
Mobilewalla used cellphone data to estimate the demographics of protesters - psychanarch
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/carolinehaskins1/protests-tech-company-spying
======
wizzwizz4
> Datta [Mobilewalla CEO] said Mobilewalla didn’t prepare the report for law
> enforcement or a public agency, but rather to satisfy its own employees'
> curiosity about what its vast trove of unregulated data could reveal about
> the demonstrators. Datta told BuzzFeed News that the company doesn’t plan to
> include information about whether a person attended a protest to its
> clients, or to law enforcement agencies.

> Mobilewalla does not collect the data itself, but rather buys it from a
> variety of sources, including advertisers, data brokers, and internet
> service providers.

~~~
mc32
This almost mirrors OkCupid’s dataviz articles they’d do for publicity.

The data is aggregate data. It shows mostly males, in the 18-34 age bracket,
mostly white.

The CEO whose surname is Datta. Quite appropos.

~~~
sneak
Reminder: OKCupid is owned by Match Group (also owns Tinder, Plenty of Fish,
BlackPeopleMeet, OurTime, Twoo, match.com, and others), which sells their
entire profile database (unredacted(!), with full names, sexual preferences,
locations, and photos) to data brokers[1].

Very few services are immune from this. I learned recently that Airbnb (YC
W09) actually sells your chat logs[2] and stay history(!) to data brokers,
which can be used for stalking or kidnapping in the wrong hands.

Coinbase (YC S12) is also one of the companies that sells your activity log
(including IP addresses and timestamps, which amounts to a location tracklog)
to a third party without your explicit consent (other than creating a Coinbase
account).

1: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59vbp5/shady-data-
brokers...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59vbp5/shady-data-brokers-are-
selling-online-dating-profiles-by-the-millions)

2: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/business/secret-
consumer-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/business/secret-consumer-
score-access.html)

~~~
sukilot
Remember that YC prefers to fund "naughty" founders, to use their own term.

~~~
Drdrdrq
[http://paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://paulgraham.com/founders.html)

What We Look for in Founders

4\. Naughtiness

Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have
a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good.
Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about
observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil.
They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be
redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.

~~~
mercer
Jesus. I imagine getting the 'big questions' right is so vague as to remove
any culpability from both YC and those it funds.

I mean, if I had a friend who openly claimed to be 'naughty' in this way, I'd
start being very cautious around them.

~~~
gmantg
YC is right, though. People who play by others rules rarely succeed. All these
senior managers, vps, execs, business owners arent known for following the
silly rules.

~~~
rapind
Basically our society rewards douchebaggery...

~~~
econcon
Nearly all products, markets and human interactions operate on specific model
which makes some assumptions, those assumptions often end up as rule - so that
the model stay predictable for the people governing it.

By not following those assumptions (rules) you can make a new better model
which might have better accuracy at representative real world problem than the
existing model.

It doesn't mean that it's unethical or morally wrong. It doesn't have to be.

------
ojnabieoot
> “It’s hard to tell you a specific reason as to why we did this,”
> [Mobilewalla CEO Anindya] Datta said. “But over time, a bunch of us in the
> company were watching with curiosity and some degree of alarm as to what’s
> going on.” He defined those sources of alarm as what he called "antisocial
> behavior," including vandalism, looting, and actions like "breaking the
> glass of an Apple store.” He added that they were attempting to test if
> protests were being driven by outside agitators.

Probably not the best defense to be made when people are concerned that this
technology is being used to suppress and monitor protestors...

~~~
jagged-chisel
Not sure "defense" is a good characterization. Doesn't sound to me like they
felt accused or guilty. Sounds like an explanation. They felt some amount of
civic duty in publishing their findings, or they'd have kept this to
themselves.

~~~
giardini
They're examining the data to determine how to market it. Just a normal
internet business trying to get by and expand their market. This article is
excellent advertising.

Look on their web pages:

" _Why Partner with Mobilewalla? Our partners are always looking for rich,
comprehensive data and profiles to provide to their clients. Likewise,
Mobilewalla is always looking to increase the quality of our data through
partnerships with companies like Oracle Data Cloud.

Mobilewalla provides brands from any vertical or industry with the insights
and long-term needs to personalize, target, and scale their marketing
initiatives - from basic demographics like gender, location, and device type,
to highly nuanced and detailed profiles...Mobilewalla provides insights into
customer behaviors as they exist in the real world, all based on mobile-app
usage and location-based intelligence._"

------
Alex3917
This (and much worse) has been happening for decades. "Don't take your cell
phone" is pretty much rule #1 of going to protests.

I don't even go to protests, but this is in the news all the time. E.g. the
surveillance tactics the government used to break up the Dakota Access
Pipeline protests was a major news story around the entire world.

~~~
nickthegreek
your cell phone is your camera though, which can be a very powerful
accountability tool. Is there a reason that it wouldn't be better to go into
airplane mode, disable wifi and bluetooth?

~~~
Alex3917
> Is there a reason that it wouldn't be better to go into airplane mode,
> disable wifi and bluetooth?

If that worked then presumably Snowden would just do that instead of turning
his phone off, taking out the battery, and putting it in the refrigerator.

~~~
abstractbarista
That _does_ work, unless you're someone like Snowden, who is targeted by the
strong surveillance apparatus.

Do you believe >300M Americans already have malware on their phones which runs
when they hit Airplane mode, and tricks them in to believing all radios are
off, when it is in fact still pinging NSA servers with telemetry data?

I don't. Such technology surely exists, but it is not massively deployed,
because doing so would spoil its usefulness. Basically, "We're not _that_
important."

~~~
nexuist
At WWDC Apple revealed that their “Car Keys” feature would work 5 hours after
the phone has died, so you don’t lose the ability to access your car.

They didn’t announce new hardware that could do this. It’s available in every
new iPhone. This is proof that this capability (to run software even when the
phone is “off”) has been around at least for a number of years. It’s not a
huge leap to imagine that some malware could rewrite the firmware and enable
e.g. microphone listening when the phone is off.

------
tzs
It gives what percentage of the protestors were black in each city, 18% in
Atlanta, 3% in Los Angeles, 11% in Minneapolis, and 14% in New York City.

In all of those cities that's lower than the percentage of black people in the
general population, so black people were underrepresented. But they were much
more underrepresented in Los Angeles and Atlanta than in Minneapolis or New
York.

Here's a table. First column is percent among protestors. Second is percent
among general population. Third is first column as a percent of second column.

    
    
      18 52 35 Atlanta
       3 11 27 Los Angeles
      11 19 58 Minneapolis
      14 24 58 New York City
    

I.e., in New York and Minneapolis you had close to 60% as many black people as
you would have expected if you just went by city demographics. In Atlanta it
was only 35% and only 27% in Los Angeles.

I wonder if there is some factor, especially in Los Angeles and Atlanta, that
discouraged black people from wanting to attend or some hardship to attending
that disproportionately fell on black people?

~~~
brobdingnagians
Someone interviewed white people in New York about abolishing police and lots
of them whole-heartedly agreed. They interviewed black people in New York
about it, and they said it was insane to want to do that. That would fit these
statistics.

~~~
godelski
From my understanding "abolish the police" means to reorganize it and greatly
reduced the funding. For example in L.A. the police budget is about $3bn and
the next biggest item is public works at $1.5bn. That's kinda a ridiculous
amount. I saw a reddit post in /r/dataisbeautiful [0] that broke it down and
showed some redistribution.

But of course "abolish the police" means a lot of different things to
different people. I'm sure there are people that want literally no police but
I'm also sure they are a minority.

That's kinda the problem we have today. We turn complex conversations and
topics into their most extreme forms and so we can actually discuss them. And
we presume the other person has an extreme view that opposes ours but we
ourselves are smarter and now nuanced than the person we're "discussing" with.
There's lots of examples. For example here we're discussing "should police
exist" instead of "what should police be doing" and often people are even
divided on the topic because "police stop bad guys" and "police are to serve
the community and uphold the social contract."

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hflutt/rei...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hflutt/reimagining_the_los_angeles_city_budget_oc/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)

~~~
abstractbarista
Many people, including me, take simple English words rather literally. So the
usage of "defund" is simply "prevent from continuing to receive funds". Thus,
the entire movement is discredited in my mind as something insane.

It's unfortunate, but I will not start interpreting language "less
accurately". I'll continue to agree that we need change, but I'm still more
happy than unhappy with the basic existence of law enforcement.

~~~
ashtonkem
While I agree that “defund the police” is a bad slogan, no fluent speaker of
any language takes words and phrases literally. Human communication is chock
full of idioms, allusions, allegories, and a number of other rhetorical
devices that depend on a non-literal interpretation of words. It’s highly
unrealistic for you to declare that you “take simple English words rather
literally”, as that’s not how natural languages work.

~~~
rbecker
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means
just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

~~~
ashtonkem
That’s a straw man.

I never claimed that anyone can make up their own definitions, only that
setting the bar at “literal meaning” is unrealistic, as that’s not how
language actually works.

See: catching a bus by the skin of your teeth so that you and your friends can
have a night out and paint the town red.

Chances are you understood exactly what I meant, but taken literally that
sentence is utter jibberish.

~~~
rbecker
But "abolish the police" _isn 't_ jibberish, and _is_ what some people
actually, literally, mean. So how can I tell?

~~~
ashtonkem
How can you tell what’s an idiom, and what isn’t? Context clues. Do the same
thing here.

Or, actually listen to people. Your call.

~~~
rbecker
So when I see someone on TV holding an "abolish the police" banner, which
context clues should I use to figure out what they _really_ mean?

The slogan makes many people think you're advocating an unreasonable idea that
you're not actually advocating. Do you think that makes for a good slogan?

Edit: I apologize. I missed where you said it's a bad slogan, and took your
defense of it as implying it's good.

~~~
ardy42
> So when I see someone on TV holding an "abolish the police" banner, which
> context clues should I use to figure out what they really mean?

The same ones you use to understand what the word "police" means. Human
language isn't a direct, thought transmission mechanism (especially with short
utterances). Ambiguity and uncertainty and reliance on _shared_ context are
inherent. The artificial language Toki Pona gives an exaggerated demonstration
of this [1].

> The slogan makes many people think you're advocating an unreasonable idea
> that you're not actually advocating. Do you think that makes for a good
> slogan?

No one can ever cram the nuance of a complex political position onto a slogan
to fit on a sign. Inevitably someone will misunderstand to some degree, then
have to go on to read one of the hundreds of articles titled "what does
'defund the police' mean?" to correct your misunderstanding.

If you're searching for some optimal slogan, you're not going to find it. Sure
there are alternatives, but a couple things count in "defund the police"'s
favor: 1) it succinctly indicates the topic and 2) pretty clearly conveys the
opinion that a radical break with prior reform efforts is needed. "Abolish the
police" does the same, except it's more amplified.

[1]
[https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/tokipona](https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/tokipona)

------
WarOnPrivacy
Between the article and the orig report, I found the data presented in a
confusing way.

> "African American males made up the majority of protesters in the four
> observed cities vs. females"

Then follows pie charts showing Caucasians outnumbered African-Americans 6:1.

It looks like what they meant was 'among African-American protesters, the
majority were male'.

~~~
gus_massa
The square with the color in the legend is very small, so it's very difficult
to understand what the pies represent.

(I don't understand how they choose the colors.)

------
aszantu
I remember that there was some protest survival guide, and it mentioned to
either leave the smartphone at home, or bring a dumb phone w/o contract, so
you can at least call an ambulance if need be.

~~~
aesh2Xa1
Why would you need to hide having participated in a protest? It is an act
which is protected by _the First_ Amendment in the US Constitution.

~~~
llampx
The reality is that you night be illegally targeted and profiled based on data
that is freely accessible. Robbery is illegal, yet it still makes sense to
avoid behavior that can get you robbed.

~~~
andonisus
To what end is the targeting and profiling illegal? Simply having publicly-
available analyzed is not illegal.

~~~
r00fus
It's not illegal (though unethical imho), it's the actions taken using that
knowledge. Most effective if combined with parallel construction [1] that
allow police to issue a trumped-up charge on a specific target.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

------
truculent
> Mobilewalla does not collect the data itself, but rather buys it from a
> variety of sources, including advertisers, data brokers, and internet
> service providers.

So we can mobilise to use this data for profiling protestors, but not to help
tackle a pandemic which is spreading concurrently?

~~~
soared
This data has an accuracy of something like ~80ft on average.

[https://www.mobilemarketer.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/news/re...](https://www.mobilemarketer.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/news/research/22928.html#:~:text=Author&text=While%20mobile%20location%20data%20is,%2C%20potentially%20impacting%20marketers'%20programs).

~~~
truculent
Ah, right - less than I thought. I suppose that could be useful for mass-
gatherings but generally we should not have those anyway.

Thank you for the correction

------
Vervious
I'm confused why hacker news thinks collecting demographic data is a bad
thing, and is all about regulating it... when everyone's personal website has
google analytics installed and is doing the exact same thing. Yet we don't bat
an eye at it.

~~~
Vervious
Seriously though, doesn't it strike any of you as absolutely hypocritical?
We're attacking data collection in public spaces in real life, while defending
it in our own domain (virtual life). I know that a lot of tech industry
paychecks come from monetizing people's data...

~~~
jacobr1
Part of the difference is scope and purpose. I'm ok with Amazon using my
purchase, and product viewing data, to recommend products I might like to
purchase. I'm even ok with them using aggregated data to determine where to
invest in white-labled products, fix UX issues, or find fraud rings.

What I'm not ok with, is them selling my data, combining it with cellphone
data, netflix viewing data, creditcard data, magazine subscriptions, email
subscriptions, and many others, and building personal profiles that
governments, political organizations, and commercial enterprises I don't have
a direct relationship with to abuse.

I don't think it is a slippery-slope from from the more narrow, single-firm
use case to the broad-profile-being abused. GDPR and similar regulation is one
way we can get there. We are going to need probably another generation of
people and laws to figure out the right regulatory norms and frameworks, but
it seems like a tractable problem.

~~~
soared
Amazon doesn't sell your data. You can't have a legitimate discussion about
this on HN because no one does their research and so just make outrageously
incorrect claims like that.

Netflix, apple, etc don't sell data. There is no such thing as building a
'personal profile' by combining data from all these different sources. Data is
licensed in aggregate, and typically anything under 1,000 user ids can't be
used. Unless your bringing in data yourself, you can't build profiles on
individuals.

I 100% agree that we need major privacy regulation, but the first step in that
is putting in effort to actually understand and discuss the facts.

~~~
jacobr1
> Data is licensed in aggregate, and typically anything under 1,000 user ids
> can't be used.

You are correct that the reputable companies I used in my strawman apply
practices like this. But it is certainly not the case that this is universal.
I've worked professionally with all sorts of a data brokers (for anti-
abuse/fraud purposes) and there are many who deal with non-anonymized
datasets, especially if we are talking about firms that evolved out the
direct-marketing space. Further, there are many ways to make use of semi-
anonymized data that while, not strictly joining private information, are able
to perform profile appends and data imputation in ways that allow for
inferences many would consider privacy violations regardless of the fact the
technical construction methods don't directly access specific profiles and are
at some level stochastic.

But all that was besides my point, which was perhaps lost with a bad example.
HN readers can be both FOR increased use of customer data for acute purposes
and AGAINST broader abuses of such data without being hypocritical. There is a
relevant distinction to be drawn.

~~~
soared
Apologies I always forget that I only have experience with the big guys and
haven’t seen what the smaller vendors are doing. I’ve made that mistake before
so definitely a blind spot for me.

I do think that what smaller players is doing is the thing people thing of as
obviously immoral, but those practices get pinned on everyone else.

------
sitkack
Much of this data comes from a company called
[https://www.airsage.com/](https://www.airsage.com/)

The anonymization is a joke, they had fixed IDs over I think a 30 day window.

Airsage should be shut down and C-levels to the board should be jailed for
wire tapping.

------
mc32
>” If [this data] ends up in hands of the government, or if protesters are
concerned that it could end up in the hands of the government, that may
suppress speech, it may deter people from going to protests,” Hussain said.”

At this point I don’t think it’s government so much as private companies I’m
concerned about.

Candidates silently get ignored depending on what this kind of data shows.

------
zucker42
Does anyone know more specifically how a company like Mobilewalla gets
location data? Is it from Google, or from apps people open on their phone, or
from trackers on websites, or from cell data, or from something else?

Also, is there any way to prevent Google from tracking the location of my
Android phone short of uninstalling Android?

~~~
surround
Cell service companies track your location based on signal strength, and are
known for selling this data to as many third parties as possible. There is no
way to stop them from tracking your phone location, short of removing your SIM
card.

~~~
zucker42
> There is no way to stop them from tracking your phone location

Is airplane mode or turning your phone off effective? I've heard stated before
that they are not, but I don't understand the technical details.

------
austincheney
I wonder if that data can be correlated against recent Covid spikes. The
cities in Texas showing the most dramatic rise in diagnosis are also those
that experienced the largest quantities of protests delayed exactly the same
amount of time as the incubation period.

~~~
danso
That wouldn't explain the flat rates in NYC [0] or Minneapolis and St. Paul
(Hennepin/Ramsey County) [1]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-
coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronavirus-
cases.html)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/minnesota-
corona...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/minnesota-coronavirus-
cases.html)

edit: Also, Texas had a Phase 3 reopening on June 3, which is around the time
of peak protest: [https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-
ph...](https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-phase-iii-to-
open-texas)

~~~
dehrmann
A few weeks ago, I remember Cuomo patting himself and New Yorkers on the back
for continuing to see a decline in cases. It's a lot easier to do that when
20% of NYC residents have antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, and that was in May. I'm
sure this limited spread during protests somewhat in NYC.

That said, social distancing during protests, being outdoors, how many people
had active infections (this varies wildly across the US), mask use, actions
(positive and negative) by the police, and living situations of the protesters
(alone in an apartment or four roommates) all have an effect.

~~~
nostrademons
Only in the presence of social distancing or other countermeasures.

20% antibodies means that you could have an R = 1.25 and still get an
effective R < 1.0, preventing further onwards transmission. R0 estimates for
COVID-19 ranged from 2.5-6, so by itself 20% of the population with antibodies
wouldn't do anything (it'd reduce R to 2-4.8, which is still pretty quick
exponential spread, faster than the flu). However, R in the U.S. around the
time of the protests was measured at about 1.07, because it wasn't fully
opened up yet and many people are staying home out of fear. Under those
conditions NYC gets an effective R = 0.85 (epidemic dies out), while a state
with 2% antibodies has an effective R = 1.05, which is still positive (albeit
slow) exponential spread.

I suspect it's a combination of the lax social distancing requirements + lack
of immunity. NYC would still be experiencing exponential spread without
existing immunity, but it's only because they're still locked down that the
level of immunity they have can prevent an epidemic.

------
fmakunbound
How do these ass-clowns get stuff like mobile application I'm using
[https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4309344/Mobilewalla%20Data%20...](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4309344/Mobilewalla%20Data%20Dictionary%20\(1\)%20\(1\).pdf)
[https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4309344/Content%20Offers/Mobi...](https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4309344/Content%20Offers/Mobilewalla%20Data%20Dictionary_Aggregated_FEB2020.pdf)
and even location data [https://www.mobilewalla.com/places-of-interest-data-
schema](https://www.mobilewalla.com/places-of-interest-data-schema) Do
carriers ship some kind of Mobilewalla telemetry app on the phone people use?

~~~
jmatthews
Having done some work in this space I can tell you the exact process.
Applications on your phone provide a maid. Mobile Application ID. Which
reports back it's(the phones) geo location. Using some basic statistics
regarding location, duration of stay, time of day, you infer home address,
work address. Once you have a small foothold you go to aggregated data
repositories and run a query. Once you get a positive hit the rest is dead
simple.

~~~
mtgp1000
I had been paranoid about this for some time, thanks for confirming.

It is so trivially easy to decipher a person's life from their location data,
especially with some simple ML.

The fact that it's so easy ensures in my mind that it's only a matter of time
before this data falls into the hands of a true authoritarian administration.

~~~
dumbfounder
This data has been commercially available for years. Assume that every
government has it.

------
andai
How was this data collected? They bought it, but how was it collected in the
first place? Random apps with shady privacy policies?

~~~
prostoalex
There's a whole cottage industry of apps monetizing user location in bulk.

They mainly position themselves as local deals apps (find the best restaurant,
get a coupon from nearby store) and fitness apps (rewards for walking,
running, etc.)

Both use cases call for always-on location sharing.

------
ogre_codes
It seems like it would be very difficult to distinguish which side of the
police line someone is on based on a pile of demographics. How many of those
are protestors versus police? Likewise, National Guard, reporters, fire
department, medical, etc. If they separated them out, it doesn't say they did
in the article or even hint at an attempt.

~~~
jleach82
I don't think so. Read this: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-
our-likes-help...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-
helped-trump-win)

I am fairly confident they can easily tell which way someone leans on the
matter.

------
one2know
If you have been watching live streams, you will learn many protesters don't
understand what a "live stream" is, because the streamer tries to explain it
to them and they still think it is a recording that can be deleted.

~~~
not2b
But while it initially goes out live, after the live stream ends the video
becomes a recording, which can be deleted.

~~~
one2know
On one stream I watched, the streamer tells a protester they are live
streaming. The protester literally says, "I don't know what that is." And
actually recordings can't be deleted because viewers are recording the live
stream and have their own copies instantly which they upload to twitter or
youtube.

------
gojomo
While the demographics, techniques, & reaction are all interesting, there's no
support in the article text for Buzzfeed's headline claim of "almost 17k
protestors had no idea a tech company was tracing their location". For
example, there's no survey of the involved mobile users – or even a quote from
a present individual! – to ask or otherwise confirm how many had 'no idea' of
such tracking.

While often people are surprised at the tracking that's happened, usually as a
result of 'fine print' they've clicked-through at some point, this is a young,
activist & heavy-mobile-using population. Many will know or suspect tracking
is happening. The more privacy-oriented organizers often inform participants
of such considerations.

Those affected have probably consciously enabled many kinds of 'location
sharing' options & location-sensitive apps – and then specifically used those
features to share updates/photos, with explicit location disclosure, from the
protest site. Many may have a generationally blasé attitude about the
inevitability of such tracking.

Some may even be happy that "I'm being counted". There's always controversy
after mass actions as to the actual number of participants, or how many truly
represent a certain local community, with biased estimates from those with
agendas. A possible silver-lining of technological tracking, if the potential
abuse for persecuting individuals can be prevented, is that it can turn mass
actions into more-accurately-measured "super-petitions", reflecting both
viewpoint & intensity-of-commitment, for change.

------
dubcanada
Not to wear a tinfoil hat, but couldn't this data be entirely made up?

It also seems to imply that the data is 100% accurate. And that is also wrong
based on what I see.

~~~
sukilot
Sure. Any researcher could be lying.

------
jleach82
Data Breaches, Crisis and Opportunity (ISBN 978-0-13-450678-4)

I always "knew" that mass data is evaluated for many things, but I had no idea
how much I didn't know. That book - besides being an excellent reference for
anyone responsible for protecting data - is unsettling in showing the depth of
the market and how it works. The topic headline doesn't even scratch the
surface.

------
soared
Mobilewalla data 101: Mobilewalla is a next generation data company that
employs big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and creativity to
power the most granular consumer intelligence platform on the planet.
Mobilewalla is the only consumer data provider employing time-based analysis
of location and app usage. The leading provider of Nielsen-verified mobile
audience insights, Mobilewalla’s cutting-edge proprietary compression
algorithm enables the storage, accessing, and analysis of 80 petabytes of
data.

Collection methodology: Mobilewalla harnesses location and behavior-based data
to understand consumers and recognize where individuals are in their life
journey based on two years of historical data. User information is collected
from a variety of sources so advertisers can engage consumers who are ready to
buy and develop compelling advertising campaigns that speak directly to their
best customers.

------
mandelbrotwurst
This is going to be skewed by the fact that not all people - and certainly not
all protestors - carry cell phones. It also wouldn't be terribly surprising if
the rate at which they do so varies by race, income, etc.

------
Abishek_Muthian
Even if the individual is privacy focused, careful with the apps on their
smartphone, if the cellular service provider pimps out the telemetry there's
little one could do to protect the privacy.

One of the reasons to have 'Non cellular network mobile Internet'[1] via long
range hotspots where we could use standard techniques we use to protect
ourselves from the ISP.

[1][https://needgap.com/problems/51-non-cellular-network-
mobile-...](https://needgap.com/problems/51-non-cellular-network-mobile-
internet-telecom-internet)

~~~
centimeter
The best technical option here is to allow for dynamic payment for cellular
services (via privacy-preserving payment protocols like Lightning) and no
fixed hardware identifiers like IMEI. You just randomize your
IMEI/MAC/whatever every time you connect to a new provider. Many of the
challenges here are that wireless regulators outlaw such privacy-protecting
measures.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
How is 'dynamic payment for cellular services' the best technical option than
ditching SIM altogether for WiFi and using encrypted apps for voice calls?
More over, no handset level changes or changes to govt. policy is required,
user can choose to not have a cellular provider(Parent link has couple of
companies doing that in India).

~~~
centimeter
Range outside of hyperdense urban centers.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
Fair enough, but any sate of the art technology first reaches the urban center
especially when it's privacy focussed.

------
etempleton
It gets much, much worse than this.

Companies are now promoting data services to advertisers that allow a company
to install a cookie on their website and, by just having a user complete a
site visit, match an IP address to a physical mailing address with claimed 90%
+ accuracy.

Don't believe me? Check out this company:
[https://www.eltoro.com/](https://www.eltoro.com/)

One of many companies that have recently popped up offering just such a
service.

------
shadowgovt
That's definitely going to continue to be a thing.

New technology adds new ways to protest and counter-protest. Cell phones have
brought us mass-tracking and flash-mobs.

------
escape_goat
The difference between a report and a publicity stunt is the detailed
discussion of sampling and category inference methodology contained in a
report.

------
supahfly_remix
The reports showed ethnicity of the protestors. Is this inferred from ad
preferences? Or, is there a database that keeps this?

~~~
jleach82
It comes from many different places and is cross-correlated at many levels.
From credit card purchase history to social media to phone location data,
across multiple agents and brokers throughout the data market. See: Data
Breaches, Crisis and Opportunity (ISBN 978-0-13-450678-4)

~~~
supahfly_remix
Thank you for the reference. I will look for it.

------
stx
If you live in an authoritarian country that can disappear you for protesting
you should turn off your phone or use a burner phone. I am not sure if
protesters in places like Hong Kong know that China could be logging BT or
WIFI mac addresses and later connect that address with a real owner.

------
coronadisaster
We need a non-profit company (or something) that will purchase all location
data from cellphone companies, all purchase histories from credit card
companies, etc and post it online for everyone to see... maybe that would wake
up some people.

------
colinprince
"It is really just fundamentally terrifying" -from TFA.

Yes, yes it is.

Those handling data like this, from whatever source, need much tighter
regulation, since they are unable to regulate themselves.

------
sdenton4
Buzzfeed uses a kinda misleading pull-quote from the analytics: "African
American males made up the majority of protesters in the four observed cities
vs. females".

The stat this refers to is gender ratio /amongst Black protestors only/; the
overall racial mix of the protests really wasn't much different from their
observed daytime (ie, control) racial mix.

FWIW, they also observe the same in-city out-of-city breakdown during the day
and night, indicating that the 'bussed in protestor' fantasies of the right
wing conspiracy machine were baseless. (though, really, that was pretty
obvious anyway, and the tin-foil hats won't be convinced by any kind of
evidence...)

~~~
cbhl
Yeah, I was confused by this pull quote given the pie charts later on the page
showing majority-caucasian (over 72% in the four cities)

------
kome
btw, it is common (in france) for the police to use "scanners" to grab all the
phone numbers of protesters.

~~~
anigbrowl
Also here - read up on 'IMSI catchers'.

------
paulcarroty
China does it for decades.

Every any kind of activist should know online privacy 101 and use burner
phone/sim.

------
jordache
as long as the data is stripped of PII. I don't care..

what's the harm?

------
jsilence
Could Meshtastic alleviate this?

------
oyra
offtopic, but how come there are only two genders participating in these
protests?! there must be something wrong with the analysis.

~~~
dmitrygr
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-
determination_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-
determination_system)

------
rydre
[deleted]

~~~
jleach82
Part of the problem is that this type of data collection and market
environment evolves much more quickly than legislation can ever keep up.
They're trying, but..

~~~
082349872349872
Data collection existed in the US, and probably most major markets, a century
ago, it's just that then it was primarily keyed on mailing address instead of
telephone number. Legislators are never going to do anything about it unless
absolutely forced to, because they rely on targeted campaigns themselves.

(and if you're in the US, it gets worse. When I lived in California, I asked
my letter carrier if I could put a "no junk mail please" sign on the box like
we do here. I was told to please not call it junk mail, but "bulk mail", as it
provides a significant fraction of their funding.)

Anyone up for a game of 35 questions?

Edit: [https://www.msp-pgh.com/history-direct-mail-
marketing/](https://www.msp-pgh.com/history-direct-mail-marketing/)

> The American Anti-Slavery Society printed and mailed marketing materials to
> religious and civic leaders in the south in 1835. This is likely the first
> direct mail campaign. They created a mailing list from names in newspapers
> and city directories, among other public lists.

the poorly-targeted campaign was not well-received:
[https://postalmuseum.si.edu/node/1912](https://postalmuseum.si.edu/node/1912)

------
yters
So mostly young white males trashing black neighborhoods? Who is exploiting
who again?

~~~
mothsonasloth
Be careful, some of these young white middle class people trashing
neighborhoods could be the next Che, Lenin or Pol Pott.

Agitation is the first stage of a physical revolution.

No, I'm not being hyperbolic... history repeats itself

