If you use an online service to upload which towers you see, and get an approximate location as a response, then yes, it could be just ad bad from a privacy perspective. What these open databases allow is the possibility to download the whole tower database to your device, and then do the lookups locally.

The system in the USA is built this way. There are countries in the world where police officers act professionally and can be trusted.

We don’t want a lawless, free for all place without any law enforcement, we deserve a proper force, trained to behave in a professional manner, and monitored to do so.

You could describe the deep reform needed as “abolish and then build from the ground”, but that’s a matter of how to reach the goal, rather than a change in the goal itself’.

I’m running exactly that, with zero issues. I also have a secondary profile with Google Services Framework on it for the 2 apps I use that absolutely require it. It works great. Seriously, I’m never going back to a stock Android phone after this.