On Pokémon GO spying for the CIA, or: why context matters
Okay, so recently I watched a video by Bryan Lunduke about how Niantic "admitted to spying on you whenever you play the game". It is the most ridiculously out-of-context reporting I have seen in a while, and it's very obvious Lunduke doesn't play Pokémon GO or understand how the application functions. As someone who has been a fan of the game since 2016, I feel the need to explain why Pokémon GO "spying" for the CIA is not as scary or insane as you think it is.
He starts the video off by saying that Pokémon GO uses the camera to build a CIA-backed 3D map A.I. Now that's a lot to take in, but we'll get back to that in a bit.
He implies that Pokémon GO always uses both the front and back camera to take pictures to spy on people. Not only is this claim unsubstantiated, but it is also pretty easy to disprove. Nowadays, iPhones come with the feature that shows you when the camera and microphone are being used, and by who. This has been the case for a while now, so even if they spied, they haven't been doing so for a long time, otherwise people would've noticed their camera was being used when they were just walking around, and this would've been a viral news story years ago, just like with TikTok (I don't know for certain if TikTok did or did not spy on people using the selfie camera, but there was a lot of debate and speculation online). Especially if you consider Pokémon GO is an app for children and parents tend to freak out over any app that might not be inappropriate for their little ones. I'm old enough to remember the Talking Angela debacle. But even if you are worried about Pokémon GO spying on you, here's a quick and easy way to get them not to: just don't give them camera access. Yes, the app fuctions as intended without camera access. If you do not use the AR-mode to catch Pokémon and do not use the camera to take pictures of Pokémon, there is no reason or benefit to you allowing camera access.
Then there is the connection to the CIA. Scary! Or... is it? The company that created Pokémon GO, Niantic, enjoyed a huge investment from the CIA's venture capital firm. Now, that would raise some alarms, and I thought it was pretty suspicious at first too, but the news of the 3D map actually made me LESS scared about this collaboration, because it explains why they work together and what they're getting out of this.
I suspected that Pokémon GO used the in-game scanning feature to build the database for the map. Niantic later edited the news post to confirm this. I will explain exactly what this feature is. In 2020, Niantic introduced a feature to the game where you could "scan" Pokéstops and gyms. For those who have never played the game, these are places in the real world interesting enough to become points of interest within the game. A Pokéstop provides items, while a Pokémon gym provides items AND gives you the opportunity to strengthen the gym if it belongs to your team, or to battle it to take it over for your team. Being in control of a gym also provides in-game rewards. But basically, someone could see a statue in a park, think "it would be cool for people to visit this; I'll apply for it to become a Pokéstop", and then when Niantic accepts it, it becomes a Pokéstop. Scanning is a feature where you take a 360 degrees video of the real-life object that the Pokéstop or gym represents. Niantic was really vague about why they wanted these recordings, but the in-game rewards were clear. Often scanning showed up as an extra quest, which upon completion would give you a reward, as well as leveling up the Pokéstop or gym, causing it to give people that visited it more items. It seemed like a pretty weird feature, because we've never really seen what this added to the game, but the recent news post by Niantic seems to imply that game improvement wasn't the reason for it. This 3D map A.I. is what it was mainly used for.
And that makes sense. We don't know if the CIA requested for it to be built exactly, but the truth is that information like this is what they're after. Better maps that are easier to interact with are massively helpful in solving mysteries. They use pictures from all angles of an object to teach the A.I. about context, so that it can imagine what places would look like from sides that aren't shown in footage. Mr. Lunduke claims that Pokémon GO spies on you in your house if you use it there, but this doesn't have any facts backing it up and, again, seems highly unlikely as people would catch on. He further goes on to say that Pokémon GO tracks your location and what route you took there and how long that took you. You might ask "but isn't that the main point of the game?", and the answer is yes. That is how the game works. Is the CIA using this information to get a better understanding of people and neighborhoods? Probably. I don't see why they WOULDN'T. As for the CIA spying on you with your camera and microphone through Pokémon GO, the FBI and CIA have many more subtle ways of spying that they're probably more likely to use to avoid detection. And a lot of the time visual and audio footage is only part of what they're after. But I don't believe that the CIA uses Pokémon GO data to track criminals en-masse. After all, why would a criminal bring a tracker into the middle of the place where he works? If a criminal has Pokémon GO, the more interesting information would probably be where they WOULDN'T use the application. And how do they know that location if you're not on Pokémon GO? Because your smartphone can be tracked anyway. Airplane mode reduces the ability to track you, but if you have your phone on and useable for calling and texting, it's trackable. Especially by big government agencies like the FBI and the CIA. They don't need your location from the Pokémon GO GPS signal. They can determine it with high accuracy based on the cell towers your phone connects to.
The truth is probably that the CIA looked at the idea of a game that people could carry around that would make them interact with the real world and figured that that could enable them to gather huge amounts of data on the general public and footage of the world. (Google Maps, anyone?)
If you don't want Niantic to use your camera and microphone, don't give them access. If you don't want Niantic to know your location, don't download their games that require you to accept that. If you don't want the CIA to know your location... well, maybe consider living under a rock without a phone. :P
He starts the video off by saying that Pokémon GO uses the camera to build a CIA-backed 3D map A.I. Now that's a lot to take in, but we'll get back to that in a bit.
He implies that Pokémon GO always uses both the front and back camera to take pictures to spy on people. Not only is this claim unsubstantiated, but it is also pretty easy to disprove. Nowadays, iPhones come with the feature that shows you when the camera and microphone are being used, and by who. This has been the case for a while now, so even if they spied, they haven't been doing so for a long time, otherwise people would've noticed their camera was being used when they were just walking around, and this would've been a viral news story years ago, just like with TikTok (I don't know for certain if TikTok did or did not spy on people using the selfie camera, but there was a lot of debate and speculation online). Especially if you consider Pokémon GO is an app for children and parents tend to freak out over any app that might not be inappropriate for their little ones. I'm old enough to remember the Talking Angela debacle. But even if you are worried about Pokémon GO spying on you, here's a quick and easy way to get them not to: just don't give them camera access. Yes, the app fuctions as intended without camera access. If you do not use the AR-mode to catch Pokémon and do not use the camera to take pictures of Pokémon, there is no reason or benefit to you allowing camera access.
Then there is the connection to the CIA. Scary! Or... is it? The company that created Pokémon GO, Niantic, enjoyed a huge investment from the CIA's venture capital firm. Now, that would raise some alarms, and I thought it was pretty suspicious at first too, but the news of the 3D map actually made me LESS scared about this collaboration, because it explains why they work together and what they're getting out of this.
I suspected that Pokémon GO used the in-game scanning feature to build the database for the map. Niantic later edited the news post to confirm this. I will explain exactly what this feature is. In 2020, Niantic introduced a feature to the game where you could "scan" Pokéstops and gyms. For those who have never played the game, these are places in the real world interesting enough to become points of interest within the game. A Pokéstop provides items, while a Pokémon gym provides items AND gives you the opportunity to strengthen the gym if it belongs to your team, or to battle it to take it over for your team. Being in control of a gym also provides in-game rewards. But basically, someone could see a statue in a park, think "it would be cool for people to visit this; I'll apply for it to become a Pokéstop", and then when Niantic accepts it, it becomes a Pokéstop. Scanning is a feature where you take a 360 degrees video of the real-life object that the Pokéstop or gym represents. Niantic was really vague about why they wanted these recordings, but the in-game rewards were clear. Often scanning showed up as an extra quest, which upon completion would give you a reward, as well as leveling up the Pokéstop or gym, causing it to give people that visited it more items. It seemed like a pretty weird feature, because we've never really seen what this added to the game, but the recent news post by Niantic seems to imply that game improvement wasn't the reason for it. This 3D map A.I. is what it was mainly used for.
And that makes sense. We don't know if the CIA requested for it to be built exactly, but the truth is that information like this is what they're after. Better maps that are easier to interact with are massively helpful in solving mysteries. They use pictures from all angles of an object to teach the A.I. about context, so that it can imagine what places would look like from sides that aren't shown in footage. Mr. Lunduke claims that Pokémon GO spies on you in your house if you use it there, but this doesn't have any facts backing it up and, again, seems highly unlikely as people would catch on. He further goes on to say that Pokémon GO tracks your location and what route you took there and how long that took you. You might ask "but isn't that the main point of the game?", and the answer is yes. That is how the game works. Is the CIA using this information to get a better understanding of people and neighborhoods? Probably. I don't see why they WOULDN'T. As for the CIA spying on you with your camera and microphone through Pokémon GO, the FBI and CIA have many more subtle ways of spying that they're probably more likely to use to avoid detection. And a lot of the time visual and audio footage is only part of what they're after. But I don't believe that the CIA uses Pokémon GO data to track criminals en-masse. After all, why would a criminal bring a tracker into the middle of the place where he works? If a criminal has Pokémon GO, the more interesting information would probably be where they WOULDN'T use the application. And how do they know that location if you're not on Pokémon GO? Because your smartphone can be tracked anyway. Airplane mode reduces the ability to track you, but if you have your phone on and useable for calling and texting, it's trackable. Especially by big government agencies like the FBI and the CIA. They don't need your location from the Pokémon GO GPS signal. They can determine it with high accuracy based on the cell towers your phone connects to.
The truth is probably that the CIA looked at the idea of a game that people could carry around that would make them interact with the real world and figured that that could enable them to gather huge amounts of data on the general public and footage of the world. (Google Maps, anyone?)
If you don't want Niantic to use your camera and microphone, don't give them access. If you don't want Niantic to know your location, don't download their games that require you to accept that. If you don't want the CIA to know your location... well, maybe consider living under a rock without a phone. :P
