Last week, the New York Times revealed that an obscure company called Securus
was providing realtime location tracking to law enforcement, without
checking the supposed “warrants” provided by cops, and that their system
had been abused by a crooked sheriff to track his targets, including a
judge (days later, a hacker showed that Securus’s security was terrible, and their service would be trivial to hack and abuse).
At the time, it was hard to understand how Securus was able to access location data from the carriers. Now we know.
Securus is a customer of a “marketing company” called Locationsmart that
has contracts with the four largest US cellular carriers that allow it
to pinpoint the location of any cellular phone in the USA or Canada,
usually within seconds.
Locationsmart exploits a loophole in federal privacy law, which requires
government agencies (including police forces) to get a warrant in order
to retrieve location data from mobile carriers. The loophole, though,
allows mobile carriers to sell this data to marketing companies like
Locationsmart, who can sell that data to anyone they like – including
the government entities who would need a warrant to get the same data
from the carriers.
Locationsmart’s website included a demonstration service that allowed
you to try out their location tracking for free: you entered a cellphone
number, it texted a query to that number asking for permission to
provide the phone’s location, and, if permission was given, it showed
the web-user the phone’s location. The idea was that you could use it
with your own phone number to see how the service worked.
But a Carnegie Mellon security researcher named Robert Xiao looked more
closely and discovered that it was trivial to bypass the
authentication/permission step in the demonstrator, allowing anyone in
the world to track, in realtime, the location of anyone in the USA or
Canada with nothing more than a phone number (Locationsmart took down
the demo portal when they were contacted by security journalist Brian
Krebs).
If you do business with the big four carriers – Verizon, Sprint,
T-Mobile and AT&T – you “agreed” to let them sell this incredibly
sensitive data to muppets like Locationsmart when you signed up for the
service.
Taking place in England the owners of the yard slowly kept adding sections to the contraption so when the squirrel learned one section and got the nuts, they’d add another section. It took over 2 weeks to get to the final product you see in the video.
In honor of me approaching my first 6 months mark as a flight attendant, here are some highlights from my time in this job:
When a lady stopped me gently to whisper that i had “mastered the art of kindness”
When an elderly woman told me i was “put on earth to be a flight attendant”
Each and every time someone complimented my nails
When i found an $8000 diamond watch left behind under a seat, gave it to a gate agent, only to have the passenger come running back 10 minutes later. Gate agent: man u wouldve been in trouble, huh? Man whom looked like a bond villain: i wouldve been SHOT.
Every lesbian ive worked with and had the nice bonding moment of “ur gay?? Im gay!!”
That time a man tried to get huffy with me because he wasnt in 1st class and i got to say “sir u can either sit in this seat or u can sit in a seat in the terminal while u wait to take the next flight”
When i had an emergency landing because the pilots lost steering and we all thought we were gonna die but then we didn’t and everyone just applauded the landing and didnt even complain about the 2 hour delay
When my flight was delayed for 3 hours because the plane wouldnt start so the crew and i just took a really long nap in the jetway
Every 4 and 5 star hotel ive stayed at for free
When we overnighted in the middle of nowhere in alabama and went to a sports bar at midnight. The bartender locked the door so it was just him and us and his friend, and we all got super drunk on obscure alcohols and i kicked everyones ass at pool
That time i had an emergency landing because one pilot had such explosive diarrhea that the other 2 pilots had to wear oxygen masks
When we overnighted in a casino resort in new orleans and ended up drunk on margaritas and playing blackjack with a bunch of old people at 2pm
Every little kid on my flights
Every dog i got to pet on my flights
When we were flying to nyc during julliard recruitments and half the seats were taken up by cellos
Being in airports late at night and seeing people sleep in the weirdest places because they just dont care (bathroom floors, under gate agent desks, etc)
When a woman forgot her actual baby on the plane
Woman: can i board first? Gate agent: are u special needs, active military or priority? Woman: no i just want to board first. Gate agent: maam i have 70 other people who also want to board first, im not looking for a line leader.
My very first working flight, when a man pointed to my necklace and said “is that a ball gag?” And, in my shock, i said “no, im gay”
That time a ramp agent came up to me holding up his phone and said “wanna see something weird?” and i said yes, reservedly, thinking it might be gross but then he held out his phone and it was just a picture of hundreds of paradise birds that we were apparently flying to a zoo
