My Phone Was Spying on Me, so I Tracked Down the Surveillants

THREAD on the location data industry and how European personal data ended up at a U.S. government contractor.

There are 160 apps on my phone. What they’re actually doing, I don’t know. So I decided to figure it out by using the power of the GDPR - or the more lame name of subject access requests (SAR).

Long story short – I got a lot of data on my movements. Actually more than 75.000 data points on my precise location.

Home and work:

How: I designed an experiment where I installed a lot of apps on an Android phone. I then consented to sharing my location data. Then I turned the tables: By using SARs I stitch together the data flows from me to different companies. (Better graphics in article.)

The app Funny Weather appeared in the metadata provided by Venntel and Gravy Analytics. The data might have been shared through Predicio, but the company did not respond to any requests for an interview.

Q is a United States Military Intelligence operation, working hand-in-hand with the President of the United States. Some could easily argue that Donald J. Trump was hand chosen years ago by the United States Military to aid them in this critical and historic operation.

Portland, OR thread.

Two years ago, the Kinney family lost their home in a foreclosure. The family, represented by their non-lawyer son, a sovereign citizen, tried to fight the foreclosure and in September, they were evicted by the police under order from the court.

The Kinney family had lived in the home for decades, but had taken out loans and then refinanced those loans to pay for their son's legal bills.

In response to the eviction, local activists took up the cause, and over the next few weeks, support grew.

The home and the surrounding blocks, have now been taken over by protesters as a autonomous zone, similar to what happened this summer in Seattle.

(1) The USA has the best constitutional system but it's not the only one that has three branches of govt as a check and balance on the others.

Folk who don't understand the current crisis don't understand why a country needs an

>executive
>legislative and
>judicial branch.

How did the Right come to hate this country so much?

Remember when (justifiably) criticizing the United States, even over minor flaws/errors, would cause the Right to seethe with contempt over your lack of Patriotism?

Yet now,….1/

...the Right claims the country is a cesspool run by corrupt, deep-state conmen who have exploited the system to get rich.....

....and that none of this country's institutions (FBI/Intelligence/democracy/etc.) can be trusted, and therefore must be torn down. 2/

We are currently seeing this in real time as Trump challenges the election in the courts. The danger being exposed during all of this is that the Right’s contempt isn’t limited to just the “liberal judges” whose professional integrity can’t be trusted because they’re liberal….3/

...the contempt also extends to Republican state office holders and a Trump-appointed appellate court judge/panel who wrote an opinion, that not only eviscerated Trump’s legal claims, but emphasized the danger that Trump and the conspiratorial Right poses to our democracy. 4/

Article III of the Constitution empowers the judicial branch to finds facts/settle disputes. When half the country believes that every “liberal” judge, and any Republican judge that rules against Trump is corrupt and can’t be trusted, then this country is headed for disaster. 5/

John John thread.

I’m just going through the JFK Library Archives and just can’t not tweet these.