Feb 7, 2018
Fox News – Brett Larson
In the latest installment in his investigation into how Silicon Valley is clandestinely interacting with Americans, Tucker Carlson sent a reporter around the District of Columbia to see how Google was tracking him.
Carlson sent Fox News Headlines 24/7 anchor Brett Larson to several major landmarks in Washington, from the Fox News bureau on North Capitol Street, to the Children’s Hospital in the north, the Washington National Cathedral in the northwest and back to Capitol Hill.
Carlson said his previous report revealed Google applied for two patents, one of which reportedly allows them to effectively “stick a camera in your bedroom and spy on you and your children.”
He said Google uses information like that for “surveillance capitalism” – selling advertisements for stuff based on your activities, locations and characteristics.
Carlson sent Larson out and about to find out how much Google gleans from Android devices.
With no SIM card in either of two phones and one set on Airplane Mode, Larson took a black car around town.
During that time, he was not connected to WiFi and only took photos at the cathedral.
Back at the Fox News Channel bureau, Larson hooked the phones up to a device that copied the data the phones sent to Google.
He found it knew exactly where he was throughout the day.
“It knows when I got out of the car!” he exclaimed, examining metadata in the report.
He and Carlson discussed how complicated user agreements allow users to sign away their privacy “for nothing.”
Google responded to Carlson’s team by saying the user could “opt out” of location history, which is reportedly a complicated process.
“You’re probably not the customer, you’re the product,” Carlson remarked of people who use such free software.
