“The carrier-side API for assisted GPS is exposed to anyone with carrier access. Your phone reports its precise location on demand, regardless of app permissions.”
The clean privacy model the average person assumes ends at the cellular modem. The carrier sees the phone’s GPS fix because the protocol was designed to let them. App permissions, location toggle, airplane mode, none of it interferes with the carrier-side query. The legal access to that pipe has been quietly expanding for fifteen years and the public conversation about location privacy has not caught up.