This also detects when the GPS is used. If the phone has GPS and cell radio (for reception and transmission) disabled, it's a lot harder for any malware to figure out its location (not impossible -- there is some research about identifying locations in a metro network using an accelerometer alone).
While it's easy to prevent the phone from recording your conversation (just place it somewhere out of earshot, maybe next to a noise source for the duration of the conversation alone), it's much harder to prevent it from learning where you're going (if you're taking it with you).
Possibly the idea is to prevent malware already on the phone from logging location data while the radios are dark, and then uploading the historical location data when the phone reconnects?
That said, it's obviously a very limited form of protection. I guess it speaks to the sad state of mobile security that this is the best Snowden and Bunnie can come up with - the only sane choice for a potential target is to assume the mobile device is untrusted and try to reduce the scope for it to snitch on the user.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if baseband processors eventually start logging and asynchronously sending gps data to the cell carriers behind the operating system’s back, so you should also keep it in a mylar sack.
Similarly the accelerometer can gather all sorts of information (passwords, text typed on the keyboard, are you driving, flying, walking, etc), so you’ll probably eventually need to keep the phone in a drawer to avoid leaking that information. Similarly for the microphone (some surveillance libraries already snoop sounds in various primitive ways).
To recap: keep it off the network in a stationary, electromagnetically shielded, sound proof box. That’s simple enough, and from there you can use it as normal.
That depends on who controls the software running on the car or phone. Determining your position via GPS does not emit any signals that can be detected; it's a purely passive process. If malicious software installed on the phone records the GPS data and later transmits it, then yes.
However, cellphones in particular do require the cellphone network to track at least which cell they're in in order to work, so in practice controlling a cellphone network gives you a pretty good idea of where all the subscribers are.
This is a big problem, and we need to figure out how to stop it if we are to enjoy the sort of freedom from government surveillance that people everywhere enjoyed since the Paleolithic until about 01998. The 20th-century results of giving too much power to governments are not promising.
That way Cellular Operators / Government can't see what you're doing (assuming VPN, no leaking, etc.) but they still can track where you are, very precisely, every second your phone is not in airplane mode or off. And with location, they know a LOT about you, potentially can infer identity at some point.
We are talking the cell providers here, disabling GPS only slows down the initial positioning as LTE has a number of alternative ways to determine your location. That is required in places like the US were its mandated by law (E911 IIRC) that the providers are capable of providing your location to government services in real time (like 911).
So, the fact that the providers are keeping tabs on you and storing all that metadata for some government agency (cause you might be dangerous!), just means that they have discovered a way to recoup some of the investment costs. Thank your government, because the phone companies likely wouldn't have been this creative by themselves.
If you carry a cell phone while on, remote tracking is possible too. It's even easier since usually the wireless signal is better than the multiple satellite signals that need to reach the gps under (or wherever they put it) the car and might even be more precise in city environments due to the closer spacing of cell towers.
I find it odd that people are so concerned about this while they carry a tracking device with their person all or most of the time...
EDIT: not only that, can be instructed as a real time listening device, if you are that paranoid :)
If the phone is powered on it allows for (potential) pervasive location tracking. Your communications can be listened to whether mobile or a home computer, but all that using your home computer reveals (by using it, not the contents) is that you're home. Using your mobile reveals that you're at Starbucks or on I-40 stuck in traffic, or that you're frequently connected to the same tower as some other persons of interest. And that's what can be known before observing the actual contents of the communication.
Yeah but everyone needs to use a cellphone in this day an age so if you don't want to be tracked like a sheep then a dumb phone with the microphone and camera removed will do the trick. They(3 letter agencies) can only track you to an approximate location and probably are unable to run it in fake off mode if you want to turn it off.
It's actually pretty liberating to have a purpose driven cellphone to only communicate with.
If you keep the phone turned off when you're not making calls and call from random locations in some big city, the GPS location data won't be very useful. For example, "this phone was used to make calls from a few scattered parks in Washington DC" doesn't really help to track down who leaked some item of classified information. Using the phone from your house or workplace even once could be a dead giveaway, so if you're security-conscious enough to want to have an untraceable phone, you would have to use it in the way I described.
I refuse to have a cell phone because they are tracking and
surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to
record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be
remotely converted into listening devices.
I find this hard to believe. Wouldn't the extra battery usage make it obvious, especially on Android devices that can track this as well as network usage at a very low level? Or is there some kind of hardware-level surveillance mechanism built in to cellphones?
I assume this is combined with some kind of mandatory GPS tracking. The GPS tracking knows the phones location and the call confirms the user is next to their phone.
One of the things I was curious about is whether the phone can be enabled remotely by the telco. I found conflicting information on the web. I suspect it can, but this is not something the carriers want to talk about. Just a suspicion, though. I imagine what happens 99% of the time is that the user doesn't want anything to do with tech like gps tracking, but then they find an app that does something cool, and it things like gps to be turned on in order for it to work. So in a way, just like Facebook is destroying privacy by "helping" folks share, many apps are destroying the anonymity of location and travel by "helping" folks with cool apps. That kinda sucks. Wish the situation were different.
Note that location services comprises many different technologies, not all of which can be turned off. Many of them are required for the phone to operate. The upcoming FCC regs, for instance, require 100m self-locating ability to always be on. I guess for things like 911 service?
Speaking of paranoia, there's also rumors that the FBI/black helicopter/MIB bunch can actually power-up your phone remotely, especially with some models. This sounds completely out-of-left-field to me, but who knows? Court docs show they can use your phone as a listening device even when you're not calling somebody, so I wouldn't put other things along these lines past them. There's probably a good reason Osama Bin Laden refused to have anybody associated with him possess a cell phone, whether it was used, had a battery in it, or not. Seems like I read something somewhere once about illuminating electronics gear with microwaves, then reading the signature of the radiation emitted. But it could have been in a pulp sci-fi novel. As I said, it's difficult to tell where reality ends and paranoia begins with this because reality is quickly catching up to the paranoia of just a few years ago. Who would have imagined sub-meter resolution on where you are? That's almost accurate enough to tell if you're wearing the phone in your jacket pocket or on your belt. Crazy stuff.
This would solve eavesdropping, but not the problem of you friendly neighborhood stalker knowing the rough location of your cellphone at any given point in time.
This trivially becomes a back door for malware that can initiate phone calls, by circumventing ordinary OS security and control.
Maybe there's a reason to intercept location data (e.g. cheating spouse), via a completed call that transmits a silent audio channel. So the software lands on the device, initiates a 911 call just to obtain the location of the device and send it to a botnet, and immediately hangs up.
Mission Accomplished: spouse is confirmed to be cheating. At the expense of an extra ring to 911.
This example is facetious. There are other reasons to snoop on a single individual's location data.
Now the calls are being triggered by remote software control, with your phone being hijacked as a proxy device, and who is left to blame?
Not that I think I can trust the phone actually disabled the GPS, but there is no reason my movements need to be tracked and recorded in detail. Make them go through the effort and pull up all the cellphone towers I ping.
Day to day, there is a very good chance I am still in my home city as first configured.
No, having a dumb phone is not enough. A malicious actor can pretend they need to deliver an SMS to you, which may result in a network disclosing your location (anywhere in the world). Mobile networks probably don't honour aggressive probing for just about any peer but it's not like nobody can do this at scale. None of this is new.
Until/unless they modify the law - turning off your phone thwarts it. While your phone is powered off, it has no ability to track & record your location movements. Obviously your active location will then be picked back up after you power it on, it won't have a record of anything inbetween.
A simple example of limiting the invasiveness using this approach, would be to have your phone on only at work & home, or similar. In absence of phone snooping, someone can already easily locate you at those two standard destinations, and can easily discover when you'd typically be at those places (ie you're not giving them much by using your phone there under normal circumstances).
While it's easy to prevent the phone from recording your conversation (just place it somewhere out of earshot, maybe next to a noise source for the duration of the conversation alone), it's much harder to prevent it from learning where you're going (if you're taking it with you).
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