In June, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) signed an acquisition plan for a 5-year, nearly $5.3 million contract for a controversial surveillance tool called Tangles from tech firm PenLink, according to records obtained by the Texas Observer through a public information request. The deal is nearly twice as large as the company’s $2.7 million two-year contract with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Tangles is an artificial intelligence-powered web platform that scrapes information from the open, deep, and dark web. Tangles’ premier add-on feature, WebLoc, is controversial among digital privacy advocates. Any client who purchases access to WebLoc can track different mobile devices’ movements in a specific, virtual area selected by the user, through a capability called “geofencing.” Users of software like Tangles can do this without a search warrant or subpoena. (In a high-profile ruling, the Fifth Circuit recently held that police cannot compel companies like Google to hand over data obtained through geofencing.) Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products.
WebLoc can even be used to access a device’s mobile ad ID, a string of numbers and letters that acts as a unique identifier for mobile devices in the ad marketing ecosystem, according to a US Office of Naval Intelligence procurement notice.
Wolfie Christl, a public interest researcher and digital rights activist based in Vienna, Austria, argues that data collected for a specific purpose, such as navigation or dating apps, should not be used by different parties for unrelated reasons. “It’s a disaster,” Christl told the Observer. “It’s the largest possible imaginable decontextualization of data. … This cannot be how our future digital society looks like.”
This is something that was going to happen eventually it’s just kind of ironic that it’s a deep red state going for government surveillance like this
Nothing says “small government” and “freedom” quite like mass surveillance.
They need mass surveillance to put down the protests for
freedom… errr to protect freedom (white people freedomrich white people freedom).
Every accusation is a confession. Always.
Red states have more poor, desperate people with guns so better keep them from getting uppity.
Totally on brand really. Republicans want to eliminate white collar crime (by never prosecuting it) and catch 110% of blue collar crimes.
Should gather Abbott’s device id and his families, and post all of their data in a constant stream of location, search results, and such. Soon as his and his families families data is being posted they’ll rethink it as a privacy issue.
But doxing is illegal 🤪
Not doxxing, just tracking and auditing a public servant.
Ahh yes, the freedom loving state. Texas. That’s right.
As a reminder, Texas has been Republican controlled for roughly 28 years.
Texas doesn’t have Texan problems; it has Republican ones.
And what would you call that ? A Texas problem. Republicans. Somebody has to vote for the fuckers
The venn diagram is a circle.
Big brother in action. Got to keep those women in line. /s
I know what you mean by /s but seriously that’s gotta be one of the drivers behind this decision. If Republicans control the state after the next gubernatorial election I could totally see a new law to punish the patient of a abortion (it just targets doctors for now).
Will they finally see or hear me say
FUCK GREG ABBOTT
I hope they can, I’m doing it as hard as I can …
Is there anyway we can open source this technology? I’d love to surveil police and politician phones if possible.
Government know people love to keep track of police and politicians so they are making it illegal.
Device-tracking services rely on location pings and other personal data pulled from smartphones, usually via in-app advertisers. Surveillance tech companies then buy this information from data brokers and sell access to it as part of their products.
WebLoc can even be used to access a device’s mobile ad ID, a string of numbers and letters that acts as a unique identifier for mobile devices.
As if you needed more reasons to use an ad-blocker.
This one should be such a goddamn no-brainer to make illegal.
This is why I’m so adamant about privacy. The govt has already been caught several times buying up data from data brokers for “predictive policing”. They’ve been using it in Pasco County, FL to harrass people day and night into either committing a crime so they can arrest them or leaving town. Once you put that data out there, there’s no getting rid of it.
Weird ass fcking state. Can we pawn this one off to Mexico?
Jesus just bomb them if you hate them that much.
Yeah thats true. I love Mexico. I shouldn’t wish a fate like sending Texans upon them.
nobody has ever said “remember that good thing that came out of texas”.
If it’s not food, then yeah, we’re setting all the wrong precedents.
Y’all aren’t exactly known for great food either lol
As a Texan who has no pride in their state at all and is actively making plans to move to a different state, I strongly disagree.
Yeah, I’m not a Texan but I also disagree about this. Also, Austin has produced some amazing music over the years (for example, random Austin band I’ve been in love with recently is Being Dead).
It’s a shame the politicians suck so hard, because they could make a killing on tourism if they’d get out of their own way.
Name food or foods that originated in Texas that are worth even a mention.
WHO THE FUCK CARES THE COPS HAVE A LEGAL DEVICE TRACKER CAN WE PLEASE STOP MEMEING AND FOCUS FOR ONE FUCKDAMN MINUTE?!
What would you like non-Texans like myself to do to help?
100% correct
My dude, they do some decent ribs.
BBQ didn’t originate in Texas, my dude.
Never claimed it did. I just said they do decent ribs. Pretty much everywhere has a regional BBQ style.
Make sure to support the government in the next elections so they can spend more public money on “security”
And they’ll “catch” just enough “criminals” (read: non-white people) to give Fox News some metrics they can blow out of proportion for the gullible, rural rubes.
Isn’t the US already a surveillance country?
Not to this extent.
NSA: AM I A JOKE TO YOU??
It is, but mostly at the Federal level and depending on who’s in the Whitehouse they’re not apt to share that data with the states.
Alt title: Texas to spend $5 mil on software that is easily defeated by not bringing your cell phone to a riot.
You’re missing the point. This is a gross violation of privacy rights.
It can be a waste of money and an invasion of privacy rights. The two are not mutually exclusive.
That’s not what you said…
Sorry if there was confusion. My main point: leave your narc device at home when doing crimes. Have a good day!
Do you think committing a crime is the only time this matters?
Edit: Imagine being trans, gay, a minority, or just the wrong political party, and the police decide to go after you.
I mean, this is texas.
Imagine being a perfectly normal cishet woman.
Sad, but true
Not too long ago Texas was trying to charge parents of trans youths with child abuse.
No, also probably when the AI pattern matches your behavior to a criminal’s behavior because you live in the same neighborhood.
Again I’m not saying this isn’t bad, I’m saying Texas has no idea what they bought or how to use it. The only practical way to use it is the way the feds do, and if they try the AI shit it will likely fuck them legally speaking at the federal level OR orange Julius wins and the NSA starts just giving this shit to Texas, so this will all be moot.
I think they got grifted out of $5 mil by AI hucksters.
I don’t think you have any idea what you’re talking about. This is exactly the kind of thing AI is good at, pattern recognition.
Correlation is not causation. This only indicates a person is in the general area [during a crime] and not that they perpetrated it. People go to jail, wrongfully, with less evidence than this.
they’re not going to use it as evidence in an arrest, they are going to use it to target social dissidents, which in Texas’s case, is everyone who isn’t a fascist.
They know they can’t use it as evidence, but they also know ten thousand other cruel and vicious things they can get away with.
Almost no one in this thread cares and they are all memeing like this is an ‘ow my balls’ clip.
Frankly I’m starting to think we deserve this
deleted by creator
That is the real (overall) goal of shit like this.
Prevent people from using communication devices so that we can’t coordinate. It is a lot easier to go around busting heads if people aren’t recording you (or running over from the other street to fight back…). Same with the constant war on encryption.
And useful idiots (or incompetent plants) will love to talk about how the real problem is people are bringing those evidence collection boxes to protests and are coordinating rather than acting as a sea of individuals.
Yet again I’m not saying this isn’t bad, I guess I’m just surprised people are just catching on to this shit. Look into meshnets. Get a DV handycam. Keep it secret keep it safe. Practice good op sec. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
No. What you are doing is trying to act smug while spreading the exact same end goal of isolating people.
A hidden gopro does not stop cops from beating you to death and saying you had a gun. A bunch of phones that are recording “to the cloud” does that. Similarly, a hidden camera does not let you communicate with other protesters and just isolates you and weakens the movement as a whole.
Please listen to others rather than being a useful idiot for the fascists.
deleted by creator
Riots are also rarely planned in the US so so I doubt even a majority of the participants will remember not to bring a phone with them.
It also impacts one of the most powerful tools we have for accountability: the cameras on our phones.
Airplane mode
deleted by creator
I am not talking about other people, I am saying that any individual who happens to become part of some unplanned ethical riot, has a chance to not be tracked through their phone and still use its function which don’t require any external connection, like camera.
Whether they decide to use it or not is really up to them.
deleted by creator
you should be pushing back against the laws > and practices that make you want to tell people that to begin with.
I am not disputing this part - I am just saying, there is something you can do even when the situation is not planned. I am not saying it is easy or anything, I am saying you are not without options.
I am not advocating for state survaillence.
deleted by creator
I guess? I mean the feds were already doing this to the capital insurrectionists, but yeah it does suck that Texas is now doing it too. I suggest everyone who’s getting pissed at me reevaluate their threat models instead and maybe go get a DV handycam from goodwill
deleted by creator
Do you think that’s the only fucking time they’ll use this?
We are in the middle of the most dangerous liberty encroachment in our living memory and literally none of you are thinking beyond your own little frameworks and by the time we get some advocacy on this it’ll be too late.
I just learned you can delete you device id on Android 12 or higher under privacy settings.
Is this the same as the advertising id?
In my phone it said “Advertising ID”. Just deleted mine. Really annoyed this was on by default. Are Linux phones a thing yet? I’m tempted to get the most basic bitch phone for work (they’ll never support a rooted phone or things like that) and a different personal phone that I have TOTAL control over.
Linux phones are coming along, Posh is very promising and helping make Linux on mobile possible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosh
I prefer the GNOME-Mobile DE on phone 😃 but I think goid hardware (like, not 2015 specs) is more the problem than good software right now
Im planning on getting a pixel phone next time I switch and will install grapheneos on it. Fuck safetynet compatibility. I’m tired of all the bullshit I have to endure on my Samsung phone.
Custom ROM?
Get a Pixel phone and flash GrapheneOS onto it. Best out-of-box privacy and security experience that currently exists still with great usability IMO. Does not have an advertising ID or even Google Play services by default. Also, it actually has better battery life in my experience.
Every fucking top comment in this thread are all jokes.
We’re officially reddit, there isn’t any more intelligent discourse here about important topics, it’s all just fucking memes and jokes and ‘lol the world is fucked’
Every one of you disgusts me, you are 75% of the reason they KEEP getting away with this shit.
Because they know ALL you will EVER do is meme and joke.
Thank you for stopping the massive expansion of surveillance in Texas.
Your sarcasm is not appreciated, I am willing to do what is needed to be done but the only ideas we have in this thread is jokes.
I appreciate your position. I don’t think you’re going to start a cultural revolution on any comment section. If you’re looking for a place to make real change, you need to network with local communities.
The the best you’ll get for “town square” value from internet forums is the expression of sentiment. People are angry, like you are, and they are using humor to literally reframe the narrative to point out the state’s fallacy.
. I don’t think you’re going to start a cultural revolution on any comment section
Where the fuck are they supposed to start then? The internet is our current social method, and places like lemmy the subversive coffee shops where people whisper about putting rags in vodka bottles.
Look a bunch of rancid enthostatists used the internet to organize fucking armed and trained militias that are operating RIGHT NOW, and most of them organized on the web and dark web.
I’m tired of being fractured and ineffectual shitposters all wasting energy telling everyone how terrible every decision they’ve ever made is. It’s DESIGNED to keep us from organizing.
Reddit used to be ideas, I literally watched it in realtime turn to shitposts.
Lemmy is going that same way at a ridiculously rapid pace, LARGELY in fact due to the shitposting and constant thought terminating cliches thrown out as some kind of profound knowledge.
I can’t speak to your experience but I’ve been farting around on the Internet since the mid 90s and I promise nothing ever changes.
Smaller communities tend to be more concise, that is true.
But what you have here is the hand you’re dealt. Complaining isn’t going to change anything any more thank joking. You can be the change you seek here by suggesting a course of action that isn’t asking others to suggest a course of action to you. If you’re seeking a course of action, you can try asking here.
But commenters on tech news aren’t likely to be expert activists, especially in whatever issue is your top concern.
My best advice to you is
-
practice acceptance of reality, not as defeat but as the first step to understanding and deciding an action
-
determine how much capacity you, as a person, have to contribute to a cause
-
determine one cause you care about and can be effective at contributing to
After doing those things, SEEK OUT like minded groups who have leadership and self discipline and are effective.
-
Let me reframe my previous comment:
If you don’t want to network in person locally, you will need to find a forum whose sole purpose is activism and direct action.
It will not be brought to you, and you will not be recruited. You have to actively go seek it out.
The forum you’re on now is called “technology”. Similar ones, like “news” or literally any other topic that doesn’t solely focus on mobilizing activists will not get you what you’re asking for here.
Fucking useless bougie navelgazer, I ban you from my internet forever.
You wield the power. Wield it well.
Are they? I see ones like
Small government
This is sarcastic, but it’s as much of a joke as Stephen Colbert - it’s touching on something pretty real. Not sure what’s wrong with pointing out hypocrisy.
How dare people cope with something horrible by making jokes. Everyone knows it’s impossible to make those jokes while simultaneously being horrified by and pushing back against the thing they’re joking about.
Freedom rations are going up this week from 10 to 8!
Texas reeks of freedom.
