The Pokemon Go Spying Conspiracy Theory? Yeah. It's Verified.

Pokemon Go using your phone camera to build a CIA-backed 3D Map AI system.
It sounds like an insane movie plot. But it's real.
In 2016, this was "Lunduke's crazy conspiracy theory about Pokemon Go being used to spy on everyone, backed by the CIA". Now, in 2024, Niantic Labs (the makers of Pokemon Go), proudly brags about using Pokemon Go to spy on you... and using that covertly obtained information to build a massive, 3D artificial intelligence mapping system of private spaces.
"We receive about 1 million fresh scans each week, each containing hundreds of discrete images."
In other words: Lunduke was right.
The CIA, NSA, and Pokémon Go:
lunduke.locals...
Building a Large Geospatial Model to Achieve Spatial Intelligence:
nianticlabs.co...
More from The Lunduke Journal:
lunduke.com/

[@eskeletor]

So the bans for changing your geolocation on rooted devices wasn't because it was unfair but because it was poisoning data?

[@JackeryThompson-lq8zk]

LMFAO

[@AdroSlice]

Abso-fucking-lutely.

[@kojitakamura2522]

so we were really just rebels all along

[@Operator588]

YES

[@inquis1t1ve5]

yup.

[@leezhieng]

In 2017, Pokemon GO saw a ban in Mainland China, with the reason sited pertaining to the game being a risk to national security, as well as the safety of consumers within the country. Doesn't sound so crazy now ain't it.

[@bonbonpony]

If Chinese government wouldn't do even crazier things, then perhaps it would.

[@miloradowicz]

​@@bonbonpony ah, deflecting, yes. "It's not so crazy, Chinesr are!"

[@leezhieng]

@@bonbonpony such as?

[@ФеофанЭтополедолжнобытьзаполне]

It never did sound crazy to begin with.

[@phillipanselmo8540]

inb4 that guy replies with another CIA honeypot as an example ​@@leezhieng

[@Jeremyak]

My rule of thumb is, if I can think of how a thing might be used for evil, then it's probably being used for evil.

[@forgalzz7]

Corollary: even if you can't think of a way, evildoers probably can

[@SageDog]

If something is free, you are the product.

[@Rumo_Notna]

This sounds paranoid af

[@OlympiaCHUD]

@@Rumo_Notna it is, if you can’t compartmentalize your thought experiments properly. If by thinking of them it infects your worldview in a detrimental manner you should probably do the abstract thinking in more safe domains and let others feel the edges of the world.

[@OlympiaCHUD]

A lot of people think the sound of freedom is an exaggeration when it’s barely scratching the surface. To recognize the reality would cause them a type of pain that they prefer to avoid by camping down the truth.

[@theoathman8188]

So turns out, the player is the Pokémon and the CIA is the Pokémon Trainer all along.

[@Operator588]

I knew it was a petification kink thing

[@canUfeelMYface]

It has been verified since the app came out

[@ped7g]

You gotta catch 'em all!

[@canUfeelMYface]

The same adults who play that game are the reason we constant scam ads and calls

[@RB-pc7tg]

@@ped7gThey have to catch us all!

[@neodonkey]

In 1984, the state paid to surveil you. In 2024, we pay to surveil ourselves.

[@dddderick]

It's a brave new world out there

[@Freedom4Ever420]

And we spy on our neighbors and call the police if their grass isn’t cut

[@SterileNeutrino]

As long as the chocolate ration is increased from 250g to 180g weekly, I'm okay with that

[@cleverman383]

We also pay to buy the latest GPS tracker and microphone to keep in our pocket all day long

[@nicoleking772]

For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.

[@Maxie962]

Now imagine if they were to specifically position pokemon in places that they want you to scan... hmm...

[@Rai2M]

I'm 99.9% sure that they were doing that.

[@aaa-hq3ki]

So in other words, the koffing that appeared in the holocaust museum was an intentional shitpost by the CIA

[@joemerino3243]

They don't, they just give you missions to scan the places they want scanned. The rewards pretty good, too. It's not a secret function, you have to actually start the scanning function, it's explicit in-game.

[@HutchinsonJC]

For the numerous quests saying take 5 pictures of a water pokemon or whatever, people probably took pictures of paperwork on their desks or all kinds of stuff.

[@shadedwulf]

They are and its not even surprising.

[@RavenWoodsDE]

That explains the horrible game quality. It's not a game at all. It's not meant to be a good game. It's meant to be a bait.

[@context_eidolon_music]

Yes, the entire thing is an illegal psychological operation, even the kid who sang the meme song.

[@dr_redbanRL]

Yeah when people were going crazy for it I couldn't believe it. It just doesn't sound fun

[@TheChuosta]

This is a red herring, pokemon games have sucked for more than a decade now... or maybe they have been lowering our standards on purpose?

[@iRelevant.47.system.boycott]

@@dr_redbanRL Manically addictive it seems. Well earned medals.

[@KyzenEX]

​@@TheChuostaThey've been lowering their standards becuse they know their diehard braindead fans will buy their slop.

[@Dang3rMouSe]

My dad said it was probably a CIA project back in the day. Hilarious.

[@nobodynever7884]

So thats why that Picachu kept jumping the fence into that Confucius Institute near my house.

[@wesleyclymer9026]

Oh…

[@jamesshorter1382]

KZbin Ad placement: "Let's put a Pokémon Go advert immediately before this video! Any press is good press!"

[@betapacket]

uBlock Origin

[@thegamerchannel3660]

jokes on you i have not just one, but TWO ad blockers! (ublock + adguard)

[@JamesBrown-f9g]

They are mocking you morons.

[@LTPottenger]

If you're a patriot you'll buy our spy app and go in the neighbor's yard

[@Domarius64]

I had one for that one about the virtual land buying, same thing...

[@TheMorteReport]

I actually said this years ago! They were using the placement of rare pokemon to encourage people to go to places they wanted mapped!

[@psypothetical]

Sheds a whole new light on all the trespassing that was happening too lmfao

[@JRM-VSR]

"There's no way they are bypassing the controls". They don't need to. The game asks. And the users say yes. As far as all the photos/videos of real-world locations - their first game, Ingress, flat out asks you to take a walk-round video of notable locations with GPS traces recorded as you do it, and upload the video. You get a (really mild) in-game reward for doing so, and it's well known in the playerbase that this is obvious data collection used for understanding the 3D world from 2D recordings -- exactly what they are describing here. And ... loads of people do take those videos and send them in. I'm willing to bet that's the primary datasource for what's being described here.

[@neodonkey]

Even more ironic considering the title of the game. Talk about hiding in plain sight.

[@Mama_esta_presa]

This is exactly what I came to say, it's all good about the pokemon go stuff because they released it after and it changed the way approach as to how to motivate the players to move around and capture data in regards to ingress but the OG "algorithm" that was 100% location and territory based is clearly way more relevant.

[@shadedwulf]

@@Mama_esta_presa ingress was more fun tho

[@dylanhohn3713]

this same feature was implemented into in PoGo as well. when this feature launched like 2 years ago, i was instantly very concerned what this data was being used for. obviously the DoD was right for banning this app on bases and such

[@shockthetoast]

I don't know why this is so surprising. Niantic has always made it clear that their business is about the data collection. They make a lot of money off of in-game purchases, but they always made it clear their major business model was collecting and selling this type of data.

[@NormalPerson229]

"Conspiracy theory" now simply means spoiler alert.

[@SterileNeutrino]

Sometimes, but some theories are just too stupid. I can't even hear the 5G stuff anymore from people who have obviously no idea how the real world physics work

[@NormalPerson229]

@@SterileNeutrino Sure, I'm exaggerating here. Given what we've seen over the past few years from governments, I now keep an open mind towards any so-called "conspiracy theory" that isn't obviously stupid like 5G towers will remotely mind control us, or the literal Lizard People are the true controllers of our world.

[@flyingegle4099]

@@SterileNeutrino ok fed

[@diaman_d]

@@SterileNeutrino and the question here is , do you ? do you really ? Otherwise just crank the volume in a manner of speech. It's not like microwaves are imaginative.

[@tinkerwithstuff]

@@SterileNeutrino If you mean, mobilizing magic nanobot cyber armies in people's bloodstreams - ok. But the density of 5G cells is much higher than previous tech, and use beam-forming via phased array antennae to direct the power towards an end point (e.g. phone). In normal functioning, such cells negotiate who has the best sight to target and will be connected. But one _could,_ if one wanted, direct all towers in reach towards the same target & crank up the power. I wouldn't want to have my head there, even without calculations. It also seems convenient that one knows which target phone belongs to which person of interest.

[@ytfeelslikenorthkorea]

When I saw one of those "flashmob" events in person, that was my first conclusion - someone needs to have access to a place where there are no cctv cameras they can hack into and they need to check who/what is there - so just send a bunch of notifications to people, so they show up with their phones, with cameras (AND MICROPHONES) on, recording live feeds, including faces of all the people in the area...Convenient. This, and social media in general are the Eldorado for all intelligence agencies. Back in a day, to do "white intelligence", agencies had to dish out a lot of resources. Now they can just go to facebook and read what people are up to, with photos, and people tagged to ease with the asset mapping. With streaming / live events / pokemon and similar "games", it's just getting better and bettrer.

[@JuanGil-c6n]

the worst part, pkmnGo players didn't even get paid🥲

[@DJWESG1]

Back in the day they just sat in the local pubs and mens clubs and collected data.

[@ytfeelslikenorthkorea]

@@DJWESG1 and read local newspapers, and listened to local radio, and then connected the dots - who,where,with whom, what's the leverage? Now, all that, with much less effort is done by introducing stupid mini-games, squeezes on facebook or free to play games on phones that inexplicably ask for a lot of permissions. I remember the time a few years back when every stupid app was requesting access to my contacts list

[@iRelevant.47.system.boycott]

Privacy is in reality dead, unless your living in a cave.

[@kofiay]

0

[@SuperM00b]

Final gym leader CIA director. **battle music plays**

[@Valoric]

CIA director Giovanni sends out Persian

[@deadpansanchez2947]

CIA director switch out persian for LSD mindslave.

[@matthewdancz9152]

I cannot like this comment. It is at 69 likes.

[@doryan08]

This remember me the Batman movie where they have access to all the mobiles and were able to create a real-time image of all the world. That scene in the movie just blew my mind, this is just scary.

[@zakofrx]

And how they decided the tech was to evil so hid it from the world.. We live in a world were a Batman movie has more ethics than our own Government and Corporations..

[@forlexer]

Art becomith reality

[@diaman_d]

@@forlexer or imitates it.

[@shockthetoast]

This is actually a game feature where it sometimes asks you to scan specific landmarks, if you do it you get bonuses. It's not secretly running like in The Dark Knight.

[@notmypresident]

It's called predictive programming.

[@The_Captainn]

I lived in the bay area of California when Niantic released some precursor app to Pokemon Go, around 2013, and I said it was a CIA asset to my friends because there were obvious trails between Niantic and the CIA. Glad to see a video on the topic.

[@joseoncrack]

The "amazing" thing with government agencies, in particular intelligence, is that they have absolutely zero limit in terms of ethics. Anything goes to serve their goals, in a fully opaque way. In the "normal world", those guys would be called psychopaths. Interestingly, when you get paid by tax money, somehow you seem to become entitled to act like a psychopath without any consequences except possibly a bonus when you've done something exceptionally unethical.

[@YearOfTheSwagon]

People openly handed their data over. There’s nothing unethical going on here in my opinion

[@Superabound2]

This is why you should only vote for people who want to dismantle government agencies

[@Superabound2]

​@@YearOfTheSwagonbut it wasn't open, at all. And most of the people playing Pokemon Go were literal CHILDREN

[@Superabound2]

​@@YearOfTheSwagonserious question, are you Jewish?

[@kerwynpk]

@@YearOfTheSwagon 'Hello sir I have received a massive inheritance from my Nigerian prince brother, Please freely hand your data to me' Is your logic still following?

[@liaminwales]

Nixon got kicked out for something like 50 wiretaps (from memory), amazing how times change.

[@bp6942]

Mussolinni's definition was the marriage of corporation and state. Yet were all ok with the CIA having it's own corporations.

[@1e0isfdkorblpg]

which wasnt even him

[@bp6942]

@@1e0isfdkorblpg Ah didnt know that one

[@hackjealousy]

@@bp6942 It’s funny how many use the term without understanding it.

[@Treblaine]

The Watergate burglars should have offered to give high fives to democrat insiders who talked about what was going on. Which is basically what Pokemon Go did, they offered really trivial non-monetary rewards.

[@anthonybf2]

The CIA can pokemon go to hell

[@JuanGil-c6n]

well, they're filled with guys that like to pokemen

[@TheTrainStationOG]

Nice

[@billylionisnotagoat]

Didn't they put all those gas pokemon at that famous museum in germany ...

[@gblenemy]

Professor built a Human-dex!

[@Bvic3]

Gonna track ́em all!

[@sittingstill3578]

So this why Apple has been so adamant about pushing AR and the use of FaceID. Makes a lot of sense now.

[@LyubomirIko]

The deniers will still fail to see for what this data could be used for. Their rationale is : I know, but I have nothing to hide.

[@shockthetoast]

What would people deny? This is literally a feature in the game that it asks you if you want to use it, and is used to scan specific landmarks. It's not new information to anyone who plays the game.

[@juliushibbert1091]

I wouldn’t deny the mass data collection but the spying claim is fear-mongering. “Scanning” pokestops (POIs) is a feature in the game - the game is not constantly checking your camera

[@Dowlphin]

"I have nothing to hide." - So you would agree to a cavity search then.

[@esphilee]

: you work for CiA. : no. : you played Pokemon? ; yes. : you worked for cia.

[@SuperM00b]

While you were catching pokemon, CIA were catching you.

[@John-wd5cb]

In old USSR Pokemon catches you.

[@MaoRatto]

Classic internet. You don't own anything, anything owns you Russian memes.

[@sgjoel]

that explains why it was so bad on the battery lmao, the lidar/camera probably pinging all the time.

[@NetflixForeign]

Not surprised at all as I remember wondering WHY a video game was being made by a company with Intelligence company connections. I thought it was incredibly strange.

[@GrimsBar]

Same with Google. The very platform you're using to watch this video. 😂

[@Mustakrakish1337]

In a similar vein, just like Google maps began as a CIA tool before it became a consumer software product

[@joemerino3243]

A lot more art and music has intelligence connections than you'd think. There are large history books written on this, it's not secret (anymore).

[@Mustakrakish1337]

Way she goes ​@@joemerino3243

[@jp5568]

@@joemerino3243such as?

[@ktvx.94]

So the game gets insane amounts of value out of people playing the game, burning their data plans sending a bunch of information that doesn't benefit players over the network and they _still_ have to pay microtransactions? That's scary _and_ greedy.

[@Bonez0r]

I'm not so much worried about them making 3D maps of public places, but more about them using the front camera to map people's faces. That gives them the ability to make deepfakes of anyone using the app. Also, what was not in the list, is that they can map and make a 3D model of the interior of your home. I'm also pretty sure that Pokemon is probably not the only app that is used for this.

[@KAZVorpal]

You have one thing wrong: This data it's not being obtained by taking pictures without your permission. It's being obtained through an explicit part of the game called "scanning", where you scan pokestops and gyms, creating a video of the area around them. And AR pictures, where you take a picture of your Pokemon in front of the real world. That's why they're open about it. They can do it WITHOUT spying without your permission. If you make the mistake of scanning and doing AR stuff.

[@JRM-VSR]

Yep, they don't need to sneak the pictures, they straight up ask you to take them in-game. And millions of people do.

[@joemerino3243]

@@JRM-VSR The scanning doesn't work with my phone for whatever reason, but they have mostly asked me to scan the parking lot at my work. Of all the insane and evil stuff the CIA does, I'm really not worried about this particular one.

[@shockthetoast]

Yeah, everyone is acting like it's some covert plot, when Niantic has always said that collecting and selling this kind of data is their major goal. They've always made it clear that they make games to collect data. None of this should be a surprise to anyone.

[@ministryofwrongthink6962]

@@shockthetoast you think they were upfront about recording data from your own home and effectively mapping out rooms in your own home along with your behaviors? Lmfao

[@shockthetoast]

@@ministryofwrongthink6962 They aren't. This is only about scanning and mapping specific real world landmarks in the game. That's what the 3D maps are. If they are doing anything beyond that, it's not what this article is talking about...

[@16alphav]

Some years ago I had view of the park in downtown Barre Vermont. I kept noticing glowing blue heads wandering around the park at night (people staring at smartphones) going to specific locations in and around the park. I thought it was very strange seeing various people walking around and stopping in the same spots in and around the park. I mentioned these observations to a coworker and he told me "They're playing Pokemon Go." I responded "What the hell is "Pokemon Go"?". I know better now.

[@dalulu418]

Ahhh, now I get why and how the media "accidentally" caught some of our politicians in Norway playing pokemon during breaks. It all makes sense now.

[@Freedom4Ever420]

They know what the inside of my bathroom looks like.

[@NotMarkKnopfler]

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@User9681e]

No worries they know the same about every bathroom equally at centimeter level accuracy

[@CalicoCrack]

they know what my penis looks like, i thought it would be funny to watch a pokemon dance on my balls

[@pissmilker2313]

All I can tell the CIA is: "enjoy"

[@keepcalmandenjoythedecline]

I bet they can do some AI quantic cross-referential correlation analysis of the cinetica of how you've thrown your balls at unwitting pokefurries in the wild and estimate with a 3 sigma interval of confidence how you ply/wrap your toilet paper after a heavy chimichangas. _Maximum-likelihood-style._

[@dannylo5875]

Niantic already sounds like that shady kids game company owned by Kaiba Corp...

[@BrianHagar]

Mapping the world was one of the purposes of Pokemon Go and Ingress from the beginning. Niantic made this known from the beginning too. The company offers an API for anyone to access the information, similar to Google Maps API and similar other APIs.

[@SterileNeutrino]

Remember when resistance fighters found out about US sites in sandy lands by checking the openly accessible FitBit jogging maps which helpfully heatmapped the presence of fitness-obsessed US denizens?

[@John-wd5cb]

Antarctica had pokemons

[@andrewferguson6901]

More like sandy cheeks. I love spongebob

[@toomanymarys7355]

The Taliban, you mean?

[@alejandromaldonado6159]

​@@toomanymarys7355Perhaps the Middle East in general. Afghanistan is more arid mountainous than desert

[@PySnek]

lol this already happened long before pokemon go the whole OS tracks and records you, whatever brand you pick

[@hugofontes5708]

Still, building a whole 3d model is a different deal

[@horusfalcon]

Wherever a technology exists, someone will find a way to exploit it in ways previously not imagined. Even an innocent-seeming video game can be exploited, especially if the exploit is baked in.

[@kevinpaulus4483]

You were so right ... I forwarded this to our local news outlet but I doubt it will surface there. But one can only hope.

[@1e0isfdkorblpg]

most all local news is owned by the same company

[@kevinpaulus4483]

@@1e0isfdkorblpg I'm European (BE).

[@taylorgang3739]

Yes your local cia approved propaganda station is gonna tell the locals they’ve been spying on you lmao…

[@maple7rees-352]

Send this to Joe Rogan and Elon Musk

[@maple7rees-352]

Lets see how much free speech can happen.

[@AlessandroRodriguez]

That sound like like the late batman movies, when batman uses a all the phones of gotham to find the joker, or the fast and furious when super girl boss hacker. Hackers all the connected devices to find anyone's, anywhere. When our dystopia becomes the corny Mc Guffin of movies,

[@sixtyinsix]

When will we find out Boston Dynamic has had access to this dataset for years...

[@SterileNeutrino]

What would they do with it?

[@20NewJourney23]

Think military-grade humanoid robots with weapons... If they have all the centimeter-level GPS visual data they need to potentially destroy basically everyone. If they wanted.

[@John-wd5cb]

You have 20 seconds to comply

[@GodwynDi]

​@@SterileNeutrino They developed the autonomous armed drones.

[@jr2904]

​@@GodwynDi they don't do that though

[@bluejayofevil]

I remember the jokes about why they would put a Pokémon gym inside Area 51 (map data showed there was one inside.) It makes a lot more sense now. People pointed out that a lot of the major points of interest for gathering locations for Pokémon gyms and stuff were based on Niantic's previous AR game, Ingress. So that may have been the precursor to a full rollout for something a lot more people would play (e.g. Pokémon Go.)

[@shockthetoast]

Niantic has always said that they are first and foremost a data collection company, selling that data is their primary source of income. This was known before Pokémon Go even released. Locations in game are user submitted, the Area 51 gym was probably submitted by someone stationed there, lol. They don't make locations so people will go there (except sponsored locations), their goal is to make a game where users want to submit locations, players bring them the data. Think about it, an Area 51 gym wasn't going to get someone to break in - they might try but they wouldn't likely succeed. It's much more effective to collect data from someone already there...

[@bluejayofevil]

@@shockthetoast That's my point. Thank you for articulating it more elaborately. Although I was not aware that many POIs were user-submitted. That detail raises some eyebrows given where they are. Seems like a potential security breach risk given the data that could be collected there.

[@shockthetoast]

@@bluejayofevil It's definitely a security risk. A while back Niantic had to remove all gyms and stops from military bases. (I'm not sure how nicely they were asked, lol.)

[@googIesux]

What truly is comical is that these people write this stuff and don't read what they've written as any description of any kind of horrific dystopia. I mean you've gotta sit back and appreciate their laser-like myopathy and robotic moral bankruptcy. Sociopaths often consider themselves "more evolved," but the condition is a literal lack of valuable perceptive capability. Similarly, imagine considering yourself superior for lacking love. Makes you wonder why they value their goals at all. Talk about vanity and meaninglessness. If we're purely material, survival and extinction of humanity are both equally meaningful.

From a purely objective standpoint... they pay a lot less cost in life.

[@silverhawkscape2677]

The Materialist makes no sense once you break down their ideas.

@silverhawkscape2677 Nothing makes sense when you break it down far enough though. We fight and die, and all withers. So not exactly an objective argument. While I personally value family and the rest, it's hard to argue it from an objective standpoint other than societal betterment and even that is very weak because we can't foresee enough.

[@joemerino3243]

@@silverhawkscape2677 keep telling yourself that, it's how you maintain delusion in mystical beliefs.

[@silverhawkscape2677]

Wrong. Some Things can't be broken down. These are the ideas that can transcend time. The Materialist stops making sense when you start using their deconstruction tactics against them.

[@utahnl]

Tim to re-install and continue poisoning the database.

[@David-eg6sd]

So, why did it take 8 years for someone to check their wireshark output while playing pokemon go??

[@yourworstfan]

Doesn't matter. For most people, any discussion of the activities of the "intelligence community" is dismissed as conspiracy theory until the "intelligence community" confirms it publicly, at which point it makes headlines and is either totally forgotten or normalized within 24 hours.

[@Loppan45]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned how this scanning is voluntary yet. I can only speak for how the game looked about a year ago and I'm also not saying Pokemon go for sure isn't spying on you/working closely with the CIA. Though what they're admitting to isn't at all what you're saying. Sometimes pokestops give you the option to scan it for some extra rewards. I can't recall ever doing that so I can't tell you how the scanning procedure looked, but I do recall them mentioning 3d space awareness and 3d models. "a 3D map built from people scanning interesting locations in our games" has always been the goal and has always been communicated to those who gave them data. Scanning a location was never forced. THIS is what they're referring to when they say they get a million scans each week.

[@ABW941]

So here is my conspiracy theory: i think that the militaries of various nations have used MMO flight/tank etc. simulations for multiple ends, like training AIs, and personel, developing tactics, finding weaknesses,... while getting payed.

[@paxsevenfour]

Maybe the real treasure was the CIA Agent friends we made along the way.

[@mk3suprafy]

KZbin just put PokemonGo ad on your video lol

[@MakzFishin]

Not only could they build 3D AI map they could probably (most likely) lock in any person’s phone and build patterns of their most traveled places. Then if they ever needed to scoop a person up they could use AI to pop out a list of places they are most likely to be at certain time of day. Think “Eagle Eye” movie but instead of an AI hacking cameras it’s is pattern recognition to deduce where/when to find person

[@FakeHeroFang]

Nothing is sacred, this doesn't surprise me nearly as much as I feel like it should. Droves of people willingly walking around everywhere with active cameras, internet, cell signal and a GPS. They would be stupid to let such an opportunity go to waste.

[@BenjaminMaggi]

Our apps are being weaponized. It's crazy, every time I look at the Taskbar in my computer whatever os I'm using i see tons of processes and I assume most of them send telemetry data... I'm running a proxy but that's not enough when I'm out and about

[@Rickydiculus]

Social media apps on smart phones came out the same year the Arab spring started around 2009. Not a coincidence.

[@earlgrayman982]

and yet people still cannot quit their cell phones....

[@andrewbuzz7308]

Because people living in affluence don't believe in consequences.

[@Serjo777]

They're not supposed to be able to quit. Those things have been designed to be addictive for the masses, like the sugar that they put in everything.

[@MandyWyrd]

Employers make sure you are forced to use your phone. Friends ghost if you don’t use a phone. America is not a country where that is possible anymore.

[@louisstyer9733]

You're doing real journalism--thank you.

[@beskamir5977]

Wholeheartedly agree, Lunduke is the best journalist I'm aware of.

[@shockthetoast]

I'm new to his content but this isn't really great journalism, as he missed that this is done by a voluntary feature in the game that asks you to scan locations for in game bonuses. It makes it clear it's to gather data for them... It's not about the game secretly using your camera when you are unaware. (If it does that it's not what's being talked about here.) Niantic has always said they aren't a game company so much as a data company that makes games to facilitate collecting that data.

[@JohnSmith-op7ls]

Meh, they know almost all of that just from your phone’s OS, even more so if you let any maps app run in the background. Add that to social media pics and photos and they’ve already had all of this for ages. Sure, they’ll always take more data to toss into the pile but there’s not much new here aside from maybe scans of home and building interiors, which they can already determine from public blueprint info.

[@crazyfrogmix]

no, 3D data is qualitatively different to 2D. that's why Musk has such a huge advantage in AI.

[@JohnSmith-op7ls]

@ Huh? It’s Pokémon go, not portable LiDAR scans. And Tesla’s self driving software sucks.

[@gringo5282]

​@@JohnSmith-op7ls The quality of social media pictures is pretty bad when you compare it to the data Niantic is collecting. Public images are often unlabeled, stripped of geolocation data, polluted with unrelated images like memes, covered in stickers/filters, or even just straight up AI. Getting hundreds of people to take a photo of the same area from different angles is just objectively superior in every way. Also, they didn't mention anything about collecting LiDAR data AFAIK, but a lot of modern phones actually DO have LiDAR nowadays...

[@YodielandInhabitant710]

​@@JohnSmith-op7lsTaking video with gps, accelerometer, pedometer, gyroscope and barometer data enabled is almost as good at this point. You're scanning stationary things anyway.

[@Rampart.X]

I stated this YEARS ago

[@innercynic2784]

I heard warnings of this when the game first came out

[@woahdudeitsme9742]

They can scan me in the bathroom, I ain't got no shame!

[@KinnikuGameDojo]

Project Mew two is ready to go sir.

[@simsreject5925]

Just wait until Smart glasses catch on. Niantic's approach is still pretty limited since people have to be holding their cameras, and its not done in real-time. Pretty much every new car has at least one cloud accessible camera on it. The only thing holding back this technology is the pace people are adopting wearable devices.

[@user-lt2rw5nr9s]

There's a lot of defense applications you can make using this collected data. I was also thinking of predictive escape paths of a target.

[@JuanMendoza-qd5lm]

I seriously cannot understand how so few people apparently never put this together until now... Literally knew this Day1.

[@dennisolsson3119]

It soubds like what they are admitting is using the images from the pictures taken of the "gyms", not continuously taking photos. Not saying the aren't or can't, but they aren't admitting to anything except using the POI photos

[@Seandotcom]

That's my take on it too. I'm not sure how much valuable visual data comes through when you are playing normally (your phone is more pointed at the ground than anything). But the POI scanning definitely sounds like the type of data they want for this "VPS" model. Although I wouldn't put it past Niantic to do something more like the "continuous" scanning being referred to here.

[@nuggetoftruth865]

This is what you need to consider. They're developing a 3d map that can purportedly track where ANY picture is taken from with incredible accuracy. In and of itself, that might not be a big deal. You might say "So what, they get pictures of me using a gym in a mobile game?" That's not the problem. Here's the problem. Niantic has HEAVY links to the CIA. Most of its original funding was from the National Geospacial Intelligence Agency. Their current board has a person who has received multiple awards for his visual intelligence work in the CIA. Odds are pretty darn good the CIA has access to this 3d map. Okay, again, what's the problem? They don't have to only input images from Pokemon GO. They can input any phone image and find out exactly where that person is by using the 3d map. Can you see how that falls into a slippery slope? If they can get ANY video data from any means, not just from Pokemon GO, they can pinpoint exactly where you are. That's an invasion of privacy.

[@avus-kw2f213]

Pokémon go to the polls now hits different

[@thehustiX]

I had the Pokemon Go add before the video hahaha 😂 Not a fan of the CIA since I heard of Kathie O'brien and her Story (those who know...). 'The TranceFormation of America' is a must-read!

[@pawesobon7243]

That's brilliant. Whenever they need some specific accurate data in some location they can just set there spawn point for rare Pokemons.

[@ffsireallydontcare]

I wonder what Meta is going to do with all that video footage from Oculus inside out tracking and their Ray-Bans... Requires a Meta account you say? In Zuckerbot we trust

[@enhidri160]

Me when the PokéTerminator shows up at my door (I did too many raids, I’m cooked fr)

[@Scorp_2]

Now way! So, conspiracy theorists were right again? Who could expect this! 😮

[@myca9322]

> one "conspiracy" theory is right, so they all must be! silly silly spook

[@Reichstaubenminister]

@@myca9322 Did the voices in your head make that claim?

[@arramon777]

um google maps did that first.....literally drove around mapping the entire freaggn planet.

[@xpavpushka]

time to play it with goatse pic streamed to both cameras and spoofed gps

[@kc_jones_gaming]

What if I told you this probably isn’t limited to Pokemon? It’s just the biggest one being brought to light.

[@MFEeee]

So how is this different from Google driving around scanning streets

[@markplute7804]

Google is limited to the streets

[@effervescentrelief]

The day the program came out, it was revealed the company was kickstarted by the CIA (they do this alot), and I felt from the beginning they were using the app to gather up to date photo data of random and little seen places for some kind of clandestine spying tool. KNEW IT!

[@marshallodom1388]

I've seen 3d maps like Google Street view built up from single photos uploaded by users to their website, all voluntarily and obviously very feasible.

[@HopUpOutDaBed]

this is why they wanted us to pokemon go to the polls...

[@yokothespacewhale]

Implications: Apparently google cars and contractors aren’t good enough They need a back door in your phone to not just do this anyway

[@Milosz_Ostrow]

If the CIA wanted to get photos from my cell phone, they would all be solid black corner-to-corner with no GPS location information.

[@beartankoperator7950]

It’s hard to get photos of Larry’s back yard but guess what some 10 year old kid is just dumb enough to climb that fence and scan Larry’s back yard for you how nice and Larry probably won’t approach them with lethal force

[@MandyWyrd]

This has been obvious for all VR games when they first came out. If you have even an amateur background in coding, you’ll wonder why the average person is so naive and stupid. My stance on this is neutral, because those maps can be used for search and rescue to free victims of trafficking. We don’t have the money or resources to leave all this data mining for law enforcement agencies. It use to bother me that our phones track everything we do and apps data mine for AI. These AI have existed since the early 2000’s (Ie: Smarter Child and Ask Jeeves), but any whistleblower that speaks up about it gets called a conspiracy theorist. If you want any regulatory policies, it will take canceling people that love to toss that label around at anything they don’t understand.

[@justincrow6820]

I can't believe they batmanned everyone's phone...lol

[@smdias65]

Until Lucius destroyed it.

[@andrewferguson6901]

No?

[@shockthetoast]

Not really, this data comes from a feature in the game where you get bonuses for voluntarily and actively scanning landmarks. It's not constantly collecting data the way this makes it seem.

[@k98killer]

Professional geoguessers are cooked. Once again, the AI took er jerbs.

[@ET_AYY_LMAO]

Im not saying its real, all i am saying is that there was a suspicous amount of kids hunting pokemons while pointing their phones directly at the windows of the leader of the danish chapter of hitz but tahrir (islamic organisation) at the time I lived in the same neighbourhood as him...

[@SterileNeutrino]

Serves him right for hosting a Charizard on premise

[@Operator588]

@@SterileNeutrino niantek putting the best pokemon in plaes where terrorists are to get intel:

[@profpuffofficial2]

me putting my finger over the camera for every AR

[@tf5pZ9H5vcAdBp]

The cell phone map was in the Batman movie.

[@TrevorLentz]

Bryan's boomer voice in this is prime. 😁 I remember being suspicious of Pokemon Go from the very beginning, not for it's permissions within android, but because it had nothing to do with the gameplay of the original franchise. It's a facade, much like other things we experience in our everyday lives.

[@Angus.MacGyver]

Uninstalling Pokemon Go right now.

[@MyAmazingUsername]

PokeMMO is better :)

[@Samulisami]

Lmao

[@SuperM00b]

Too late CIA have seen your diglett

[@xvdifug]

Too late.

[@thetower8553]

they know you're going to uninstall it right now just like they know that you don't know that they know.

[@colt.4598]

I remember seeing something similar to this in the Dark Knight movie when Batman was trying to locate Heath Ledgers Joker. They used sound instead of pictures to locate him. Also at the end of your video I got a Pokemon Go ad.

[@sarahsturgill9262]

Use Brave Browser, turn on Brave Shields, youtube gets no ad revenue.

[@isekaiexpress9450]

Well, that explains the mass amounts of shiny Pokemon on Russian military bases.

[@kylewhite2985]

Pokemon Go to the polls! lmao

[@sohlasattelite]

witch must have been cackling for referencing it on the TV and nobody being wiser

[@XartiXV]

If Hillary joined us in PoGo, she probably didn't know that the CIA was spying on her and us.

[@simex909]

Vindicated once again. I wish I could say it felt good. opportunity + motivation + time = thing will happen

[@V530-15ICR]

Luckily I never were able to sign up for a Pokemon Go account then.

[@Foche_T._Schitt]

Not the least bit surprised. Not only do I not install games on my phone. I keep my camera's covered.

[@AC-qe1io]

So bold. So brash. 🤷🏼‍♂️ The meek shall inherit the earth, Mr. Lunduke. 🙂 Thanks for the excellent reporting, Sir!

[@HutchinsonJC]

@9:10 you're saying that this is the part where they admit to spying on everyone, except it's not really spying on everyone if *you* willfully and knowingly send them a picture. They built functionality into the game, and rewarded players for doing it. I intentionally stayed out of this part of the game because I wasn't going to knowingly send them data about any surroundings that might include people in a background or cars and their license plates. The players were hit with a something of an IQ test and the players themselves supplied the data.

[@shockthetoast]

I tried the feature years ago but I never got it to work right. But I'm pretty sure they tell you not to have people in the pictures. I remember the app being pretty picky about what data it accepted. (I'm sure it wasn't just over friendly privacy concerns, people in the picture just interfere with the data they're trying to get lol.)

[@EricchiYukia]

10:35 It's really not like that at all. Pokémon GO has AR scan quests where you have to voluntarily scan and upload a video of your surroundings in particular places and you get an in-game reward for that. The game does not activate the camera by its own while you are walking.

[@derkevevin]

3:33 So this information was public, but everyone thought the cia are just huge pokemon fans? 🤡

[@nangld]

A few years ago Russia arrested a few people catching pokemons near the Putin's bunker

[@asumazilla]

That's a good place to spawn rare types.

[@Ratnoseterry]

​@@asumazilla🤣

[@chieftron]

This reminds me of those 23andMe and Ancestory type websites that are harvesting DNA from people.

[@blu3h4t]

the very first time i heard something about pokemon go i said its fvkn coverup for google maps inside the buildings :D