queeranarchism:gardencorekid:queeranarchism:selfenjoyment:goodzillo:grouchycritic7794:mysharona1987:
queeranarchism:gardencorekid:queeranarchism:selfenjoyment:goodzillo:grouchycritic7794:mysharona1987:You ALL be regretting writing, or attempting to write, that book or script about the serial killer.Prosecutor: “The defendant googled ‘How does a murderer clean up the scene?’ is that not highly suspicious?!”Sobbing writer: “But it was for my pulp crime novel! And I still can’t get a publishing deal!”My worst fear has been realised.I’m not saying this to be a mean stick in the mud, but this isn’t going to affect fiction writers lol. Researching your crime noire novel (or, let’s be honest, fan fiction) isn’t going to get you arrested. The case reported on had this used to create a profile of narrowed down suspects related to a vandalism, without needing a specific warrant. When this gets used further, it will be primarily to profile activists (especially black activists) based on who searched for organizing efforts related to certain protests, or some similar measure against dissent. It’s not going to be used directly against you in court unless a warrant is issued, which has been a factor for years now.As with most privacy concerns these days, the issue isn’t so much what it will do to any one specific person, but how it empowers law enforcement to enact wider authoritarian controls on populations using such enformation. More invasive methods of monitoring become more widespread and ubiquitous reprisals.Regardless, you should already be moving away from using google as your primary search engine.Stop using Google and instead use alternative search engines:DuckDuckGo SearxQuantStartpage.comAlsoinstall the TrackMeNot extension, which provides a constant stream of fake input to pollute data to the point of making it unusable. be extra extra careful when you’re looking for directions. Cops are all over travel planning apps and map apps, looking for people who drove to or looked for a bus to a protest sight. It’s a treasure trove of data and almost every site that provides travel planning shares their data with cops. OsmAnd Maps is an app that allows you to download maps of a specific city or region and then use them without an internet connection. The cops may be able to tell if you download a certain map (idk what the app’s policies are in regards to this), but they can’t tell how you used that map or any specific location you may have located on it. It may not be as convenient, but it’s better than using Google maps when you’re avoiding being tracked. Of course, I’d say the best way to avoid cop detection is to find a physical map of your area and ditch the smartphone with GPS tracking capabilities, but that’s not always feasible. Here is what the app icon looks like. This is on iOS, but I think it’s on Android. I can’t confirm that though:Cool! There’s also a somewhat safer way to use maps that do share data with the cops:When checking train and bus connections, do not put in your real travel date put pick a day with a similar schedule, like a week before. Try to avoid looking up information on the day or travel or the day right before. Plan long distance travel (highways and train connections) by navigating to one big busy point to another big busy point. Millions of people are moving from Washington Central Station to New York central station every day, so that’s far less likely to identify you as an activist than ‘from my home to the autonomous zone’Screenshot maps for shorter distance travel (like from the central station to the autonomous zone) so you can travel the last bit without a digital device.Never use GPS. Disable that thing as permanently as you can. If cops are looking for data on a protest, they’ll look for anyone traveling towards that point & close to it on the day of the protest. If your location is a different place and your date is a different day, they don’t have that location+date that they use as a selection criteria. However, and that’s true of all not-paper maps: If the cops are tapping your phone specifically, they can probably see pretty much everything you’re doing on it, including the things you do when you’re offline. Hacks that screen-record and send the recordings to the cops continue recording when there is no internet and send the footage when the signal returns. If you are arrested and your phone is taken, everything on there may be used as evidence. If it really matters, don’t do it on a phone at all. -- source link