top | item 40058015

(no title)

>Sorry; I just don't follow. Google isn't "protecting" me from F-droid

Yes, they give you a warning to scare off normal users and you have to enable installing from 3rd party sources. My point isn't that they're "protecting" you at all, my point is it's security theater.

>Nor is Google (AFAIK; if there's evidence to the contrary I'd be interested to see it) providing cellphone data to nations that are targeting them for death

Various subsystems on android are controlled by Google and they enable Google to collect and consolidate all of the telemetry/usage data etc (effectively google is root on your phone).

Google is also part of PRISM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM#Media_disclosure_of_PRIS...

This information is used to select targets and kill people:

"Since 2002, and routinely since 2009, the U.S. government has carried out deliberate and premeditated killings of suspected terrorists overseas. In some cases, including that of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, the targets were placed on “kill lists” maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon. According to news accounts, the targeted killing program has expanded to include “signature strikes” in which the government does not know the identity of individuals, but targets them based on “patterns” of behavior that have never been made public. The New York Times has reported that the government counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

https://www.aclu.org/cases/al-aulaqi-v-panetta-constitutiona...

I'm upset that google is basically just the data collection arm of giant murder machine and it's being automated.

discuss

shadowgovt|1 year ago

You're not bringing much evidence to the table to single out Google for your frustration. Targeted tracking of individuals with cellphones is enabled by every cellphone, by virtue of the fact that it's a radio and signal strength and connection is logged and forwarded by the towers themselves; there's nothing special Google is doing to modify that process. So I don't know why we should focus on Google and not, say, T-Mobile or AT&T or TracFone or the entire cellular infrastructure.

You seem to be alleging that Google is brokering third-party access to data stored on the phone or generated by the phone (beyond the telemetry that's natural to every cellphone), but there's no evidence to support that hypothesis. Have I misunderstood what you're alleging?