I'm not going to go look for my dusty copy of The Anarchist Cookbook (is this the copy I bought back in high school? I doubt it...) for the exact quote, but even back in the late '60s when it was written, the advice "never say on the phone anything you wouldn't say with a cop in the room" was practically an aphorism amongst the book's target audience.
Nowadays I am typing this on a computer that has a camera and a microphone right over the screen. I haven't turned them on, but that doesn't mean nobody has. Like most people, I carry a remotely-activatable GPS locator with microphone around with me most of the time, and like most people's, mine even has a camera or two on it.
The telescreen isn't behind the mirror anymore; it's in your pocket.
A word to the wise is sufficient.
It's a Brave New World. Or it would be if Big Brother would drop the War on (Some) Drugs and let me have my soma.
ReplyDeleteI find that a small cigarillo tin, just large enough to contain my phone works as a handy, portable faraday cage.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I was thinking about this just the other day. One of my favorite bloggers posted a picture taken out her front door and I wondered how long it would take someone with too much time on his hands and Google Streets View to find that house.
ReplyDeleteUK Houston,
ReplyDeleteOther people have done just that, and years back. A determined stalker could think of another half-dozen ways.
Privacy these days is more of an illusion than most people think it is.
As for stalkers...
"Hey, baby, what're you doin' tonight?"
"Shootin' people who won't get off my lawn."
;)
Best comeback line eva'
DeleteAnon 6:19,
ReplyDelete"I find that a small cigarillo tin, just large enough to contain my phone works as a handy, portable faraday cage."
Also, most phones have only the one battery.
"Also, most phones have only the one battery."
ReplyDeleteAlas, they are non-removable on most of the current smart phone crop.
Now I know what to say and whom to say it to when I decide to shuffle off this mortal coil!
ReplyDeleteSo my friends and I sprinkling words from the FBI's "list of watch-words" to screw with the tappers is a bad idea?
ReplyDeleteI have half-seriously thought that if you do that enough they will put you on the "ignore" list and then you can conspire at will. ; )
DeleteTAMARA
ReplyDeleteIF YOU ASK ROBERTA NICELY IM SURE SHE
WILL TEACH YOU MORSE ITS A VERY HANDY
SKILL SINCE MOST "OFFICIAL" TYPES ABANDONED THE CODE NEARLY A GENERATION AGO YOU WILL HAVE A DEGREE
OF OPSEC FOR YOUR COMMUNICATIONS UNAVAILABLE TO MOST YOU CAN ALSO USE ONE TIME PADS WITH MORSE FOR YOUR CIPHERING PLEASURE
Navigator, that's good advice on using the Morse code. I suggest that Tam also conceal her whereabouts by dumping her GPS and only telling her friends how to find her by using LORAN, celestial navigation and a compass.
ReplyDeleteMy cheep cell phone fits nicely in a Prince Albert tobacco can, along with a knife blade and a fishhook and line.
ReplyDeleteDon't depend on Morse for sooper seecret messages. Too many people have the seecret decoder rings; AKA code readers.
However, "railroad morse" is much less well known, and throwing in characters from other CW alphabets confuses the readers.
Stranger
I was reading a nifty article about all the stuff the US forces pulled on Iraqi cell phones during the late unpleasantnesss.
ReplyDeleteTurning them on while they remained "dark" getting them to "ping" on schedule, etc.. etc...
Effectively, they would send an update to a phone, that would be automatically accepted and would basically give the US forces root access to the OS without actually telling the user anything.
Effectively the phones were spying on the owners and relaying positional data, sound, video, potentially temp, speed, anything the phone could be made to cough up.
The article ended with the statements, between the lines, that oh yah, most of this stuff had come along from US police forces...
IF they were writing the bill of rights today, the 1st amendment would be something about privacy I think.
AGREE WITH AJ RE NOT USING A CELL PHONE(TAKE THE BATTERIES OUT OF THE UNIT EVEN WHEN IT IS OFF IT CONTACTS THE NEAREST CELL TOWER EVERY FEW SECONDS) I SUGGESTED THE USE OF ONE TIME PADS FOR YOUR CIPHERS
ReplyDeleteOF RANDOM 5 LETTER GROUPS
USE BLINKER WITH FILTER FOR LINE OF SIGHT COMS VS VHF
LORAN - ALPHA HAS GONE INTO HISTORY
LORAN CHARLIE IS ON ITS WAY OUT
CELESTIAL IS A PIECE OF CAKE ALWAYS USE IT
IRON COMPASS IS WHAT YOU RELY ON
JUST CHECK AZIMUTH EACH WATCH
LOG MALFUNCTION ON RADAR TRANSPONDER AND TRY TO LOOK INCONSPICUOUS
TRENCH COAT WITH TURNED UP COLLAR DARK GLASSES PONY TAIL
UNDER YOUR HAT TAMARA
There's a reason I insist on a phone with a removable battery.
ReplyDeleteOkay, there's more than one reason, but the ability to prevent anyone from turning it on remotely if I find the need to is one of them, even if it's fairly far down the list.
But, really, there's an even simpler solution - if you're doing anything you don't want "them" to find out about, just leave your phone somewhere else!
I have a dumb phone and I don't carry it everywhere... TS
ReplyDeleteTigerStripe,
ReplyDelete"I have a dumb phone..."
If your dumb phone is less than eight years old, it probably has GPS capability. If it was bought since 11/12, it definitely does.
Either way, it can be triangulated. Also, it can be turned on remotely. Please enunciate clearly into the telescreen. ;)
My phone is an analog oldie w/o camera.
ReplyDeleteDoes that count for anything?
@KM: if it works in the US, it's practically guaranteed not to be analog cell phone. The analog system is gone, and has been for years.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this is all worrying about symptoms. The saying ought to be "the honest man has nothing to fear," not "the honest man has nothing to hide." Alas, many in law enforcement don't give any weight to the possibility that someone may be honest at all.
I was thinking about this the other day when reading what someone had posted on facebook (crime watch site regarding 'non-residents' strolling around their neighbourhood). There are some things you just should not say out over a phone and definitely not post on your facebook page / blog.
ReplyDeleteAnd let's not forget we live in a world where not even the head of the CIA can keep his email private. And storage keeps getting cheaper and smaller.
ReplyDeleteThe line "Is it still paranoia when they really are out to get you?" used to be funny. :-/
ReplyDeleteWV: "716 sssrvis" -- What snakes in Buffalo, NY get at restaurants.
Privacy: it's what's for dinner. Lookit, if you would not say it though a bullhorn on the porch, don't say it on the telephone.
ReplyDeleteMorse Code: she refuses. I've tried. Heck, I have enough buzzer sets for a whole house intercom (though I'd need one for the front door: "PSE GIVE SINE OR CALLS").
("Sine" being what a landline op uses instead of a callsign or "handle.")
I figure by just visiting Western Rifle Shooters Assn., you set off a whole series of bells and whistles in somebody's van.
ReplyDeleteJust a couple of weeks ago, I was going over practical field cryptography with my daughter.
ReplyDelete"Honey, mnemonic cypher schemes like 'The quick brown fox' and 'BLACKHORSE' variants won't last ten seconds if a real cryppie want's to crack 'em. On the other hand- they're easy to recall, don't require you to carry a physical key, and will fool your peers and almost all non-crypto-geeks. Perfectly safe for stuff that only has to be secure for a short period before someone calls in a pro.
"Here's how you use a book code -- but for Heaven's sake, don't ever use the King James Bible -- it's like the default test setting for any cryppie software -- they'll read your cleartext in real time!"
>I find that a small cigarillo tin, just large enough to contain my phone works as a handy, portable faraday cage.
ReplyDeleteAll that and a bag of chips! Next time try a mylar potato chip bag. Same effect, and it's for sale in numerous vending machines around the country.
The thing is, most phone will "freak" out when you cut them off from the support network. In a desperate attempt to reattach to the Borg collective, they will use up a considerable amount of battery power sending out radio messages.
Turn it off first. Or take the battery out if you don't have a potato chip bag.
-SM
As I said to my wife this weekend, "What do you think any half intelligent dictator of the last century would have paid for the tracking capability we purchase for ourselves.".
ReplyDelete>My phone is an analog oldie w/o camera.
ReplyDeleteThe old analog frequencies have been turned off years ago I believe. You might have a dual band digital/analog.
Anyway, the hacked the stuffing out of OnStar years ago when it was analog. They even hacked it as a wireless bug when the owner didn't actually have OnStar service paid for.
-SM
Just thought of something somewhat counterintuitive: rooting/jailbreaking your phone may make it more secure against governmental interference. Most of the really interesting ways to use a phone to do more than act as a personal location device require that you replace the operating system with one that lies to the user as to what it's doing. For (perhaps obvious) reasons, if you do root/ajilbreak your phone, you ought to go through the effort necessary to break the Over-The-Air push update capability; and you can also install watchdog software to look for such changes. OTOH, you know how you root a phone, right? Except for certain developer models, you have to exploit a security hole in the phone's software...
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, to replace a phone's onboard OS is a chancy thing; requiring either physical access or complicity of the phone company, or a truly staggering amount of resources (and even then I'm not sure it's practical); and risking detection if the target looks at his phone at the wrong time. Much easier to use the phone company's mandated legal cooperation equipment to listen in on you and trace your location.
Either way, it can be triangulated. Also, it can be turned on remotely. Please enunciate clearly into the telescreen. ;)
ReplyDeleteIf it's really-powered-off?
I don't think so. Source, please.
The radio has to be ON for it to be "turned on" remotely, because otherwise it can't get a signal to respond to. (Obviously.)
(Also, what Ian said - it's a million times easier to get the telco to tap the call than to push an update to a modern Smartphone and get it to auto-update silently.)
That's where "lying to the user" comes in. Is your phone truly off? How do you know if you don't pull the battery or wave a detector at it? But, for even most criminals, having the OS hacked at the level required to pull that off is TV-police-procedural nonsense. And even trivial observation of battery use patterns will give away the fact that the radio is not truly off, and, in fact, is transcieving at times. Allegedly the FBI has exploited mob bosses' phones as bugs/locators; but I was seeing credible stories involving that when OTA updates were a figment of an engineer's imagination - they had to have had physical access at the time, and if you have physical access, the device is your oyster and you're the starfish. Plus, mob boss prosecutions get resources unlikely to be deployed for any lesser use.
ReplyDeleteTam, I know my dumb phone can be triangulated and the mic can be activated without my knowledge. Hence not carrying it everywhere. I like it being dumb because it has a lot less personal info on it.
ReplyDeleteTS
This thread (and Navigator in particular, bless him) is giving me Cryptonomicon flashbacks. And yes, that's a very good/awesome thing.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, anyone else notice that the Blogger captchas now include images of house numbers (presumably from Google Street View)?
How about a metal sunglass case? Or is the clamshell aspect of that type of thing a security hole?
ReplyDeleteAfter my OS tried to be helpful by taking a snapshot of my face and offering it to me as a choice for a login button ( WITHOUT BOTHERING TO ASK ME FOR PERMISSION ), I put a bit of tape over that damned laptop pinhole video camera.
ReplyDelete