A recent investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Associated Press has revealed the extreme extent of data surveillance of everyday Americans by law enforcement. Fog Reveal offers pigs a powerful and incredibly invasive tool for sifting through huge datasets of phone location data to track the movement history of devices. This gives cops warrantless access to your location data and allows them to perform “geofenced” device searches, a search for all devices in a specified region on a map, and then find all other locations those devices were at other times.
This next-level-obsessed-helicopter-parent-ass company was developed by, who else, two former Department of Homeland Security officials under former president Bush (the finger painter, not the dead one). The architects of our modern surveillance state use advertising ID numbers pulled from apps like Waze, Starbucks, and hundreds of others that target advertisements based on a user’s movement. This information is neatly packaged up and sold to companies like Fog and then utilized by little piggies to sniff out other people’s business.
“The capability that it had for bringing up just anybody in an area whether they were in public or at home seemed to me to be a very clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. I just feel angry and betrayed and lied to.”
-Davin Hall, former crime data analysis supervisor in Greensboro, NC
If you’re thinking to yourself, “Well how can this possibly be weaponized against everyday people with nothing to hide?” I commend you on your lack of critical thinking skills. Sometimes I almost wish I knew what it was like, lacking a frontal lobe.
Side Items
Serena Williams legendary career (maybe) came to an end yesterday, as she lost to Anja Tomljanovic in a three set thriller. I watched approximately 15 minutes of the match and sweat enough to leave a stain on my couch. Here’s hoping Serena finds happiness and fulfillment in whatever comes next for her
NASA’s relaunch is scheduled for today and things appear to be green-lit, so here’s hoping they got the math right and double-checked all the exit velocity parameters and of course accounted for the Coriolis Effect
Liverpool just wrapped up 96 minutes of absolutely uninspired football, tying cross-town rivals Everton 0-0 (that’s nil-nil) in the Merseyside Derby and giving me stomach ulcers to last a week