So I’ve just been thinking about privacy, and how everyone’s location can be tracked. Then I realized: What about people who have no permission to enter the country?
Like do they just decide to not have a phone, or do they still have phones and just roll the dice and hope they don’t get caught?
How would they know who’s phone to track if the individual is undocumented?
Account linking from ad ids, and social media profiles.
But again - how would they know that someone was undocumented? If someone started new social media accounts when they arrived, and bought a new phone/started new service, then what do they have that’s going to reasonably demonstrate that they’re undocumented? Particularly if they buy a pay-as-you-go phone, which doesn’t require any kind of ID to buy and activate?
The bigger problem for law enforcement is the price of that data, big tech want big money for that volume and specificity of data.
Unless they post on those social media that their visa is expiring, how are social media profiles to know that info?
Yes there is plenty of track-able info on this person’s phone.
Law enforcement still needs to know exactly who they’re looking for, in order to know exactly which phone to track.
If the individual in question is undocumented, by definition they can’t know exactly who they’re looking for. They can’t tie them to a specific individual phone.
You’re talking about CIA levels of surveillance for what amounts to basically nothing. Despite the Republican politicians constantly ranting about illegal immigration, they’re the ones benefiting from undocumented labor. They’re not going to put much work into changing something they benefit from.