I found a report from Citizen Lab that caught my interest, so I figured it was worth sharing it with the Purism community considering its themes’ relevance.
Here is an introductory quote I reformatted which summarizes it:
I have not gotten around to fully reading the entire report, but after doing so I will join in the discussion in this thread, if any.
Definitely looks relevant. Unfortunately at 40 pages, I don’t have time right now.
While your local authorities may themselves like to exploit these kinds of weaknesses, hopefully they are also paying attention that it is exploited by, sometimes hostile, foreign authorities.
At least on the Librem 5 you can use the kill switch to suppress tracking of any intermediate locations (i.e. intermediate between the times when you “choose” to “broadcast” your location).
I downloaded the PDF copy as that is more convenient for future reading.
This report has been far more eye-opening than expected, and immensely dense. It will require me multiple days to simplify it into written actionable steps for everyone to benefit and protect themselves, so while I continue to formulate this in the background, here are some important quotes worthy of discussion and my immediate interest:
Part 1
Related:
Part 5
My interests in this report are centered towards creating anti-surveillance and anti-censorship solutions broken down into manageable steps.
And if you are in a country where human rights protections are fairly SUCI … whether the government in that country allows telecommunications operators to take advantage of available security features.
My current line of thinking is that I should make an entirely separate thread to address all of these issues within the report. It makes more sense to write up a practical guide, similar to the EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense, but more effective than their proposed solutions. It will take many weeks to complete.
In the meantime, this thread can be used for discussion for any of the points in the report, for those who value it. My current focus is defeating cell-site simulators/IMSI catchers, but I am also fine discussing anything else relating to street-level surveillance.
Well I started writing the guide, and it will probably not take as long as I thought because I am going to omit explaining all of the technical details and jargon behind it, in favour of focusing on actionable steps against mobile geolocation surveillance. Anyone interested can simply read the report on their own time and do further research on their own if desired.
I will mention that Figure 7 of the report had additional redactions on November 8th, 2023, but it can be easily reverted using the Wayback Machine, either by using the initial report, or this “direct” image link.