Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the world. Abortion clinics, places of worship, and individual people can all be monitored without a warrant.

Privacy advocates got access to Locate X, a phone tracking tool which multiple U.S. agencies have bought access to, and showed me and other journalists exactly what it was capable of. Tracking a phone from one state to another to an abortion clinic. Multiple places of worship. A school. Following a likely juror to a residence. And all of this tracking is possible without a warrant, and instead just a few clicks of a mouse.

  • SplashJacksonEnglish
    825·
    6 hours ago

    So why abortion clinics in the title if it can track people anywhere? Do they think abortion clinics are the most popular destination for the majority of people? Why not put pizza joint im the title? Or sex club? Bath house? Dairy farm?

    • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
      411·
      6 hours ago

      Because right now’s political climate is about how abortion is being billed en masse as murder, and people are having to go to other states to get abortions (even for miscarriages), so the states that bill abortion as murder want to be able to prosecute the women. So there are a lot of fears that states will be tracking women through tools like this, and it turns out the fearful were correct.

    • positiveWHAT@lemmy.worldEnglish
      152·
      6 hours ago

      It’s American focused and abortion is at the forefront of their christofascist-liberal culturwar.