[BonesJustice]

> A system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location data from major cellphone carriers...

Wait, what? Carriers are selling personally identifiable location information? I knew they were selling aggregate data, but how are they legally selling location numbers tied to actual phone numbers?

I dug into my carrier's privacy policy, and it looks like this is true. They say you'll be asked for consent before it happens, but what mechanism does the carrier even have to request that consent? I've certainly never seen an opt-in prompt for anything like that before, but according to my carrier's site, there are at least two companies that are accessing or have accessed my location data through my carrier. That is not okay.

If an app or service I use wants access to my location, they can go through my phone's location services API, which requires my affirmative consent. It is completely unacceptable that they can bypass me and get it directly from my carrier.

[zkms]

> Wait, what? Carriers are selling personally identifiable location information? I knew they were selling aggregate data, but how are they legally selling location numbers tied to actual phone numbers?

I tried the demo (https://www.locationsmart.com/try/) and it indeed works. The location given is about 200 meters away from my location. This is kinda scary? Why are carriers allowed to do this and are there any opt-out options?

[pjc50]

> how are they legally selling location numbers

shrug It's America, there's no general concept of privacy in law. It's not considered to be your data, it's their data. I'd be rather more surprised if this is legally happening in the EU.

(I would not be surprised to discover that most EU carriers are compromised by some quasi-private intelligence service organisation like Cambridge Analytica/SCL group, illegally selling location data or derived results.)

[Consultant32452]

Am I correct in recalling that the way abortion became legal was an argument about a constitutional right to privacy? I wonder what happened...

[azernik]

Like many things in the Constitution, that only restricts the government. If they asked for this information, they'd need to get a warrant for it to be admissible in court.

[smsm42]

Privacy right is not in the Constitution, it was created by the courts (IIRC there was a hilarious argument about penumbras of Constitution and stuff, but really, how credulous has one to be?). So I would think they may make it restricting anybody they like. And of course the Congress is the legislative body, which can legislate these restrictions, as it does with a myriad others. As long as the Constitution does not ban it, it'd be fine - and it's not likely that SCOTUS would consider right to privacy as contrary to the constitution, I think.

[cortesoft]

I think the 4th Amendment is about the general concept of privacy, and it is definitely the law.

[pjc50]

No, not at all; it only refers to search and seizure carried out by the government. Whereas the 1st amendment is usually interpreted to mean that, once you've given data to a third party, they are free to publish it. In this situation the phone location data belongs to the phone company.

ECHR Article 8 contains a genuine right to privacy.

[azernik]

It's about protection from government intrusion. Negative rights, rather than a positive right as in Europe.

[vertexFarm]

Of course. Of course marketers are just allowed to track specific numbers for nebulous marketing reasons. Of course the phone companies just hand that feature out to whoever the fuck they want. What kind of god damn terrible security is this? What is wrong with the FCC? Oh yeah they were bought to exclusively terrorize the competitors of large telecom companies.

I remember when cell phones first started becoming commonplace and people thought I was crazy for having doubts. I hate being right.