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- Hacker News
- Feels like this should have been done long ago. Like I would just assume that ad tracking (any kind of tracking) for military is always gonna be a bad idea.by sorenKaram
- Wow, it's like there should be a law that allows anyone to disable all data tracking about then, not just anonymize it.
This is a large conversation about Consent, which is a concept Silicon Valley refuses to acknowledge.
by exabrial - Ironically, the US Miliary appears to be supporting the GDPR.by GJim
- To them, the consent is using the device/service/whatever.
You see it in various bits of EULA and ToS all the time. "Continued use of <insert thing here> implies agreement with the license terms".
Now, is that at all feasible when you need a smartphone to do things like pay for parking in cities or to read menus at restaurants? No. Do the people in SV who think this way also try to wedge their products and services in every single nook, cranny, and crevice of our lives as a way to increase their net worth? Yes. Is this indicative that these people have severe antisocial or sociopathic tendencies that we, as a society, need to handle? I'm not a psychologist.
by lenerdenator - This is probably a smart move. Especially finger printing is more and more intelligent. If foreign actors are using exercise tracking apps to track US Military personnel and positions. It seems reasonable that they would want to block something that is much lower effort for tracking.
- Wait until they realize that military spouses and children might also need this, and government employees, and sensitive contractors, etc. It’s almost as if “ad trackers” shouldn’t exist at all.
The US government used to love this stuff when it was the only one who could abuse it. There might be a different outlook now that the tables have turned.
by iamnothere - It seems like stalking laws in most jurisdictions should already cover this. Is there any legal precedent that could help without the need for new laws?by jonhohle
- If they can do it effectively, that would be impressive. There are so many ways phones and other devices are tracked. Do they prevent users from installing apps?
For example, I was reading Apple's Platform Security guide, a technical, detailed manual: There are so many identifiers, before any applications are installed - really, before the OS is fully loaded - that it's hard to keep track of them, manage them, or even form a mental picture of what's going on. Apple in many ways requires you to send those identifiers to them in order to use the device.
Apple is trying to protect consumers by operating the Root of Trust for the consumer devices, something consumers can't do effectively for themselves. And maybe Apple provides large customers with means to become their own root of trust; some of Apple's keys are embedded during manufacturing but other vendors allow large customers to substitute their own keys at that stage.
Regardless, it makes Apple an incredibly valuable target for highly resourced attackers, like the kind targeting the US military: Gain the right authority at Apple and you can monitor and control Apple devices worldwide. I'm not sure how the US military protects themselves without highly managed, locked down, customized devices.
by mmooss - Just throwing this link out into the void:
https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ad...
Wonder why it took the Pentagon so long to take the ads risk seriously.
by 9cb14c1ec0 - Why even allow any mobile phone for the US solider if it could cause any arbitrary problem for the US military if the location data, name, unit, rank, ... of the respective soldier was published and permanently updated on a publicly viewable website?
It should be obvious that the US military has good reasons why this would be the death for many military strategies. So, why doesn't the military than treat every soldier who has a mobile phone near to him where the above could cause military problems to be a saboteur (perhaps even with the accusation of being a spy of a hostile nation) who should be charged by a military tribunal?
- > Why even allow any mobile phone for the US solider if it could cause any arbitrary problem for the US military if the location data, name, unit, rank, ... of the respective soldier was published and permanently updated on a publicly viewable website?
By this logic, why keep anyone around after the SF86 hack[0]? Simple answer: Costs. It's a lot more expensive to lay off everyone with a security clearance (especially, if they're regular employees) and make a whole new batch of people go through the security background checks. We're probably talking billions - not to mention the issue with downtime of no one being around to do anything.
> So, why doesn't the military than treat every soldier who has a mobile phone near to him where the above could cause military problems to be a saboteur (perhaps even with the accusation of being a spy of a hostile nation) who should be charged by a military tribunal?
...because they (they being the military, in general) have - relatively - planned for this in places that they physically control (and the threats levels demand it) by essentially making all buildings that need to be secure giant faraday cages[1].
What that doesn't account for is people outside of the buildings[2], which is probably what they're hoping to address with this change. (Too little, too late, I think - as that data's already out there.)
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Office_of_Personnel_Manag...
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform...
2 - https://www.wired.com/story/phone-data-us-soldiers-spies-nuc...
by 2legit2quit - Probably because the intelligence community is also at the other side of this equation. The strategic advantage of a smartphone duopoly completely inside US jurisdiction is immeasurable.by xorcist
- There are MANY problems that are too politically or practically difficult to tackle for the US Military and personal cellphones aren't close to the top ten. It's far easier to force everyone to register their cells to be automatically blacklisted from data collection than it is to justify tens of thousands of NJPs and court martials every year, many of which will include officers and senior enlisted.
The US Military doesn't win through stealth or secrets either. Their advantage from the beginning until now has always been funding and logistics. With the Internet, satellites, and now AI, OPSEC is a fool's errand outside of very specific operations anyhow.
- Oh boy, what an easy way to see if the phone's user is military or not.by cgannett
- Exactly.
The abscence of an indicator that is expected is itself an indicator.
- Could probably get a lot of actionable military information about troop locations by running targeted ads for subprime auto loans and divorce lawyers and collecting location information, discarding any US locations.
- Oh, this is an old trick the US has used for a long time:
https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ad...
by 9cb14c1ec0 - You say that like it’s not already happening.by voakbasda
- Probably not anything more than you could find via publicly accessible information and then the movements you do care about (deploying to go fight in a war) you'd get via your satellites and so forth.
It's unfortunate that predatory businesses exist (payday loans and furniture rental anyone - you could run ads for those in certain communities :o ) but it's a tough and demanding lifestyle that's a bit unstable since our military actually does things and there are a lot of predatory auto companies and banks out there praying on regular people (most of them from poorer, working class, and/or minority communities) who aren't as well educated as the rest of us on things like interest rates and loans and all of those things.
by ericmay - Or Kalshi bets.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-soldier-charged-using-clas...
Or run tracking.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
by ceejayoz - Does it make sense to give the troops special phones instead of their own? I always find it weird that soldiers can take their own phones into the base.by ferguess_k
- The base is where people live 24/7. You'd be banning them from having phones.by apefulsin
- It allows fun things like locating aircraft carriers on Strava.
I don't think the Iranians have direct targeting tech for individual mobiles for decapitation strikes yet, that's an Israeli capability.
by pjc50 - Most of what goes on on most bases is as unsecret as it gets. The rooms where sensitive things happen have security measures in place and they keep you from bringing your phone in there. Usually a little locker is provided where you store your phone while you are inside the protected area. In some very sensitive places there may be additional active and passive measures but usually people with access to those areas police themselves.by metiscus
- These things need to include more details. What is the report that ads were used to target deployed troops? What is the device use policy as of today? FOBs and semi-permanent installations are not secret locations. They're extremely obvious, have marked fences, gates, and guards in uniform. They're on satellite and aerial photos, sometimes on maps, depending on how long they've been in place. During patrols and any other movements in which unit locations are meant to be secret, as of 15 years ago when I was still serving, phones or any other kind of personal electronic device were not allowed. Even in training exercises, as far back as 2009 that I experienced, and probably further back than that, SIGINT units used radio triangulation to find and kill you when you used a phone during an exercise, which resulted in both removal from the exercise and reprimand because you weren't supposed to have a phone with you in the first place. They also captured and publicly shamed shit like getting nudes from your girlfriend or even just exchanging text messages.
If deployed personnel are sharing videos of their deployment activities to social media, how is that allowed? It can't be, right? They're violating some policy in doing that. Unit commanders have your social media accounts and monitor what you do there. Uniformed servicemembers have never had any expectation of privacy. UCMJ doesn't have 4th amendment rights. Your room, housing, belongings, car, phone, can all be searched with impunity at any time, with or without notice. All communications can and will be intercepted and read.
by nonameiguess - The US military hasn't yet been in a military altercation with a peer adversary that can actually exploit that information. The war in Ukraine shows that these information leaks can have severe tactical consequences.by samus
- >Unit commanders have your social media accounts and monitor what you do there.
I’m prior Air Force, so never been deployed to a FOB, but I have never had a commander ask me for my social media accounts. I’m not sure how this is even possible. I couldn’t even tell you all my social media accounts if you define social media as a platform where people communicate directly with one another publicly (forums, marketplaces like Craigslist, etc.) You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I have never seen it happen and it seems like a pretty weak enforcement mechanism.
> UCMJ doesn't have 4th amendment rights. Your room, housing, belongings, car, phone, can all be searched with impunity at any time, with or without notice.
That’s a bit of an overstatement. For housing or computer systems owned by the military, yes, you have no expectation of privacy and they can be searched without probable cause. However, personal effects such as your phone or laptop do have protections against unauthorized searches. Commanders and military judges must have a reason for authorizing a search, that search must be narrowly tailored, and if the search does not meet these requirements the evidence can be suppressed during court martial proceedings. Good example would be US v. Nieto
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/caaf/1...
by derektank - It sounds like they disabled the "advertising ID" OS feature, but there are many other ways to fingerprint a device for advertising. Maybe this will lead to real privacy reform, now that the true risks are apparent. Not to mention ICE using the same data against civilians.by tencentshill
- Everything they do is a framework for consumer protection laws.
- Disabling "advertising ID" on iOS makes it extremely difficult to reliably fingerprint phones. Apple doesn't allow SDKs which attempt to bypass this, so the app would have to have a first party auth of some type.by pnw