage aren’t left alone with any.