[sneak]

The US federal government has an exact, real-time count and location of every single person with a phone in the country due to universal bulk surveillance.

Cross-referenced with the subscriber records from wireless, cable, and utility companies, databases from data brokers that are fed by loyalty programs and supermarkets, and every bank or credit card swipe in real-time, they already have 100% of this data in far higher resolution than will ever be collected by the census. They know about your address updates even before you tell the DMV.

I will be ignoring the effort.

[kelnos]

> I will be ignoring the effort.

Then you do so to the detriment of your state. Regardless of whether or not the government has the information via the means you describe, House and budget apportionment is determined by the census numbers, and not this "shadow data".

[bobjordan]

I think my cell phone setup throws a bit of a wrench in the tracking glue. I use a sim card from China with an account that's not in my name. While I've got a China bank account with Wechat pay connected to it, so I can just hit a button and reload it with funds each month. I can make all the phone calls I need while roaming in the USA and also use a reasonable amount of data, it still only costs me about $60 bucks per month max. I don't lose any sleep over anyone tracking my cell phone. For a USA number, I use skype with VPN.

[DrScump]

I have 6 phones. Am I 6 people?

[novok]

You registered them under 1 owner cluster that links up to you, so no :D

[jasongill]

Citation needed

[sneak]

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligenc...

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records...

https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-dat...

[gruez]

>https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligenc....

>The NSA has stopped collecting location data from US cellphones without a warrant

uh, isn't that a counter-proof?

edit:

>https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records....

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

not exactly location data

>https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/

sounds like a great way to under-count people with poor credit or access to banking

>https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-dat....

Sure, it'd probably be cheaper to buy the data off some data broker rather than doing a census yourself, but how clean is their data? Are they also going to disclose their methodologies? Is giving a few private companies the power to control government funding allocation and distribution of congressional power really a good idea?

[sneak]

Look at the second link for why it isn’t. Don’t believe spies when they claim to have stopped spying (after repeatedly demonstrating that they are willing to break the law to spy).

IP addresses are absolutely location data. The subscriber records of major network providers, both fixed and wireless, are known to the IC. An IP address is a street address and subscriber name.

Most states have programs to ensure that even the poorest have wireless phones, if for no other reason than to enable job application callbacks. Very, very few people do not carry any sort of phone, and all phone metadata in the US, including and especially location, is under continuous logging and surveillance.