Your phone knows where you sleep. Where you work. Which doctor you visited last Tuesday. How long you stayed. It knows this because it never stops telling someone. !Surveillance in your pocket: your phone tracks you 24/7 Every smartphone is a tracking device that happens to make calls. The surveillance is not a bug. It is the business model. And almost none of it required your informed consent. How Your Phone Tracks You Your location is tracked through at least three independent systems simultaneously: GPS: Satellite-based positioning accurate to within 3-5 meters. When enabled, your phone logs precise coordinates and timestamps. Cell Tower Triangulation: Your phone constantly communicates with the nearest cell towers. By measuring signal strength from multiple towers, carriers can calculate your position within 100-500 meters — even with GPS disabled. WiFi Positioning: Even with WiFi turned off, many phones continue scanning for nearby networks. Each WiFi access point has a unique MAC address mapped to a physical location in commercial databases. There is no combination of settings that fully stops all three. Airplane mode comes closest, but it also makes your phone useless as a phone. What iOS and Android Actually Collect Google/Android collects device location at the operating system level and ties it to your Google account. Android phones have been found to send location data to Google even when location services are disabled, via nearby cell tower addresses. A 2018 investigation by Quartz confirmed this behavior. Apple/iOS collects fewer data points by default and offers more granular permission controls. But Apple still collects location data for its own services, and the data Apple does collect — including precise location histories — can be compelled by law enforcement through legal process. Both platforms allow apps to request location access. Most users grant permissions without reading the dialog. A 2024 study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon found that the average Android user has 22 apps with location access. Fewer than 4% of users ever revisit those permissions. The Securus Scandal: Carriers Selling Your Location In May 2018, The New York Times revealed that a company called Securus Technologies was providing law enforcement agencies with real-time location data for any cell phone in the United States — without a warrant. Here is how it worked: Major carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint) sold bulk location data to aggregation companies called "location intermediaries" Those intermediaries resold the data to companies like Securus Securus built a web portal that let sheriffs, police officers, and — according to one investigation — a former Mississippi sheriff who used it to spy on colleagues, type in any phone number and get its real-time location No warrant was required. No judicial oversight. No notification to the person being tracked Senator Ron Wyden, who investigated the program, stated that the system was "available to virtually anyone willing to pay." After the story broke, all four major carriers pledged to stop selling location data. They did not stop. In 2019, an investigation by Motherboard found that the data was still flowing through a different intermediary. The FCC eventually fined the carriers $200 million in 2024 — six years after the original story. By then, the data had been sold for over a decade. IMSI Catchers: Fake Cell Towers An IMSI catcher — commonly known by the brand name Stingray — is a device that mimics a legitimate cell tower. Your phone connects to it automatically, and the operator can then: Identify your phone via its IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) Track your precise location Intercept call metadata and text messages In some models, intercept call audio The ACLU has documented that at least 75 agencies in 27 states and the District of Columbia have purchased Stingray devices. The actual number is almost certainly higher because many agencies refuse to disclose their use, often citing nondisclosure agreements with the manufacturer, Harris Corporation. Law enforcement has routinely obtained Stingray data without warrants by using "pen register" orders — which have a lower legal standard than a search warrant — or by not seeking any court authorization at all. Law Enforcement Buys Data Instead of Getting Warrants After the Supreme Court's 2018 Carpenter v. United States decision ruled that accessing historical cell-site location information requires a warrant, many agencies simply stopped going to courts altogether. Instead, they purchase location data directly from data brokers. This is the "data broker loophole." The Fourth Amendment restricts government searches, but it does not restrict the government from buying information that a third party has already collected. So agencies buy what they cannot legally demand. A 2023 report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed that the U.S. intelligence community purchases "commercially available information" about Americans, including location data, and considers this legally distinct from surveillance. How to Reduce Your Exposure You cannot eliminate phone tracking without abandoning mobile devices. You can reduce it: Audit app permissions: Revoke location access for every app that does not strictly need it Disable WiFi and Bluetooth scanning: Both Android and iOS scan for networks even when these radios are "off" Use approximate location: iOS offers "Approximate Location" per app. Android offers "Use approximate location only" Limit ad tracking: Both platforms have settings to limit ad tracking identifiers Use airplane mode when location privacy matters most Consider a VPN to prevent your carrier from seeing your internet traffic (though it will not prevent cell tower tracking) None of these are complete solutions. The infrastructure of phone tracking is built into the network itself. The Fundamental Problem The tracking is not accidental. It is not a side effect. It is the product. Your location data has value, and that value is extracted from you continuously without meaningful negotiation about price, consent, or consequences. They did not ask if we wanted to know. They built the system so we would never have to. _- The Department_