They actually have routine anal probes somewhere? On the whole iPhone thing, you already knew you were being tracked by your cellphone right? There's been years-long logging of cell switching information, maybe even connection strength for triangulating exact positions. And now everyone's mad because Apple collected the info on a unique ID basis. Wasn't Apples privacy policy a dragon? Don't get me wrong here, I think mass-invading privacy by recklessly storing information is horrible. I just don't get why it's a surprise to people. If you don't want to get tracked by law enforcement and your service provider, don't get a phone. If you don't want to be tracked by your phone vendor, pick a dumb phone or a cool vendor. Else just pick who you'd rather give your info to. Any detailed info about android phones? You could specify during activation to sent 'anonymous' information to Google or not, wonder if it's honest. -Lodewijk 2011/5/26 Tyler Durden

Actually that's a really good point. Even I've been lulled into accepting being surveilled as the default. "Oops! We accidently grab all of the traffic coming from your device! Sorry about that!" It's like falling up, and it didn't even occur to me to be more than slightly peeved.

Damn. Soon I'll be arguing whether routine anal probes at bridge and tunnel crossings are actually necessary.

-TD

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Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 08:04:00 -0400 To: eugen@leitl.org; cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net; info@postbiota.org From: jya@pipeline.com Subject: Re: [liberationtech] iPhones/iPads secretly track 'scary amount' of?your movements

At 01:07 PM 4/21/2011 +0200, you wrote:

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----- Forwarded message from Nathan Freitas -----

This verges on being an apologia for the privacy violators, to find a fix rather than burn their carcasses with huge fines, bans from the industry and prison sentences as sometimes happens in other cases of egregious, prolonged public transgressions based on deception and secrecy.

Finding techical fixes is like adjusting oversight of misbehavior in lobbying, finance, politics, war, tyranncy and abuse of innocents. The warfighters, torturers, techies and their sleazy lawyers protect their own interests in watering down punishment into gentle remonstrances, yet more lying privacy policies from gov, com, edu and org.

Privacy transgression by peddlers of devices and programs is an epidemic, like tobacco and drugs, and should be treated with powerful antidotes not mere misleading label warnings and wrist slaps which leave the door wide open for endless tiny adjustments in evasion of responsibility -- all too often concealed by the wizards who can spot a fault, raise hell about it, and then what, well, offer the violator a chance to hire the spotter as a security expert, donate to a security and privacy org, pretend remorse and regret, and move onto even more insidious campaigns to cheat the customer.

Programmers, like weapons designers, know exactly what they are doing to the gullible public, no matter a few dissidents clanging warning bells now and then, get noticed, get hired, get a contract, disappear into the morass of ignobility keeping quiet and enjoying the benefits of being well-paid, bribed into quietitude, insiders.

Spying and data gathering are never done by the bosses but by the operators of systems who cowardly conceal their essential role, coutured in NDAs and secrecy pacts. Sorry sons of bitches, all of them, and their pipsqueak calls for techical fixes is pure shit coutured in "realism" about the necessity of every more hurtful inventions to counter those allegedly doing the same for the "other side," the competitor, those who will do it if we don't.

Venality, see it for what it is, a moneymaker wrapped in a costume of public service.

Your generous contribution to ours would be a real deal bold name maker in the vein of Apple, MS, Intel, DoD, God, et al.