Thank you!
I mean, you can have a street full of iPhones - which I assume is a regular occurrence in USA, where people trust Apple - and still Google Maps on iPhone would guess well enough where you are. For example, I'm far away from the street and Google hasn't passed here recently, so my WiFi-based location is always way off (using Android). In my other home (and vacation home in another country) it's the opposite, because the cars have passed quite recently.
The story checks out so far for me... but I am kinda lazy to search for the source on this right now, so pls share if you have it.
Which part of GDPR would prevent Google from collecting pairs of (Wi-Fi BSSID, approx lat/lon), with the consent that you gave when you set up your Android phone, and using it for their own purpose without giving it to any third party?
>The information that Chrome sends to Google Location Services may include:
>The Wi-Fi routers closest to you
>Cell IDs of the cell towers closest to you
>The strength of your Wi-Fi or cell signal
>The IP address that is currently assigned to your device
https://www.google.com/chrome/privacy/
Disclosure: I work at Google but not on anything related to this.
Does this mean the US probably has satellites that can easily pick up cell signals anywhere in the world from space?
Most of the satellites shown on the Leolabs site are too dim to see without a telescope because they don't reflect enough light. My site calculates brightness and filters down to the ones that you can see with the unaided eye.
There are still quite a few! ISS in particular is very bright and can even be seen before sunset. The new Chinese space station Tiangong is also a good one to try. In the next few weeks it's expected that the recently launched BlueWalker-3 will become quite bright too as it expands its enormous phased array antenna (64 square meters!). But the coolest is probably if you can catch a recently launched Starlink train, 50 satellites all visible simultaneously or within seconds of each other.