Break Free From the "Unsigned Social Contract" That Strips Your Privacy

TLDR: Most of us reach for our smartphones dozens of times a day without a second thought. But behind the screen, something we have not knowingly agreed to is quietly happening: our location, movements, and daily patterns are being harvested, aggregated, and sold, even sometimes to government agencies, without a warrant. This creates a massive surveillance dragnet that bypasses the Fourth Amendment. We have a rare window, before April 20th, to try to get Congress to change course and eliminate the “data broker loophole” in FISA, or better yet, sunset FISA altogether. 

As you can imagine, that is a long shot, and we gain more certainty by taking matters into our own hands and combatting smartphone surveillance at the platform level. Even if the government continues with this warrantless surveillance through commercial data, you are not powerless. UP Phone is the solution. 

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Last week, NPR published a report “Your data is everywhere. The government is buying it without a warrant.” The report details how the FBI, ICE, DOD and other agencies are purchasing bulk cell-phone location data from commercial brokers. This isn’t a theory; it’s happening now, and it happens regardless of which party is in power. 

Other government bodies involved in this practice include the IRS, DHS, and even federal, state and local law enforcement.

It’s fair to say that many people (particularly Unplugged’s customers and followers) probably understand that smartphones collect data about the people who use them. We don’t like it, but most people don’t fully comprehend how much power they have to stop it. 

Poll after poll tell us that people want more digital privacy; but, the incentives of the smartphone makers, and even the incentives of the governments that regulate the tech oligopolies, simply aren’t aligned with everyday citizens—the customers of the products.  

What’s Actually Happening in the Background

The data lifecycle most people never see is a tangled web involving hundreds of thousands of entities: apps on your phone collect location, relationships, and behavior to build data warehousing and advertising profiles. Those profiles flow from the app to data harvesters, then to data brokers, and finally to buyers—including governments. 

This data reveals far more than you might expect: where you go; how fast you move; who you’re near; even whether you’re walking, driving, or at home. Tools exist that let agencies geofence an area and pull up every phone that visited a specific place, all without a warrant, thanks to the “third-party doctrine.”

Privacy advocates call this a “broad dragnet sweep” that circumvents the Fourth Amendment. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) told NPR: “You’re collecting data that really you would never get a warrant for, that kind of a broad dragnet sweep under normal warrant requirements."

Jeramie D. Scott of the Electronic Privacy Information Center warned that these purchases are “contributing to an ever-expanding infrastructure of private sector surveillance that is hurtling us into a dystopian surveillance society.”

Monstrous Scale

To say this “dragnet” collection is happening on a significant scale is an understatement.

Even when your phone is sitting idle on a table, independent research shows it is in near-constant communication with third-party servers. A 2024 Cybernews study found that an idle iPhone makes over 3,300 DNS queries per day to third-party domains, while an idle Android phone makes over 2,300. Once you start using apps and browsing — as most of us do every day—the volume jumps roughly 10 times higher! 

Unplugged proved out these numbers with our own third-party study with Raxis. 
On average, a popular Android app contacts 13.5 third-party tracker domains even after a user explicitly denies consent; iOS apps still reach 5.5–8+ trackers on average even with "Ask App Not To Track" enabled, (ACM Study, 2023). Nearly half of apps continue contacting trackers regardless of permission settings. All of this adds up to millions of data points communicated to data harvesters daily from the average user.

We may know our smartphones are spying on us, but the volume and detail of the surveillance is staggering. As a result, billions of people are unintentionally participating in a “social contract” they never signed or even knew existed, powered by this massive, always-on surveillance system.

This goes far beyond serving ads and customizing social and video feeds. Because the data is commercially available with no warrant required, government agencies easily purchase it and build precise profiles of us as individuals and as groups. They not only map our movements, but they can profile habits, health choices, associations, family circles, and even our opinions on social and political issues.

You Don’t Have to Participate

The good news? You don’t have to stay locked into this system. Privacy isn’t about hiding - it’s about preserving and claiming the individual freedom we all have an inalienable right to.

There are opportunities to get involved, civically. As the NPR indicates, if you are an American citizen, you can contact your congressional representative to make your voice heard about the reauthorization of the Foreign Surveillance Act:

"Privacy advocates say that the best chance for Congress to close the well-known loophole around the Fourth Amendment that allows for that sort of governmental snooping is coming up in just a few weeks.

“That's when Congress is expected to take up reauthorization of what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire on April 20.”

Although we strongly support civic engagement, we’re skeptical the U.S. federal government will sunset FISA. Usually, they expand its powers. 

Even if the government continues with this warrantless surveillance through commercial data, you are not powerless. 

At Unplugged, we built UP Phone precisely to break free from this unsigned contract. Our on-device firewall blocks unwanted third-party traffic at the source. Our physical off switch truly turns the phone off, and our de-Googled OS removes background data pipelines that feed brokers and governments. 

You never signed-up for mass surveillance—yet you’ve been enrolled anyway. You don’t have to remain part of it. 

See why UP Phone is the solution. 

— The Unplugged Team

P.S. Our migration guide makes switching easier than most people expect.