How many of these "private" phones turned out to be a sting operation
by the likes of the FBI? Can I look at the code and schematic? No?
Take it away. Come back when you have a product based entirely on
auditable open source hardware and software, whose operation satisfies
the Kerckhoff-Shannon principle that the only secret is my private
key.
So currently, it's a couple days after police and intelligence agencies worldwide raided the owners of ANOM-using phones that were allegedly private and built to exclude common hardware/software that's used for tracking. I'm not saying the governments of the world were wrong to bring those people down. But do you really expect anyone to buy a phone - with any combination of hardware and software - and retain any expectation of privacy whatsoever? Am I paranoid to think that this sounds like a continuation of the ANOM project... selling a supposedly secure, home brew and private device to the gullible who desperately want a secure channel?
Here's a secure channel: Dump your phone. There's no personal security with a device like that if you live in a state that might use your affiliations against you.
Nothing dishonest here. A criminal enterprise purposely creating a phone with hidden OS to cater to the criminal market. No privacy conscious person buys a black box $1200 phone that costs $700 every six months. This doesn't mean all encryption is for criminals, rather the story is about for product being for criminals.
Alternatively, a corrupt government might want folks to distrust their mass market phone such that they can have an individual come along and offer them a 'completely secure and private' alternative[1].
Stingray is actually built by the Harris Corporation, so it seems entirely logical that a public corporation would consider the technical manner it's designed to glean intelligence from a standard cell phone a trade secret.
They are, after all, selling that very product to the US Government.
Exactly my thought. Surely, if you're a criminal and you're actually successful, then you want to use open source privacy. Heck, if only to hide your usage with everyone else's right? It's not unusual to have Signal on your phone. It's pretty weird to have Anom or whatever else exists
The whole idea that anything on your phone is private is laughable. Private to who? To hackers? To the FSB? The NSA? Phones are all easily hackable for one. Real privacy cannot be achieved on the spy device in your pocket.
What this does is provide a casual level of privacy. It gets us parity with the phone number hiding in tools like telegram.
That kind of absolute demand is just as useless. One might just as well ask "Where is the code and the audit?" And until we have that we are left with a strong motive on the part of snoops to force Intel and every other technology provider to create back doors.
Moreover there is evidence that at least some makers of mobile baseband systems included the ability to parse and execute special commands to turn phones into room bugs. This was revealed in a federal case against mafia activity. So it's not unprecedented for very large technology companies to comply with requests of that nature and keep them confidential.
You think so? It seems disingenuous for you to suggest that when all the evidence points to this phone having nothing useful on it, that this is just a thing the FBI wants to have done for precedent. The FBI has been crowing for backdoors into all our private communications long before this phone became interesting.
I admire this effort. However what we need is a fully free phone (Hardware schematics, source code). I am really disturbed about all that network connection, GPS yet so little transparency.
Have you ever seen a movie, where the rogue agent does not take out and destroy the phone, like it is a devil work :P
Any knowledge on hardware schematics, source code, license issues?
In reality they lift your prints from the phone, fool the lock sensor, then clone it to a new, bugged phone, and monitor all your communications.
But frankly, such scenarios are not privacy concerns unless you're actually trying to carry out crimes because at that point you've got a half-dozen or more government agents assigned to personally follow you.
Essentially we have no idea what goes on inside that phone and inside the operators. It's all closed source hardware and software/firmware, and the companiea are pretty much unaccountable to us and could put all kinds of secrets in there. This is why Stallman was actually right all along. When you don't have open, public computer systems, you end up beholden to these huge entities.
So we pay $400+ for these devices every couple of years. But we don't trust the manufacturers nor the carriers. Some are paranoid that they're tracking every detail and transmitting at every opportunity.
Yet we continue to buy them?
Seeing the picture of the phone in the case, I can't help but think that this is a rather ridiculous state of affairs. If we don't like being tracked, if we don't trust them and if they breach our privacy, why don't we stop using/buying them?
Sadly, we live in a world where it's quite possible that phones like these are nothing more than a ploy to lure NSA targets in. They need to get people, who have something to hide, to feel safe again.
I think RMS is making a deep point about the ability to trust what your device is showing you when it's encumbered with non-open software, firmware, and hardware.
I think a clever surveillance agency with inside access to the guts of the phone could make it very, very hard to detect.
There was a phone called the AN0M that came on the market a couple years ago that purportedly had similar features, turns out it was an FBI honeypot op to sell it to people that were seeking "privacy" with the hope that criminals would purchase it.
Complying with any request for anything by the FBI costs money and time. There's no difference between that and making a trivial backdoor for one phone.
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