FYI, the most relevant information to avoiding your phone showing up in ICE's rented databases is how they are getting the location data:

The material does not say how Penlink obtains the smartphone location data in the first place. But surveillance companies and data brokers broadly gather it in two different ways. The first is from small bundles of code included in ordinary apps called software development kits, or SDKs. SDK owners then pay the app developers, who might make things like weather or prayer apps, for their users’ location data. The second is through real-time bidding, or RTB. This is where companies in the online advertising industry place near instantaneous bids to get their advert in front of a certain demographic. A side effect is that companies can obtain data about peoples’ individual devices, including their GPS coordinates. Spy firms have sourced this sort of RTB information from hugely popular smartphone apps.

This includes a link to a prior 404 story that may have a list of apps, but it's paywalled and none of the archive sites seem to have it indexed: https://www.404media.co/candy-crush-tinder-myfitnesspal-see-the-thousands-of-apps-hijacked-to-spy-on-your-location/

Your phone company is selling this data. Your tax dollars are then used to spy on you. But let's place the blame with the enablers. If the data wasn't being sold, ICE couldn't buy it with your money.

Privacy is a myth in the United States.

The people should start buying this data to identify ICE personnel involved in incidents. It's not like you need to be law enforcement to get access to this. You just need money.

I thought this was going to say they were deploying Stingrays in neighborhoods. Pretty sure this is worse, because at least a Stingray requires something be physically present. Fuck all of this.

"This is wrong" — Lucius Fox, The Dark Knight

Prescient, and also an example of copaganda/how corporate media conditions the public to accept this shit because the "good guy" is the one using it.

In July 2023, PenLink merged with Israeli surveillance contractor Cobwebs Technologies

Tangles is a web platform, originally developed and sold by Israeli firm Cobwebs Technologies, that scrapes data from the open web, deep web, and dark web, as well as allowing for the tracking of mobile devices within a user-designated area, in a process known as "geofencing," through an optional add-on feature called WebLoc.

Source

Cobwebs and how the spying is going global.

WebLoc

Do not take your phone to protests/rallies/organized events. Do not turn it off and take it with you thinking it's okay, they will know when and where you turned it off. Jury is still out if modern phones truly turn off as well. Use a regular camera for taking pictures, take lots of them, get faces, IDs, anything if you can of ICE. Let them start the violence first.

Everyone should be using an ad blocker for this reason exactly.

Ads are often the culprit of data for the location data brokers. Fuck the ads.

Turning off our phones isn't the answer, prohibiting this invasive and predatory practice is the solution. They couldn't follow you around town and all the way home, and take note of your address without getting flagged for stalking, or at least a restraining order.

They shouldn't be able to stalk you electronically, any more than they can do it on person.

Per EFF: US a surveillance regime as much as North Korea, China and Russia.

It wasn't that long ago we had phones that couldn't leave the house. This choice does still exist for us.

People get offended whenever I've said that even random app developers are part of the problem. They can't or won't see that what we have arrived at is a Kafkesque world. It has been death by millions of papercuts. The collective rush to make an "app for everything" was in net effect building a global surveillance dragnet. It was inevitable the aggregate of data would turned into an authoritarian system of oppression.

All you wanted to do was make a 99 cents a sale for your basic phone app. You blindly stuffed it with copy-paste analytics APIs that voraciously collect data from users without transparency at all. You insisted that these random data brokers are 100% super honest. Just trust them, bro. You ridiculed anyone of trying to warn people how reckless this is. Good job, guys.

Thanks for including the app list!

Laughs in root level location spoofing module

Archive link because this is too important for people to be turned away by a paywall

https://archive.ph/HYbBG

The takeaway that I got here is basically that even a burner phone can hypothetically be linked to you, if you take it home with you after a protest. And if you aren’t using a burner phone, they can get so much granular historical data about you that your whole life is laid bare.

And zero warrants required, because of course this needs to be abused as much as possible.

What do normal people even do about this sort of thing? Flock cameras at least can be disabled or hacked, but this? We don’t have access to cell towers nor the ability to choose which we connect to, we don’t meaningfully have the ability to opt out of data tracking.

Truly cyber dystopian shit. Really makes me think about just stop using an smart phone.

Leave your phone at home.

If you're at a protest and notice you only have 3G coverage for some reason, you're connected to a fake cell tower.

If you absolutely must have a phone at a protest, use a burner you bought with cash. Otherwise, look into meshtastic devices.

https://archive.ph/kBTTk

A social media and phone surveillance system ICE bought access to is designed to monitor a city neighborhood or block for mobile phones, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow them from their places of work to home or other locations, according to material that describes how the system works obtained by 404 Media. Commercial location data, in this case acquired from hundreds of millions of phones via a company called Penlink, can be queried without a warrant, according to an internal ICE legal analysis shared with 404 Media. The purchase comes squarely during ICE’s mass deportation effort and continued crackdown on protected speech, alarming civil liberties experts and raising questions on what exactly ICE will use the surveillance system for.

My neighbors use this. And, likewise, I used a few geo-location tools to find why my default zip code was always wrong on forms auto-filled by geolocation.

turns out my phone's IP address is geolocated at the Bothell Police Department. I made sure that there wasn't an substation or whatever right there but nope Bothell Police Department and Public Courthouse is where my the world thinks my phone is located.

Can't even use the simple conveniences of the internet because of surveillance.

This has been the case for a while now. Nothing here is new, they're just learning how to use these tools and tactics more effectively now. Privacy died in this country after 9/11

Nice, I just tried iplocation.net, and it thinks I'm in Denver, CO. Which is cute, as my VPN goes thru there, at the moment. And then I jumped on my magick razor scooter, and now I'm in Vancouver, BC. Perfect.

Hmm, the article also says Webloc can use GPS and WiFi data, which gets around VPN, I think. Anyone know a work around for Webloc, Penlink, and Tangles? Alas leaving the device home / elsewhere may be the only/ best solution.

Additionally blocking location data gathering may be useful to some degree, on some phones.

Obligatory "Dont take your phones to protests"

https://archive.ph/kBTTk

A social media and phone surveillance system ICE bought access to is designed to monitor a city neighborhood or block for mobile phones, track the movements of those devices and their owners over time, and follow them from their places of work to home or other locations, according to material that describes how the system works obtained by 404 Media. Commercial location data, in this case acquired from hundreds of millions of phones via a company called Penlink, can be queried without a warrant, according to an internal ICE legal analysis shared with 404 Media. The purchase comes squarely during ICE’s mass deportation effort and continued crackdown on protected speech, alarming civil liberties experts and raising questions on what exactly ICE will use the surveillance system for.