While I agree with the overall premise, but to best of my awareness (and I worked at an ISP in Russia in '00s) those statements are not entirely accurate.
SORM is Russia's Room 641A, except that it's legislated and all done in the open. It started way before telecom consolidation (which started mid-'00s, when large enterprises with strong government ties started to absorb smaller companies) and initially crept in slowly. At first smaller telcos were able to step around the requirements and just promise to cooperate "if something" (essentially, looking up flow logs and/or running tcpdump after being served a proper warrant).
AFAIK, SORM's first targets were mostly CSAM distributors and people who leaned towards neo-nazi views to various extents. That's how it was legitimized in the eyes of those who knew about it: look, FSB is going against pedophiles and nazis, yay! Don't know about journalists or minorities.
Shit started to hit the fan with mid-2010s rapid acceleration towards authoritarianism, when mandatory censorship and drastic expansion of online surveillance became a law.
And mass/non-targeted phone tracking is a relatively modern development in Russia, mostly post-pandemics.
Sounds similar to ChatControl, right?
Not saying that the EU is turning authoritarian at all, but just that it is a tool that may turn evil in the future.
That's about all in similarities, though. AFAIK, there's a difference in the system architecture: Russian SORM was a push from an existing agency (FSB) who became it's sole operator (and basically took over the country: Putin is KGB/FSB spawn), EU proposal seem to establish a clearinghouse-like system for various law enforcement agencies to access through. There's also a difference in oversight: FSB has none, EU proposes some, though I'm not really knowledgeable on the details.
And - yeah - any tool that allows government to violate citizen rights is inherently dangerous if the government becomes hostile. This is clearly the case in Russia, and I'm not knowledgeable about EU at all so I cannot possibly tell.
The problem here is a lack of data protection laws. It's entirely legal for any private citizen who wants to to purchase huge amounts of mass location data/history for billions of people.
i consider myself fairly knowledgeable about tracking techniques and countermeasures. despite constant effort and techniques that are extreme or impossible for the average individual, i believe my evasions are minimally effective.
it's also increasingly difficult to use the internet or even exist in public at all without some kind of compromise that invalidates most of that work.
https://www.rsn.org/001/ice-obtains-access-to-israelimade-sp...
Sounds like it is still illegal. They just don't care.
https://slate.com/technology/2013/07/nsa-can-reportedly-trac...
+ sorry for tracking your comment edits ;)
Spoiler: it's obvious to anyone who knows about tech.
I mention the date because this problem has been known by everyone, not just me, for a very long time. But it seems like others are incapable of acting on the knowledge.
To be fair this has been happening at least since 9/11 under both parties.
Just be another crop for the police state.
If you the reader are working on these technologies, I encourage you take a good look at yourself in the mirror. You are building a surveillance state for the rich to use against yourself, me and everyone else not part of the ruling class.
You are helping cement the class divide.
The last two years it has become more of a signal that "this is something right wing USA would want to supress".
I think the flagging mechanism needs a rethink now it is being abused in this way.
ICE is buying a software tool that analyzes information purchased from commercial data brokers to track people.
And both will continue to be allowed to do this, obviously. Something something private business free speech child protection that doesn't apply to ICE because I'm against ICE right now.
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[1] Nearly all deportations - overstays are civil, not criminal[2][3] cases.
[2] If they were criminal cases, every accused would be constitutionally entitled to a trial by jury.
[3] Anyone using the term 'illegal' to refer to those people is speaking out of both sides of their mouth. They want to make them sound like criminals, while denying them the constitutional protections that all accused criminals are entitled to.
Are there any reputable law scholars that supports this argument? Otherwise this feels suspiciously close to sovereign citizens argument about how they don't need drivers licenses because they're "traveling" or whatever.
>[3] Anyone using the term 'illegal' to refer to those people is speaking out of both sides of their mouth. They want to make them sound like criminals, while denying them the constitutional protections that all accused criminals are entitled to.
What about "illegally" parked cars? Those are also civil infractions.
If the dossiers are available on the market, and the price is right, and they're allowed to for some reason even though they wouldn't be allowed to collect that information themselves, they should just buy them for every citizen just in case.
The bigger story is that the Republicans have illegally dismantled safeguards against the centralization and collection of data. And they’ve stopped any sort of warrant process for collecting and analyzing this data.
Buying commercial data with a warrant or a process around it to ensure it is lawfully used is one thing. Disregarding the law and constitution to do whatever you like is a wholly different matter.
And don’t forget the end game. This is about silencing political opponents. It’s not for a lawful use. It’s purely so the Republicans can keep their man in power in perpetuity.
The end game alone makes this vastly different than what’s been done before.
Are you going to link this story? It would be interesting. What was the previous warrant process, and what laws required it?
I wrote this TLDR, because I wondered what I would have to do to prevent tracking (turn off bluetooth etc), but it's just a commercial data broker.
Barreling towards a complete lack of privacy is scary and waving it away as "just don't bring your phone" is massively naive. There are many many ways you can be identified and tracked besides your own phone, because there is so much incentive to do it. Even if everyone stopped bringing their phone everywhere out of fear of tracking, they would _still be tracked_
Why did you leave your phone at home? What are you hiding? Why are you afraid of being tracked by us?
Do you not understand anything about privacy and why it’s important?
Just some companies which collect unfathomable troves of data but have no incentive to clamp down individuals or manipulate democracies?
I just spilled my rhetorical counter argument...
You are right, the distinction between public or private abuse of power is futile in the end, but this doesnt mean we should put a blind eye on private corporations doing the dystopian ground work, by eg. relativizing all this with a "It could be worse. It could be the government but thank god its only palantir bundling the data, so no f'ing issue here. Calm down smart people!".
