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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)
They also are buying the NSO group
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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And it’ll never ever be used against law-abiding, tax-paying, god-fearing, naturalized citizens ever—hand over heart, fingers crossed.
2 microseconds later...
Nano
Pico
Fempto
Goku
One micropenis later
It shouldnt even be used on people who arent any of that.
You know the saddest part of this? ICE paid for that. If I made something that blocked that tool from working or even just made a knockoff that does the same thing, they would just seize it.
So that company has more rights and protections than actual humans do.
And that’s considered okay.
Citizens United strikes again.
Non-expert opinion: it's dangerous.
Paragon’s “zero-click” Graphite program can quietly invade the mobile phone of its target and extract its contents, even from encrypted apps.
How? Screen scraping? That would involve installing malware on each phone.
Looks like they use 0-day exploits to indeed install spyware on targets
Meta shared information with WhatsApp that led them to identify, mitigate, and attribute a Paragon zero-click exploit. On January 31, 2025, WhatsApp sent notifications to approximately 90 WhatsApp accounts they believed were targeted with Paragon’s spyware, including journalists and members of civil society.
Lol. It relies on WhatsApp.
Weird that they would target one of the biggest mainstream chat apps in whole of Europe
Oh. I have no doubt that a lot of people are vulnerable to the exploit, but I'm entertained by the fact that you can stop the exploit by simply removing a chat app.
Um... one problem for Mr. NSA:
I don't have friends. Zero groupchats. Don't even have any mainsteam comms apps. Not even a Lemmy client (I use browser lmao). How am I supposed to get the .pdf?
😁
I mean if you're a genuine target they'll find a way.
(Also a nitpick, Paragon is originally an Israeli corporation, altho they do have an US division since 2021)
Its honestly going to get to the point where to rid yourself from The Eye of Sauron you'll have to make the data centers defunct.
but Palintir, thiel is already in the hands of LEO. his obsession with AI is on par with the other techbros, but hes been obfuscating it pretty well.
I mean, yes, that's how it works. Humans are not stupid, not always outright violence is used where it's optimal, but if it were never optimal it wouldn't exist.
I've also started getting interest in early Soviet cinema, its political component is, maybe counterintuitively for us now, that the most decently-looking revolutionary ideology is anarchism, except it doesn't work, and those movies are full of direct or hidden polemic with various kinds of anarchism in advocacy of bolshevism. And that polemic is still relevant.
People well-versed in Soviet ideology actually just love being approached with anarchist positions, including even ancap. That's what they want to argue with, and the general positioning of problems is similar with various kinds of anarchism. While the rest of political ideologies they treat as something long discarded and not interesting to discuss. I repeat, Stalinists who know something about Stalinist ideology, won't respect a fascist, but will be just happy to explain to an anarcho-capitalist how their ideology is an improvement on anarchism.
So, returning to violence, there are situations when limitations on violence, formally perfectly consistent, are limiting only violence against one side.
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.
I wonder if theres a way for us to watch the watchers.
I wonder if Anonymous can dox ice agents.
Does Nokia still make a solid feature phone?
My biggest use case for a smartphone is MFA for work, so if I can convince them to give me a yubikey instead, I'd be interested.
Alternatively, you can carry a phone only for 2fa with no internet connection. I think there are tokens that have the totp screen on them too
Gestapo. They’re going to start kidnapping and killing whoever they feel like soon
I wonder when is EU gonna open up to US Refugees, right now they aren't gonna take an American's asylum claim seriously, I have yet to see any American actually been able to obtain political asylum in any western democratic country.
Remember: ICE are not people.
Good thing if you don't do crime, you have nothing to hide!
And what is completely normal and legal today can be criminal tomorrow, so no need to worry for all kinds of companies and instututions hovering up everybody's private data.
Yeah that's why I keep a ring camera in my bathroom. Got to make sure that corporate knows I am doing nothing wrong!
"poops once ever 3 days or a week" sends miralax, metamucil ad to your phone.
It's messed up when some random spyware Chinese camera is safer to use than anything made in the US.
they made huwei phones a boogeyman of spyware thus having it "sanctioned' from us market, because its competing with low cost phones.
Yeah it's great how the law is complex enough to criminalize any aspect of your life that is needed for persecution!!
Criminal prosecution has always mostly been used for pleb control.
That's why rich pedos never go to prison.
its also useful for GOP states, to illegally count them as residents for the census.
We should all get the same protection they do.
Forgot the /s?
They’re making up crimes that’s what Nazis do read a history book