Quote:In the months leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two obscure American startups met to discuss a potential surveillance partnership that would merge the ability to track the movements of billions of people via their phones with a constant stream of data purchased directly from Twitter. According to Brendon Clark of Anomaly Six — or “A6” — the combination of its cellphone location-tracking technology with the social media surveillance provided by Zignal Labs would permit the U.S. government to effortlessly spy on Russian forces as they amassed along the Ukrainian border, or similarly track Chinese nuclear submarines. To prove that the technology worked, Clark pointed A6’s powers inward, spying on the National Security Agency and CIA, using their own cellphones against them.

A6 claims that its GPS dragnet yields between 30 to 60 location pings per device per day and 2.5 trillion locational data points annually worldwide, adding up to 280 terabytes of location data per year and many petabytes in total, suggesting that the company surveils roughly 230 million devices on an average day.



Anomaly 6 harvests only GPS pinpoints, potentially accurate to within several feet. In addition to location, A6 claimed that it has built a library of over 2 billion email addresses and other personal details that people share when signing up for smartphone apps that can be used to identify who the GPS ping belongs to.

“Everything is agreed to and sent by the user even though they probably don’t read the 60 pages in the [end user license agreement].”

The Intercept

Quote:U.S. Special Operations Command Paid $500,000 to Secretive Location Data Firm

Anomaly 6 is run by ex-military and location industry veterans.

Motherboard previously reported how a wide range of apps, including a Muslim prayer app, sent location data without users' informed consent to a firm called X-Mode, whose clients included U.S. military contractors.

Quote:U.S. Government Contractor Embedded Software in Apps to Track Phones
Anomaly Six LLC a Virginia-based company founded by two U.S. military veterans with a background in intelligence, said in marketing material it is able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications, in part through its own software development kit, or SDK, that is embedded directly in some of the apps.

One of Babel Street’s products, called “Locate X,” includes the location records of millions of cellphones, drawn from consumer apps. The two former employees set out to build a product to compete with it, according to Babel’s lawsuit. Anomaly Six declined to comment on the lawsuit, which was settled out of court last year.

Developed with input from U.S. government officials, according to court records, Locate X is widely used by military intelligence units who work on gathering “open source” intelligence, or information taken from publicly available sources. Babel Street also has contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and many other civilian agencies, federal contracting data shows. Babel Street didn’t respond to a request for comment.

(04-23-2022, 09:58 PM)NightskyeB4Dawn Wrote: I remember a time when you took your life in your hands if you dared suggest that your cell phone spied on you.

You where considered an insane conspiracy theorist, that needed to be locked up for your own safety.

Now it is considered normal, and the only people that should be concerned about it are those that have something to hide.

Those were the days.

I wonder what generation Z will be lamenting about in the future.

(04-23-2022, 11:32 PM)fishertail Wrote: When personal surveillance devices (smart phones and cell phones in general) first came out, I had one for a short amount of time. I saw how it worked. The "essentials" that hooked everyone, you know, tip calcs, social media, weather apps, etc etc etc I realized weren't so essential but all my peers were just so dog gone fascinated by them they just wouldn't put them down. The gov't loves that! It's a dream come true for the agencies.
I lived so many years without those "essentials". I was fine then. I did not need them. Nice to have? Ok sure yes
Need?
Gosh naw.
What I get a kick out of is the watches. Plain old tracking wrist bands... and people pay big bucks to wear the darn things all over town!

(04-24-2022, 12:24 AM)Ninurta Wrote: Protip: You know those bands that allow runners to strap a cell phone to their upper arm? Get one. Every morning when you get up, use it to strap your cell phone to the cat before you let it out for the day. Over time, they will be amazed at the things they are tracking "you" doing and the places you are going!

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