Given Guardian Project's privacy/android focus, this news seems relevant. There is a suit in Federal court alleging that Massachusetts (MA) caused Google to push a contact-tracing app to Android phones in the state, without the user asking to install it, consenting or even knowing. In the complaint, people say it turned bluetooth on, and some seem to say it turned on location and cell data.
So much for people thinking they don't need to worry about state-level adversaries! I am pretty sure this didn't happen to me since I was running lineageos or calyxos, both of which lack google play services :-) https://nclalegal.org/robert-wright-and-johnny-kula-v-massachusetts-department-of-public-health-et-al/ https://nclalegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Wright_First-Amended-Complaint-3.20.2023.pdf The MA web page seems to corroborate the idea that the app was pushed to people's phones, saying "but it didn't fully do contact tracing if you didn't enable it", more or less. (The text is more interesting after you read the detailed allegations.) https://www.mass.gov/info-details/about-massnotify They say, amazingly enough: If you have an Android phone and wish to uninstall the Exposure Notification functionality distributed to your phone by the Google Play Store, you can do so at any time by taking the following steps: [snip] Tap on “Exposure Notifications Settings Feature – MA” and click Uninstall It is important to note that the presence of the Exposure Notification functionality on Android phones did not automatically activate Exposure Notifications on users’ devices, and users’ device settings were not changed To try to return to topic, I wonder about an app that basically keeps a census of installed apps and reports to the user comings and goings, with an ability to download (over tor of course) a list of apps suspected to be installed than than at user request, for higher warnings. I would expect the list to be manually curated with out-of-band reporting. It could perhaps contain the vendor-installed more-or-less malware apps that seem to be common on non-Pixel phones with the vendor OS. (So I hear; I have never tried to use such a phone.) Maybe this is already written and out there? _______________________________________________ List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/guardian-dev To unsubscribe, email: [email protected]
