The FBI as advanced persistent threat – and what to do about it The best device to reduce road deaths, suggested economist Gordon Tulloch, would be a large steel spike in the center of every car's steering wheel. Focuses the mind. The IT security equivalent is an "Assume This Device Is Tapped" sticker on every phone, tablet and computer. Absent that, the best we can do is pay attention when …
Nope.
Unless and until you buy your own cell phone towers and switches, they still own the network if they want to and can install anything that they want to via network mandated updates.
Phones aren't your PC, where you can pick and choose what updated software is allowed to get installed. Cell phones will update silently if the carrier network tells the device to do so, with no alert, no notification and no interaction from the end user. They can turn on and off your microphone, camera and disable the pretty little LED telling you that they're active.
That's actually ancient news, it's why the Taliban destroyed cell towers after we refused their demand to turn the towers off at certain times each day. They knew we were listening and the easiest counter was to shut down towers, as nobody can trust end users to not bring their cell phones where they're not allowed to be.
Go into Settings / Apps, then App Info, then tap on the hamburger menu and select "Show system".
Look at your installed application stack and find the now-visible "Mobile Installer". It runs in the background and auto-installs anything that your *both* your cell provider and your smartphone manufacturer decides is necessary, most often just roaming lists or network configurations but is capable of forcing updates on any system software designated as "important" to the phone you are on (carrier and manufacturer apps, etc).
When I worked in mobile phone software there was no mechanism for the networks to update the mobile phone firmware. They could have SIM apps but those had limited capability. It may have changed in the last ten years, but why would network operators want to develop mobile phone firmware?
I could imagine a supplyer to Apple or one of the other big phone companies putting something dodgy in their firmware so I would not have absolute trust in any device.
Baseband and Wi-Fi processing is isolated on newer models of Google Pixel (those running GrapheneOS) and iPhone to prevent exactly what you are describing. It used to be true that the baseband processor had full access to memory, allowing for potential mass surveillance by exploiting its firmware, which is why a lot of work has gone into ensuring it’s no longer part of the trusted base.
A lot of people are telling me they have nothing to hide.
My answer to that is that it's not you who decide what's important and what is not.
A 1970's French comedy movie begins with the words:
"Observé à la loupe, n'importe quel innocent devient insolite, suspect."
which roughly translates into:
Observed well enough, every innocent person becomes strange and suspect.
Algorithms and AI are clearly making the situation worse.
"A lot of people are telling me they have nothing to hide."
I'm sick of hearing this from the ignorant or the just-plain DUMB.
We ALL have something to hide. Always. Maybe the things that turn us on, maybe the simple fact that we don't like an extremely popular thing and that will bring scorn from people we don't really want to connect to anyway.
We ALWAYS have something very personal in our lives that we simply don't share. But these FOOLS think that isn't true for them...until it is. THEN they'll complain.
"I have nothing to hide" is another way of saying "I'm too fucking lazy to take responsibility for my things, I'll expect someone else to do the hard work [of keep me 'safe']".
I manage to live without Google apps on LineageOS (on a Moto G5S), but my needs are minimal in any case - I much prefer a small (Linux or BSD) laptop for flexibility and ease of use, I hate the ultra-minimal Android app GUIs.
And maybe if you do, since GrapheneOS's lead appears to be having a few problems.
safeguards to bring this stuff to light, but no effective safeguards to safeguard against it happening over and over again. Otherwise, it they were effective, it wouldn't be happening over and over again, no?
"safeguards to bring this stuff to light, but no effective safeguards to safeguard against it happening over and over again."
There aren't strictly any "safeguards to bring this stuff to light", there are (some) safeguards that allow independent investigative journalists and advocacy groups to bring (some of) this stuff to light with a lot of hard work and very limited resources. Very little wrongdoing ever comes to light through 'official channels' (eg congressional oversight committees) unless those official channels have been forced to act because evidence of wrongdoing has been published by the media. And even in the supposedly free western world, journalistic freedom keeps getting eroded.
"no effective safeguards to safeguard against it happening over and over again."
The only effective safeguard to prevent it happening again is jail time, a lot of it, to the director-level , top-level managers and political appointees, instead of slaps on the wrist, fines (paid anyway from taxpayers' left pocket to their right) and any jail time targeted only at lower-level scapegoats.
In any case, thanks for the tip (although it DOES read like it's a paid-for ad!!)
"been forced to act because evidence of wrongdoing has been published by the media"
Then they go after the journalists, claim they are 'so-called' journalist, claim they are 'paid shills', set the IRS on them or force them into exile.
" ... this comment is a proof I'm a Russian shill ... "
Now I know and don't have a problem with you being one. Because now I know who and what you are and just ignore you.
Thanks for the heads-up!
:)
The people perpetrating these crimes aren't being prosecuted, and there are plenty of laws on the books under which to prosecute these crimes.
The only conclusion I can draw is that since the safeguards don't function they don't exist. Abstracting that to "there is no rule of law".
Being a moderate or left-wing activist isn't some high bar in probable cause, certainly being anywhere near a violent protest, or protesting quite legally at a school board meeting is plenty reason for the FBI to become interested and lump you into a profile. How much more so purchasing a firearm or ammunition, or using a VPN?
It won't end until the people exploiting these organizations are charged with civil rights violations under color of law, and it starts right at the top, from Joe Biden, Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton down into the Senate and House before it even makes it to the FBI leadership team, who should also be charged with these crimes of course, along with any individual agents.
And before you scream I'm some MAGA Republican, and start into the whataboutism of only naming those people, those people are clearly guilty of crimes far worse than Watergate, we all know it, and they're currently in charge of the FBI. You wouldn't put up with a Republican does it, why would you put up with it when your President does it?
Unfortunately democracies are profiting from all this situation.
Governments democratic or not, are striving to keep the population under control. Make no mistake here. To them, all these data collecting companies are like a godsend since they no longer need to build and maintain the massive surveillance infrastructure. They can get it for free from the likes of Google, Meta and so on. In exchange, the tech giants are allowed to continue unhindered.
It is highly ironic but the US government surveillance is way much better than the Chinese government one. While in China, collecting and analyzing surveillance data is more like an obligation imposed by the government, in the US those companies collecting your data are making big money, they have a huge financial incentive. Now please tell me, which one motivates and stimulates you most, an obligation or making money ?
...they can't have your data if you never send it.
That is where the stringrays, NSO/pegasus and the likes comes into play. You don't need to send it if they can take it.
It is stupid to think that a mobile phone has any privacy at all. You'd need to redesign everything from the ground up and isolate the radio part completely. And then, you are still trackable when you carry the radio or when you turn it on.
The whole thing is an expensive gadget with zero privacy. Carrying a mobile means no privacy. Period.
> It is stupid to think that a mobile phone has any privacy at all. You'd need to redesign everything from the ground up and isolate the radio part completely. And then, you are still trackable when you carry the radio or when you turn it on.
> The whole thing is an expensive gadget with zero privacy. Carrying a mobile means no privacy. Period.
You seem to confuse "any privacy at all" with "total privacy". Privacy isn't an all-or-nothing. One can make some things public and keep others private. One can make certain sacrifices of privacy for convenience, while keeping other things private.
There's also the question of "private from whom?". Just because my carrying a mobile phone means I can be fairly accurately geolocated and tracked by the network provider and government agencies, should they be interested to do so, does not mean that I also must allow eg. any website I visit to be able to do the same.
"Privacy isn't an all-or-nothing. One can make some things public and keep others private. One can make certain sacrifices of privacy for convenience, while keeping other things private."
The exchange of privacy for convenience where companies fleece people. People haven't been taught or shown examples of where these things come into play and because they don't have anybody they know that's had their identities stolen and bank accounts emptied, the lessons don't hit home. For younger people, they may not have been hit as they don't have enough to make the risk worthwhile. In the mean time they carry on with doing their banking and other financial activities and organizing protests and flash-mobs. At some point, they break that threshold where they do have enough money/credit or become important enough in a group to go after. The years' long back trail of "I have nothing to hide" catches up with them and they're toast.
Mobiles are not secure, the cloud is not secure and anything you can't afford to lose is something that you need to be certain about its security. It's a very bad thing to have your retirement accounts internet accessible, but people will do that so they can view their balances or make changes anytime the mood strikes them where it might be much better if there were some roadblocks to making impulsive changes without having the time to consider all of the implications.
It's not keeping one thing private and not worrying about some others. The Big Data companies can infer a whole ton of things about you built on lots of innocuous and trivial stuff. The same goes for government agencies that can also access data you can't keep from them such as tax and employment records. They can even look up where your car has been based on automatic number plate readers.
> It is stupid to think that a mobile phone has any privacy at all.
Only because we have allowed this to be so,
I had no interest in cellphones until they became smart. Because I never wanted a phone in my pocket, but a pocketable computer with roving internet was very interesting.
For a short time in the early naughties you could have such a thing. My choice was driven by PalmOS but there were Symbian and even Windows-based devices. Microsoft charged for Windows and Palm and (say) Ericcson just bundled the system to make a hardware sale. There were no other strings attached. Very much like, in fact, any other kind of computer.
Just because a computing device connects to the cellular network should not in any way change our privacy expectations. We've been trained to accept this as normal by Google. It isn't normal, and we don't have to accept it.
It's a real shame that our only realistic choices now are Apple or one of the vanishingly small number of Android devices that allow you to install a non-Google system. Since I don't trust Apple much more than Google, and I don't like to be taken for a fool on pricing, this leaves me with a handset that I absolutely hate, and a version of an operating system (AOSP) which I also dislike intensely. My first Treo was better in almost every way except, of course, the hardware specs.
-A.
Yes.
On the UBPorts site they list precisely 5 devices which are fully supported, all of which (except Volla) are no longer produced. I'm not going to find any of them in my habitual tech retailers.
But, thanks to your post, I am now giving serious consideration to purchasing a Volla phone 22. It's a shame that navigating their web site is so difficult for those of us who don't speak German.
-A.
@captain veg
"Since I don't trust Apple much more than Google, and I don't like to be taken for a fool on pricing, this leaves me with a handset that I absolutely hate, and a version of an operating system (AOSP) which I also dislike intensely".
Wow! So you paid for a telephone that you hate and then loaded it with an operating system that you don't like? Why? It's such a stupid thing to do that I think you are making it up, or you are some sort of A.I. having a bad hair day
I've been using an Android-based /e/ os phone the last few months. It replaces Google play services with it's own microservices. In theory there's no guarantee that any Android app will work on it, in practice I haven't yet found any that don't.
Of course it also means finding alternatives for Google mail, maps, calendar, photos and the bunch of other google apps that are seemingly incessantly intertwined with Android. If I really need to use something, I use a one-time private session through the browser connected through VPN. It's a bit less convenient than the alternative but it works well enough. Also, while protecting against most general data-hoovering, I am under no illusion that I am completely immune to this, nor in any way safe from a more targeted attack.
Do a test;
Install a vpn client on your device and run it in the tunnel all mode.
On the other end use a firewall to limit where it can go.
Turn off the cellular data and capture the packets on the firewall.
You will be surprised how much data will go outside the vpn to upload what the OS and its apps want.
It will make you think twice about the so called VPN protection.
But of course you need a Meego or Symbian to run it. At least here in Fennoscandia that's not a problem at all, used Nokia phones everywhere and they're cheap.
I've an ancient E7 for phones/texts/maps/navigation and that phone goes with me. For modern BS I've an Nokia-made Android but it stays at home and is mostly with 0% battery: The only way to make sure it's *really* off and not just pretending to be.
"I haven't yet found any alternative with the depth of functionality of Google maps."
I have, it's from Garmin and sits on my dash. From time to time I purge it's history.
I still use Google maps from home to plan a route or check for things like the nearest train station to someplace I'd like to go. In the US, there isn't a good rail planner that I've been able to find and there are lots of routes that are State run or private links that don't show up with Amtrak. Even routes with Amtrak trains that are sponsored by a state don't always show up which is one of the big problems with trying to use rail in the US. Rome2Rio was showing some promise but got hoovered up by M$ and now it's a mess. It keeps trying to shove me onto a plane and sell me hotel rooms and car rentals even for direct rail routes.
eOS, /e/, https://e.foundation - they're all the same OS.
Problem?
Nobody fully tests the Security of eOS. Red team, blue team, even basic Security tests - nothing. You're assuming the device is secure, but you have no evidence. You're outsourcing that evidence gathering to the /e/ Foundation people, and they aren't doing it. It's a bunch of well meaning people, but it isn't a professional level phone OS business.
I noticed that the duckduckgo results on eOS seem to be very skewed towards Russian results for .ru domains, which I found very strange. This was on TOR browser and Firefox on an eOS device on a samsung s9+. It's a very good effort at a secure OS, but you need to take these things with a pinch of salt.
To put it in to context, Apple, Samsung, Google, Nokia: they pentested their products to destruction and used red teaming and blue teaming to try destroy their Security processes on-site, for their OS, for the devices. I would be cautious about using a banking app for example on an eOS operating system.
"it isn't a professional level phone OS business."
I can believe that, but who has that? No-one that is.
"they pentested their products to destruction" ... *did* being the key point. That was somewhere in '00s, No-one is doing that now, it's just a cost and authorities have full access anyway, why bother.
Somewhat true, though there are different degrees of great unwashed.
On a recent trip to Orlando, a large number of flights had been diverted there from Mexico. The queue at customs was predictable; over 2 hours - worse than normal even by MCO's standards. The questioning the Mexicans were getting were considerably more intense than that of the British arrivals.
The CBP officer commented "you guys had a long wait, huh"; to which the only appropriate reply was "bit of patience required, we'll get there".
No other questions. No what are you doing, where are you going etc.
Well, TBH, you have competing concerns in a complex situation.
Customs always has 'tiers' of concern regarding the origins of travellers. Someone from say, China, vs someone from the UK. A traveler from one of these countries has more risks than the other.
For instance, the risk that they'd consume their beer warm instead a properly cooled one.
The risk what might happen if they were told to dress only in shirt and pants and immediately go outside.
etc. etc.
Humor aside, it's a complicated mess.
A) The level of data sharing and knowledge of an already-expected traveller from the UK may differ from an emergency arrival from elsewhere.
B) You have no clue what they may or may not have already known about you before you ever boarded the plane vs. a traveller from a country whose the-letter-agencies already have their hands in each other's databases.
I could go on, but while it's reasonable to scratch your head and go hmmm (being concerned and asking questions is fine) it's too easy to imply unjustified bias which may encourage jumping to conclusions.
"For instance, the risk that they'd consume their beer warm instead a properly cooled one."
Cellar temperature isn't warm, but not as cold as a US beer. The thing is though that something that will be served at cellar temperature is brewed to be very tasty that way. I'm fine with it and don't try to make each pint last a long time.
Your post self-evidently undermines itself. 'Those people' are terrible people, just based on the geography they live in.
You know, kind of what your own xenophobic bias is accusing US citizens of based on nothing more than the country the live in.
"Those hateful foreigners who hate foreigners... wait a minute..."
This article and these comments fail to make a useful distiction:
- namely the snoops need to be able to attach an identity (i.e. a real person) to a physical end point
(1) Buy an unlocked phone
(2) Buy a SIM and some minutes for cash at a convenience store
(3) Go to a public place (say the middle of Hampstead Heath), install the SIM
(4) Install the minutes; switch off the phone
You now have a burner which has no real person to identify with the phone.
Then there's laptops. For traffic NOT IDENTIFIABLE to the actual person on the endpoint:
(5) Internet cafes (or some other hijacked WiFi access point)
(6) Or perhaps the burner (see items #1 through 4) could be used as a 4G hotspot
(7) Encrypted messaging using peer-to-peer communication can help too
More sophisticated schemes might involve VPN use.
But, of course, although the "burner end" might be anonymous, it's always possible that the other end might be a problem!
Still....snoops reading the traffic might have a very hard time assigning the traffic to a real person.
Just saying!
A lot of things that criminals don't find difficult are things that the rest of us find harder. Sometimes it's something immoral and we just won't do it, but that doesn't apply here. Two other problems apply in this case:
1. We don't particularly want to get punished by law enforcement, so we avoid doing stuff that's against the law even if we don't agree with the law unless we have an extreme objection to that law. If I obtained a fake piece of identification, that's a thing the police don't like, and I'd have to be in a pretty bad situation to take that risk.
2. Things that criminals have access to are not as easily available to non-criminals. I'm sure that there are markets where criminals can buy a number of things that aren't legal, but I'm unaware of how to find those places and to gain entry. I can find basic fake identification somewhere online if given enough time, but I'm not sure how much verification the countries that require it will do. If they do, then I might have to use a real identity that doesn't belong to me, and now we're looking more at the immoral category.
Fortunately, I don't live in a country that would require identification for that.
"Fortunately, I don't live in a country that would require identification for that."
If you are in Europe with borders just kms apart, it's not that hard to buy a SIM in one country and use it in another. Touristy places are best since there will be shops that cater to people looking for a local SIM to use while on holiday for local calls. They'll also not balk if presented with an ID from another part of the world and may have no idea how to spot counterfeits. Some shops will be less diligent in checking ID's too in places where ID is required.
" We don't particularly want to get punished by law enforcement, so we avoid doing stuff that's against the law "
Sooner or later you'll find there is no connection: It's all *totally* random. Despite law enforcement claiming so.
Police has always attitude "everyone is a criminal, some of them hasn't been caught yet ..... but we'll try anyway".
If you are going to use a burner phone, you also don't want any other device you have to be on (best to have a removable battery). Use the burner in a busy place and turn it off as soon as you are done. Don't turn on another device until you have shifted locations. I remember a story about a drug lord who would use a burner phone thinking they were being clever but they used their more permanent phone from the same location shortly after and there was little other traffic besides their 'staff'. For a while, the intelligence agency tracking them was in evidence heaven. They got the burner numbers, the henchmen's numbers and the numbers the head guy called from his regular phone. After that, they could all be tracked and recorded.
"Then there's laptops. For traffic NOT IDENTIFIABLE to the actual person on the endpoint:
(5) Internet cafes (or some other hijacked WiFi access point)
(6) Or perhaps the burner (see items #1 through 4) could be used as a 4G hotspot"
One has to be careful about CCTV at places of business. On the street using a handsfree device, a single person in criminal garb (a hoodie) makes CCTV ident much harder. They'll be looking for somebody using a phone, but if you aren't holding one up to your ear or holding it in front of you, you just look like any average person unless you are alone. Sometimes the best privacy is had in the midst of a crowd.
Quote: "...the FBI ... has been caught using its power to hoover up communications without a warrant.....
So......FBI.....please hoover away!
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0PihKdEzEdC5gZ2lQLC7if6Z490dyvCDo9gXivSvIj0Pedmlm5uBQDwvsnchqbILs5IjmfqzaJ8t
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EBW5olcFsdeXw9aXsbA1Yr4fOvkfwdA9Q54fuTsbGTc5I963wlOxMfUlOXctk1ILcn4xq7u9Odoj
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Sd6TgbYXaPeR
P.S. It's not base64!!!
Interesting. Makes some sense to me, also form a grammatical point of view. The usage of the word does change its properties. Thanks for providing the link!
OK, I know I love to nitpick, and this is not entirely seriously meant: But by the reasoning one must not capitalise "Black" when writing about someone who either lives in their home country[*] or is an immigrant or in (whichever) generation descended[#] from African immigrants. I mean, there (apparently) are people in the US, who identify as being Scottish or Irish even though their family came there more than a century ago, and they are fully assimilated and only have a US passport. I guess that there are some who (or whose family) immigrated to the US from Africa in the last hundred years or so - are they "Black" or should one not rather use their "ancestral home" (or however one would put that)?
[*] and I would totally see this as rude, writing about somebody from Ghana and just calling them "Black" - nobody would (ok, should) do that
[#] now this is more tricky, isn't it?
"https://lawprose.org/lawprose-lesson-373-on-capitalizing-black-but-not-white/"
Interesting take. Following that logic, while any African-American whose family are descendents of slaves should be characterised as Black, any African-Americans who immigrated (or whose families immigrated) into the US relatively recently (eg after civil rights movement in the 60s) should be characterised as black (since it is only a descriptor of skin colour and not of shared cultural history). Similairly any black-skinned visitor to the US from Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, India, Australian Aborigines etc should be characterised as black and not Black??
"God forbid anybody simply call a black person in America "an American"."
I agree. Using distinctive descriptors when there's no need just segregates people. The funniest thing I ever read was a black person from the UK being called an African-American. There's a journalist that needs a really good editor checking their submissions.
Going by the horrific grammar and random speeling mistooks on news sites including the beeb this does not surprise me. Some articles look like they are collaborative works where the various authors never spoke to each other let alone read each other's work.
Given the abundance of DNA testing it is not hard to find your roots these days.
No surprise you posted anonymously.
Most people can neither spell in ways approved by (some) dictionaries nor follow historical dictates on grammar. Mostly because they are bollocks, but it's partly due to ignorance. I regret that news media fail to "correct" the mistakes of their contributors, but that's for the subs, not the writers.
DNA testing is TOTAL BOLLOCKS writ large, and has precisely nothing to do with anything at all except defrauding the gullible.
-A.
It depends on context.
I live in Europe. Here the fact of being American would be the most noticeable characteristic irrespective of skin tone.
I'm from London. Londoners come in many shapes and colours. This is normal.
I work in advertising. Ad campaigns are generally targeted at socio-demographic groups. Only in the USA do they make "race" a demographic criterion. And "Hispanic" too. And all sorts of other ethnic stuff. They're fixated on the issue. I've never come across this obsession in any other advertising market.
-A.
There was a programme yesterday on the wireless about Tony Benn (for younger and overseas readers, a former British peer who managed to have the law changed so he could become a common citizen and be elected to parliament as an MP at the leftish end of the Labour Party). He was reported as saying the interception of his phone calls made his telephone his last remaining connection with the British establishment.
>>The best device to reduce road deaths, suggested economist Gordon Tulloch, would be a large steel spike in the center of every car's steering wheel.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-recalls-defects/takata-airbag-recall-everything-you-need-to-know-a1060713669/ Even when faced with a bomb in the middle of the steering wheel, traffic carnage continued unaffected. There are certainly still people driving around with one of these.
The prognosis for such a diagnosis in never good whenever so much being constantly delivered is clearly bad.
Assuming as one can do, and it is advisable that one does so presume intelligence services are enabled to hoover up everybody's communication and virtually shared thoughts, one does then have to rightly conclude that the powers and leaderships that be within haven't a fcuking clue about what to do with that which they would then know, given all of the obvious evidence of increasing mayhem and madness, conflict and chaos because of what is shared.
It does have one doubting they have any level of effective intelligence to make any appreciable difference about anything they may, or may not, have learned, either before or after the fact.
And they put themselves in a very perilous position of jeopardy should continuity of ignorant punitive activity against cynically created phantom foe in furtherance of perverse and corrupt established establishment agendas, result in them being deemed systemically unsuitable for future greater intelligence help.
By societies' actions and intelligence services' inactions does one know them .... and all that they don't yet know and which makes them catastrophically vulnerable to those in the know ...... who may be just a few but well able to enable an army of many.
I had consigned myself to adjusting the color balance of my display after reading this, but alas, this was merely a yellow-green overlay of all in my purview as the consequent afterimage of reading your purple prose.
I understand your intent, and I even agree with all you said, but honestly can't be bothered to read any more posts of yours in this fashion as the effort/reward ratio tends toward zero.
But hey, that's just me, and you have you do fun your way. :)
The answer is obvious. The government wants to monitor communications. So we give it to them. Lots of communications. Use AI to fill the monitoring channels with fiction and fantasy. Government has no imagination or creativity. Have you read Bruce Sterling's "Hacker Crackdown"? Take a look at the FIB attempting to decipher Peter Jackson Games. What a hoot.
Hoovering up data to catch terrorists is probably legal, but infamously innefective - from about 100 million records two people of interest were identified, no arrests. A waste of public money and resources.
Google et la do collect all sorts of data to sell targeted ads. They won't give up your data voluntarily without a court order.
Agents who illegally spy on you should face penalties such a suspension without pay, demotion etc.
"They won't give up your data voluntarily without a court order."
Not too sure on that one!
A bit worry, and this has been shown to be legit, is that they are trolling the data fishing for something 'crime-ish'. In the UK the po-po have turned up at people's homes due to tweets that 'might cause anxiety'. No actual law broken, no-one has actually reported it, they are just fishing for an easy 'crime' to add to the stats.
" They won't give up your data voluntarily without a court order."
While true in theory, almost every police organization has a permanent court order allowing them to ask any data they want. Even all of it. And if someone doesn't have, they can get one from FISA in 20 minutes, by phone.
Also, FBI or NSA is in't *asking*, they tell you what data they want and if you don't give it, they'll take you with them. Purely theoretical limitation which doesn't stop *anyone* in reality.
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