Windows has a way to track your phone
The short version: A Windows-phone tracking feature is another reminder that surveillance isn't just cameras on poles — it's baked into the software we use every day.
Our Take
The creator behind Digital ID, Mass Surveillance and Digital Currency flags something that sounds mundane — a Windows feature that can pinpoint a linked phone's location — but the implications are anything but. We cover license plate readers because they're a visible, physical form of tracking bolted to a pole on your street. This video is a useful reminder that the same appetite for location data shows up quietly in the software running on billions of devices, often enabled by default and buried in settings most people never check.
That's the pattern worth paying attention to: surveillance infrastructure doesn't need a single villain or a single camera network to be dangerous. It's the sum of a thousand small integrations — an OS feature here, a corporate ALPR network there — that together build a detailed picture of where you are and where you've been. Flock Safety's cameras are one piece of that puzzle, feeding plate scans and location history into databases that police and private companies can query. A phone-linking feature in your operating system is another piece, just less visible.
We'd encourage viewers to treat this video the way we treat every ALPR report: as a prompt to ask who has access to your location data, why, and for how long. If you want to see the physical side of this story in your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on the hardware tracking you, our take-action page has concrete steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Digital ID, Mass Surveillance and Digital Currency, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.