Komprosat
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
We’re all being watched. I think you know you are.
But what if I told you that there was one person who probably knows more about you than anyone else — more than your family, more than you know yourself?
He knows more about me too. About everyone.
A politically active person… with family ties to apartheid, with a close relationship with Vladimir Putin… and an even closer bromance as “First Buddy” to the US President-Elect.
Oh, and he’s also the richest man in the world.
The question you need to be asking yourself isn’t “is this really possible?” — I’ll explain that in a sec. The question you need to ask yourself is “is this okay to ignore?”
Location. Location. Location.
You are under surveillance all day. Everyone’s tracking you. Every time you say “okay” to cookies — and even if you don’t. Every time you park your car. Every time you get a ping from WhatsApp, even with privacy settings on full and GPS turned off, your location can be established.
And it matters. I can tell a lot from your location history.
I can figure out your gender1, how much you earn2, your fitness level3, how much you’re worth,4 if you have dog5, when you break up with your partner6, where and when you have an abortion7, how many kids you have,8 where you go on holiday, all of your interpersonal relationships… I could go on.
In 2019 the New York Times bought some open-market, “anonymised” location data and ran a series of studies to reverse engineer it.
The findings were alarming - they identified individuals, they named them, they tracked them to work, to school, identified their kids, spotted their breakup, where their ex lived, where the new partners lived… and worked… even their trips to WeightWatchers or the doctors.
There’s nothing anonymous about anonymised data once you have enough of it.
Your location allows me to piece your life together — with remarkable accuracy.
Coverage is King.
We should be clear that the New York Times investigations relied on only anonymous data, in a territory where that data collection is relatively easy and legal, collected from apps that are not, necessarily, ubiquitous.
But there are other methods for tracking that don’t even require a smartphone.
The most obvious is cell-tower triangulation. All day, every day your phone is chatting away to all of the nearby cell towers, shifting amongst them as you move. Using timing data from three or more towers, your government and mine can accurately triangulate and track your precise location any time your phone is switched on.
Keep this technique in mind for a second…
Cellular Constellation.
Okay - so by now you might be wondering: what does a background in location tracking and cell-tower triangulation have to do with Elon Musk? He’s busy shooting rockets, crashing twitter and buying elections isn’t he?
Well, in 2018 Musk’s started putting tiny “Starlink” satellites into orbit around the Earth, ostensibly to provide internet to far-flung parts of the world (although he’s reneged on that promise already).
Today, there are 7,000 of these satellites in orbit with another 12,000 en route.
And while they do provide internet access (including access to Russian and Iranian drones striking Ukraine or US sailors circumventing onboard security to watch porn) they are capable of something far more interesting.
Yes — these satellites are also little cell towers capable of providing terrestrial cellular telephone services … with all the triangulation capacity that comes with talking to your handset.
Cluster Fuck.
So this is how I answer the question you don’t need to ask: “is this really possible?”
Yes. Not only can you use these satellites to GPS yourself … they are, in fact, cell towers, capable of passively listening in to cellphone handshakes across the entire habitable surface of the planet.
Every human with a phone.
All day. Every day.
Without anyone knowing.
Kompromat.
But really? Why would he?
So, the reality for those of us in the west is probably no-one cares directly about your movements or mine, yet9. But with just a cellphone number (or by doing a little digging in the data), Musk and anyone to whom he grants access, can track anyone who carries and uses a phone.
And if you can track someone you can learn their darkest secrets … and as soon as you uncover some secret they want to hide … well then you have complete control.
The Russians call this kind of information: Kompromat.
Kompromat is the currency of extortion and coercion. It is used as a means to exert control and there’s surely no real expectation that the world’s richest man, who telegraphs his comfort with surveillance and his contempt for democracy and the rule of law on a daily basis, would not resort to using kompromat to meet his ends, is there?
Call me an Uber!
The reality is: this kind of shenanigans is not new to Silicon Valley.
In 2015, Uber (a company funded in part by Musk’s Twitter and SpaceX investor Fidelity Investments and old [pay]pal Peter Thiel) was caught and fined for letting employees “spy on ex-lovers, politicians and celebrities.”
Ten years on, Musk’s SpaceX is making deals with the Americans to launch a spy-sat constellation, he’s also openly in contact with Putin and he counts the Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal as the second biggest investor in Twitter and he has the ear of Zelenskyy and Netanyahu.
Just that list of names represents an enormous market for the kind of kompromat and live location data SpaceX could readily pull off their network. That’s obvious without even contemplating the kind of mass surveillance his friends in India or China might choose to leverage.
Is this okay to ignore?
It’s a tricky one isn’t it.
Part of me resisted writing this because, up to a point … what’s the point?
We all travel around with our phones in our pockets. We’re all in blissful denial of the level of surveillance-lead conditioning we undergo each day and (I assume at least) we all feel that we haven’t done anything worth blackmailing.
But as I keep saying — we are proverbial frogs, boiling slowly.
We’re all sipping the Kool Aid. We’re all addicted to digital sugar. We’re all incapable of leaving our phones behind for a day.
For as long as we’re glued to our phones we are enslaving ourselves to the coercion of a literal handful of creepy guys. We are sacrificing our freedom on the alter of convenience and entertainment.
We are heading, inexorably to Musk’s ludicrously dangerous vision to give up on this planet and all of the humans (and other species) living on it … to “Occupy Mars” and to focus on the trillions of interplanetary humans of the next million years.
You, me and our families be damned.
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power... Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” — Orwell, 1984
It’s true - we don’t have much control. But if you live in Canada, France, Germany or the UK you would do well to campaign vehemently against any party or narrative that has Musk’s fingerprints on it.
He doesn’t care about you — only his vision — and his vision is already all-seeing.
via associations, shopping locations, linger time etc
city, district, frequented locations, personal associations etc.
walking speed, exercise routine, trips to WeightWatchers (see NYT piece)
from where you live and myriad other signals
regularity and routine of walks
habit changes (again, see NYT piece)
inferred from trips to appropriate clinics
school run
although, law enforcement in the US already uses location and other data to prosecute abortion cases — and obviously there are plenty of other countries where people are actively tracked, all the time.