Presented to users as confidential and anonymous, data collected by smartphone apps are in reality sold on by traders in a vast global marketplace. The Data Broker Files investigation by a team of German journalists reveals a highly lucrative and unregulated system that is an infringment on our privacy and a clear and present danger.

Director

• Maximilian Zierer
• Florian Heinhold
• Rebecca Ciesielski

Country : Germany

Year : 2026

From the homepage:

εxodus analyzes Android applications in order to list the embedded trackers.

A tracker is a piece of software meant to collect data about you or your usages. So, εxodus reports tell you what are the ingredients of the cake.

εxodus does not decompile applications, its analysis method is legal.

The House on Friday voted by unanimous consent to extend a controversial surveillance program until April 30.

Earlier in the morning GOP leaders had pushed for either a five-year renewal or the 18-month renewal President Trump had demanded, but both votes tanked.

The stop-gap measure was pushed through and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was set to expire Monday, now heads to the Senate.

The tool allows U.S. intelligence agencies to intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside of the United States.

This is a concept still in the making. I came across a few people discussing it, and I found next to nothing about it online. I thought it is important and I post it here to give it some traction.

The core idea that appealed to me is that it extends the idea that the processing power and bandwidth of modern devices is not used for our own sake, but to better funnel behavioral data to corporations.

So it is not just "so stupid design" that "we don't even feel devices are 10x faster than 15 years ago", but deliberate design to use the hardware capabilities for the sake of other people's computers.

The countercomputing philosophy asks, down to the chipset, what is the most repairable, reusable component, that can help the user fortify their computing and harness it as independently as possible.

It is obviously a thought that resonates with the right-to-repair movement, privacy, and other politics related with renewable energy, but with a particular focus in selecting each and every component so that we own the hardware and we can use it as we see fit. Other links can be drawn to the smallnet initiatives such as gemini protocol, alternative nets like Reticulum, and of course open hardware.

The retro angle can offer flexibility to movements to rely on simpler components and adjust their needs, something that will also lead to greater independence >from Nvidia and the like.

As I said, there are very few people discussing this idea right now, and you can't find much online, but it is worth to "look out for" possible developments in the future.

Author @whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml

I found this, it's about the data broker loophole. The problem is, in the US we have 4th Amendment protection against warantless searches. Many other nations, have a similar right, by another name. Canada has Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

These are more and more bypassed by data brokers. The government purchases data from data brokers. Data it could not get without a warant in the past.

Maybe this is not as much a problem yet in Canada as in the US? I'm not sure, hope some Canadians can say how it is? But here in the US, it's a massive prob now.

Related: We Built a Surveillance State: What Now?

I'd like to procure some fitness tracking devices for myself and my partner. Something like FitBit to track heart rate, sleep schedule, etc. Ideally, they do not require 3rd party data collection or services in any way. I'm open to manual steps and/or self-hosting software as needed.

Can anyone here recommend specific brands or devices?