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ICE just bought new tool to monitor hundreds of millions of smartphones. Experts say it’s dangerous
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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I hope there’s some technological way we can use to foil these attempts to violate citizens’ privacy en masse.
It's called GrapheneOS
I’m aware of GrapheneOS, but I don’t know how their tracking works, so I also don’t know if GrapheneOS can offer enough protection.
Alternative OSes surely do have better privacy than Android, but that's probably not sufficient. On Smartphones, there runs not a single CPU like on a laptop, but more like 5 computers and only one of them is controlled by the OS. For example, there is a baseband processor and a radio modem. And the SIM card is a computer. And part of these can be controlled remotely (have you ever wondered how your phone automatically re-programs it parameters when you change providers?).
And then there are gaps in authentication in the radio prozocol: Your phone / SIM card authenticates against a radio tower so that the right phone user pays the bill. But the phone has no way to detect a rogue mobile tower...
Reticulum is gaining momentum. I’m planning on investigating how viable a shift off cellular would actually be for my uses and it actually looks pretty doable.
What area do you live in that reticulum has enough coverage to remove the dependency on cell service
It doesn’t have the ability, not completely anyway. But it can actually do the thing and by putting the pressure on myself that way I can ensure I do my part to improve the situation. At its start all I need it to be able to do is notifications and text messages. If I can’t get it to do that much it’s already successful for me me.