this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
1007 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

72691 readers
1777 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] TheLoneMinon@lemmy.world 17 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

One thing I'm noticing in these comments, and in a lot of comments threads is the "well yeah, duh. Everyone already knew that" and while I'm definitely in that camp and have done that myself, I am starting to wonder if there is danger there.

Like, this is a significant breach of privacy and trust and the kind of thing that we should be up in arms about. But we already assume the government is doing the worst movie villain shit imaginable, so when we have evidence of it we shrug it off as just another Tuesday.

Yeah, waters wet. We should still be alarmed when we see a puddle of it somewhere it shouldn't be. (I don't know if that analogy actually tracks but I'm sticking with it).

[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 4 points 15 hours ago

You're not wrong, but these days the number of members of the public that truly cares (to point of taking action) about privacy is an extreme minority.

[–] Kirsche_z@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Puddle has been wet for a while, infact, it's practically almost an inland ocean, why do you think we're funding drone wars? Ai computing? Quantum computers? tactical robotics? Surveilence companies like Pegasus, Blackrock, Palantir, Even our our domestic surveilence is getting a larger check than defense. It's a very deliberate "funding" of institutions that ultimately give the police an upperhand, not saying that the police are directly funding these institutions, but rather the state, although not much when it comes to anything outside the defense budget.

There's a reason why privacy advocates are for alternative tech, and that's because since 9/11, corporations have become "lobbied" for lack of a better word, to include backdoors and implement certain tech to aid a surveilence state, such as the removal of headphone jacks, the endorsement of useless and extremely vulnerable tech that's more energy wasting, blutooth products (yeah i have a problem with it, everyone should), fingerprint sensors, front and back facing cameras, artificial intelligence (yes even the older models.), and even going as far as to add metadata to photos that give your exact geolocation data.

Don't even get me started on the invasive software that comes with the tech, like auto generated albums, or auto editing photos, the such, it pisses me off that we let these things happen. Alternative tech makes it much harder to intercept such vulnerable information, ofcourse, it won't completely stop it, but it mitigates how much they can swipe under your nose.

Not only that, but check upon the "Blue Shield Act," it explains the motive for corruption within the american institutions of police, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. It's the common trope for the kinds of psychopaths that would be okay with doing the job in the first place. If there's one thing that makes their job easier, it's definitely going to be you in cuffs staying silent, so why try to steer away from cutting corners? We're the law, what we say is final. Until it isn't ofcourse..

But that's the problem, as you state in your comment above, this abuse of power is shrugged off, almost as if a normal behaviour, expected. It's digusting to see it even when i grew up around the same mentality. But hey, at least their method clearly seems to be working, we're practically silent seeing as they still have the confidence to fuck with our lives.

Just remember, it's final until it isn't.

Blue Shield/Blue Wall/Blue Code https.//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence

[–] KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca 3 points 17 hours ago

I think you can just assume at this point the US government does not care about the constitution or it's people and will use any means necessary to collect data on those who wish to counter its growing authoritarian nature.

If you go to a protest, only take a burner phone or no phone at all. If you must take your phone, turn it off and Faraday cage it.

The US has become a failed state. Leave if you can. Things will only get worse before it completely implodes.

[–] slaveOne@reddthat.com 1 points 17 hours ago

Like in a water cooled PC

[–] super_user_do@feddit.it 28 points 23 hours ago (7 children)

and they criticize china for this bruh

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 6 points 19 hours ago

Reminds me of:

Samsung: "Apple Bad! They removed headphone jack and the charging brick."

Also Samsung one year later: "sAvE tHe eNvIrOnMeNt 🤡"

[–] spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 6 points 23 hours ago

Remember, they were really just admiring them 🫠

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] jeromyokc@lemmy.okla.social 4 points 17 hours ago

Saw a job posting yesterday to assist a contractor with installing a system used by police to monitor school camera feeds directly "to support law enforcement". jesus fuck man

[–] Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Exclusive BREAKING NEWS: After careful consideration by the World's top scientists from 1000+ top Universities, it turns out that WATER, H2O, the Wet Wet is, in fact, wet.

[–] MBech@feddit.dk 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No fucking way! I'm gonna need about 100 articles about that, all explaining the exact same thing, but slightly too dumbed down to the point that it doesn't actually tell me anything.

[–] raynethackery@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

Then I'm just going to do my own Facebook research and come to my own conclusion.

[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

Where is the “water isn’t really wet” guy!?

Your comment is 8 hours old. He should be here by now!

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 1 day ago (7 children)

So basically, one could go to ICE protest and troll with fake conversations about attack points and watch them scatter to control nonexistent issues.

[–] bold_atlas@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

You could then troll them even harder by giving them a real threat to scatter over.

[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

Very bold…atlas.

[–] modus@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

"Free Donuts, corner of 12th & Main. Tell no one."

[–] Snowclone@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

better be VERY coded language that a jury would agree is innocent in nature and intent.

Brave to think this will go before a jury.

might be better to have a bunch of gibberish with a few named places.

They might think it's code and deploy there, and you're not actually making a legitimate threat they could come after you for somehow.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 102 points 2 days ago (7 children)

once again.

do not take your phone to a protest

[–] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Cory Doctorow wrote a pretty entertaining book on the subject of tech vs politics.

https://craphound.com/attacksurface/

Also it's well researched

https://pavelanni.github.io/attack-surface-tech/attack-surface-tech.html

load more comments (6 replies)

I mean who doesn't know this cmon

[–] RaoulDook@lemmy.world 152 points 2 days ago (48 children)

Even though most of the comments here point out the obvious that phones are a risk, this kind of journalism is still important for spreading awareness and documentation of illegal surveillance for the record

load more comments (48 replies)
[–] cashsky@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Could AI be used to create a bunch of useless chatter in the airways that they would have to sift through and waste their time? Maybe use AI for actual good.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

IMSI spoofing is a product of wireless telephony being an ancient (way-pre-internet) technology, and we're long in an era where law enforcement (or in this case law-enforcement coded) investigators don't have to obey laws, such as assuring due process, and unreasonable searches disqualifying evidence. Instead they're hunting political enemies, and every prisoner of the United States is now a political prisoner.

It also means we don't have to obey the law, and can start using all-frequency jammers in and around protests and ICE actions to level the playing field. (It will also interfere with regular infrastructure, but it's not like ICE or the current regime gives half a fuck about that.

All-frequency jammers are older tech and easier to build than IMSI spoofers, and are highly illegal since so much of our commerce and communications depend on radio. But the current [FCC] has also been captured and is failing to do its job.

Any Amateur Radio enthusiast will know how to make a jammer. And current battery technology would assure you could make a handful that are portable and powerful enough to shut down blocks and blocks of municipal communication. This is playing pretty hardball, but then ICE isn't playing by the rules.

[–] Sawblade02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

From an RF enthusiast,

Wideband jamming will get a lot of attention very quickly and is extremely easy to triangulate with handheld hardware and a couple of hours of training. I'd recommended against doing that.

[–] bold_atlas@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Hide them and trigger them remotely.

Alternate between multiple devices and relocate every time you use it.

I bet you could waste a lot of their time with this.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 22 hours ago

At the point you already have a tense paramilitary operation clashing with protests in what is escalating towards lethal violence, I'm not sure finding wideband jammers will be the priority of responders in the area, at least not the first few times.

Though in times of peace and order, wideband jamming is, yes, a big no-no.

[–] jonesey71@lemmus.org 3 points 23 hours ago

I understand it would be totally easy to triangulate if it were a single jammer, but would it be possible to triangulate a mesh of maybe half a dozen jammers. It seems like a headache to try to triangulate that because your signal strength would be all over the place.

It also means we don't have to obey the law

Not true. Even pre ICE. Law enforcement is allowed to lie to you, but you cannot lie to them. The playing field is not level.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] KbSez@piefed.social 144 points 2 days ago (9 children)

If you attend a protest, you need to read this and follow it:

https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest

load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›