[ActorNightly]

Its important to not be hyperbolic in these times.

The two technologies ICE uses rely on permission for apps tonuse geolocation data for advertising purposes. Same reason you start seeing ads for local things when you travel.

Technically they can subpoena cell records to see which towers your phone connects to, but this is not viable for multiple people.

For privacy, if you care, having a rooted degoogled phone with no sim card is sufficient enough. You can check its signature by using your laptop as a IGW and capturing traffic to see if any apps or services ping anything.

If you want off grid comms, meshtastic devices are very nice, me and my wife use LilyGo Tdeck pluses for comms and finding each other at festivals. The portable modems are also nice because you can use them for GPS for your phone vs built in location services.

[buran77]

> phone with no sim card is sufficient enough

It's most certainly not. Phones connect to a cell tower even without a SIM to make emergency calls. The phone can still be tracked and it's not a difficult leap from there to identify the owner of the phone.

[embedding-shape]

Strikes me as almost negligent to say to "not be hyperbolic" and then completely downplay exactly how they can track you in the real world.

[beecasthurlbow]

That may be true for this specific use case, but the protection on bigger services could be easily rolled back. E.g., law enforcement was able to ask Google for "tell me everyone who was in this specific area during this time" [0] and is still able to ask "give me everyone who searched for a specific term" [1].

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2024/10/08/google-to... [1] https://reason.com/volokh/2025/12/16/are-there-fourth-amendm...

[soco]

Nevertheless, it's eerie that we are even having this discussion today. I didn't say "scary" because I'm far away from these events, but definitely uncomfortable - I know, the "events" may approach sooner or later my location too...

[AndrewKemendo]

There’s millions of people who have been dealing with this daily for the last few decades. The sim swap networks and VPN/TOR users across the world live like this.

When I was in Iraq it was basically expected that all of your communications are totally pwnd, if you live in China you’re totally pwnd.

Cell trackers like described in the article have been in use for the last 15 years by police and law-enforcement inside the US.

why you think its eerie?

[muwtyhg]

> why you think its eerie?

You typed out how awful the situation is, and how you cannot trust anything, and then ask why it's eerie? I feel like you answered your own question before you even asked it.

[AndrewKemendo]

It’s only eerie if it isn’t common