Alarming NYT Op-Ed Reveals “Disturbing” Secretive Surveillance State Powered By Your Phone’s Location Services
Millions of Americans are walking around with phones that have, unknowingly, created one of the most disturbing and unintentional “surveillance states” to ever exist.
A explosive new opinion piece in the NY Times aims to demonstrate that detailed smartphone tracking is far more ubiquitous than many think, despite the ongoing claims by companies that people’s data is “anonymous”.
Paul Ohm, a law professor and privacy researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that describing location data as anonymous is “a completely false claim that has been debunked in multiple studies.”
He added: “Really precise, longitudinal geolocation information is absolutely impossible to anonymize. D.N.A. is probably the only thing that’s harder to anonymize than precise geolocation information.”
The op-ed looked at trying to identify people in positions of power. It identified and tracked “scores” of notable people, like military officials with security clearances, as they drove home at night. They also tracked law enforcement officials and high powered lawyers. Though they didn’t name any of the people, they followed them on private jets, vacations and taking their kids to school.
Despite some of the data pointing to “scandal and crime”, the purpose of tracking them was to document the risk of under-regulated surveillance.
One person identified was Mary Millben, a singer based in Virginia who has performed for three Presidents. When told her phone was putting her “on the map” for everyone to see, she said: “To know that you have a list of places I have been, and my phone is connected to that, that’s scary. What’s the business of a company benefiting off of knowing where I am? That seems a little dangerous to me.”
