When it comes to privacy in today’s modern world it is virtually non existent for the general population.
Today’s most widely used surveillance device by the governments and corporations is the self sponsored ubiquitous mobile phone, which bugles the location a lot and invades the privacy of the user.
A personal computer (even a laptop with inbuilt camera & microphone) can be more easily configured to mitigate data collection, where a mobile phone also leaks bio-metric data including the surroundings.
Since at lest the 4th generation iPod touch, Apple used its sensors (3-axis gyro, accelerometer) combined with known database of Wi-Fi router locations to obtain the user's location very accurately.
That’s why there is a huge push from governments and corporations for the general population to use smartphones and apps which also harvest ‘private & confidential’ user data.
The reality is that the general population is tracked & monitored 24/7 by the ‘5-eyes’ global surveillance network, which also the ‘9-Eyes’ & ‘14-Eyes’ nations are part of, where this surveillance is not for the benefit nor protection of the people.
MANY people may be of the the erroneous belief that the surveillance began since the introduction of smartphones or the inclusion of GPS chips into the phones, but in reality tracking occurred with the introduction of GSM phones via cell tower triangulation and audio via deliberately ‘flawed’ or insecure communications protocols.
Spying via mobile phones is supported at two levels, the hardware layer, that being the baseband modem and the application layer meaning programs or ‘apps’.
The PC world has not been left out in the cold, ‘malicious’ code, no ‘backdoor’, no ‘administrative’ portal has been put into Intel branded CPUs that went undetected for many years, where there is no action to remove this ‘computer in a chip’ by Intel.
The humble ‘landline’ didn’t get left out either.
For example in the United States, all phone records have been ‘outsourced’ to an Israeli corporation called Amdocs, where in Australia Telstra also worked with Amdocs in a discrete deal and location.
A lesser mentioned fact is that Israel is a top tier surveillance state with products like Cellebrite, and educational institutions designed for the sole purpose of hacking.
Israel is also involved in surveillance technologies within hardware manufacturers such as Intel and in software from Google, Microsoft, Meta (nee Facebook) and many other ventures.
In the mobile phone arena, people are given the illusion that they have a choice, you know the red pill or the blue one or Apple & Google, where in this duopoly the data goes back to the same people.
Other ‘competitors’ e.g. BlackBerry or Microsoft have been shut down for the purpose of easier administration having the duopoly only to contend with, just like in anything else, from politics e.g. East v West, North v South, Liberal v Labor to supermarkets Coles v Woolworths.
While there are other manufacturers of privacy related phone tech, they do not influence the market enough to make an impact, but nonetheless they still exist.
Apple’s hardware and software is so locked down where even replacing a faulty camera module or battery may render your device unusable, not very good if it’s truly ‘your’ device.
In the Android world it’s a bit better where a base version of Android, devoid of Google's and manufacturer's spy or bloatware called AOSP (Android Open Source Project), is available for certain phones.
This ‘de-Googled’ operating system cut off other newer ways of spying on people, that being via Wi-Fi Scanning and Bluetooth Scanning, and also ‘Contact Tracing’ which is embedded in the retail smartphones such from e.g. Samsung, LG, Sony, Nokia, Motorola etc.
One can also ‘de-Google’ a Google phone (how ironic) via GrapheneOS, another flavour of AOSP only compiled for Google Pixel phones.
Because the internet today cannot function without Google (a legal topic that should be fought out in a multi-billion dollar lawsuit) in order to get some more modern useful functionality like apps and notifications the AOSP community has you covered.
In order to better spy on you, corporations (and governments) want/need you to login to your phone, e.g. mail services by Google or Microsoft or Social Welfare services e.g. ‘myGov’ in Australia.
These actions are not recommended if one is truly concerned about one’s privacy.
AOSP has created an app called microG that has anonymised your usage with Google and negated any requirement for you to login to Google on your phone.
Unlike Google’s core services app (Google Play Services, com.google.android.gms) microG does not obtain data from your contacts SMS or phone apps.
Hidden in the microG setting, there is a setting that is not available in the standard Android phones, that being in Location Module which includes the Mozilla Location Service setting which can be configured to disable Wi-Fi data & Cell data being sent to the geolocation service.
This is another way to stop data collection on you.
You can also obtain apps from Google’s Play Store, again without the need to login to Google, with the use of an app called Aurora Store, but keeping in mind that most of the data collection is done via apps.
Developers that respect your privacy, offering their programs up for scrutiny put their applications in an ‘open source’ app store called F-droid.
No comments:
Post a Comment