Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
i wholeheartedly support this open platform that gives its users the control to turn -any- of its radios on or off at will (of the operator...). This will not help too much.Either you're not in the network or network should be aware about your location.When someone calls you, network have to select a proper Base Station to enroute call to your mobile, don't you think so?If network has no idea where you are, there is no place to route call.Call fails with subscriber is not available, blah-blah-blah message.Simple?;).Surely all this can be (ab)used.But I see no any realistic way how to avoid this completely.At very most, it is possible to relax things a bit but you can't avoid tracking completely because this means network is unable to route incoming calls to your phone. So... - If you're just an average Joe, relax and enjoy by your 'democracy'.Total control.Sounds so democratic, isn't it?That's how democracy works, after all :P - If you're an IT pro and really willing to do something unfair, you're probably know how to avoid this dumb issue anyway ;) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
This strikes me as a uninteligible answer: 2007/11/29, t3st3r [EMAIL PROTECTED]: i wholeheartedly support this open platform that gives its users the control to turn -any- of its radios on or off at will (of the operator...). This will not help too much.Either you're not in the network or network should be aware about your location.When someone calls you (...) If I don't want to be located, I don't want to be called, either -- think plane mode, no radios on but MP3/AVI player on, agenda on, text editor on, etc. That is what people meant when they say turn off any of its radios at will. I want to have a check button saying GSM radio on/off, other saying GPS radio on/off, other saying WiFi radio on/off. So I can ... drumroll ... turn them off _at_ _will_. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
I thought I should elaborate: 2007/11/29, Humberto Massa [EMAIL PROTECTED]: If I don't want to be located, I don't want to be called, either -- think plane mode, no radios on but MP3/AVI player on, agenda on, text editor on, etc. That is what people meant when they say turn off any of its radios at will. I want to have a check button saying GSM radio on/off, other saying GPS radio on/off, other saying WiFi radio on/off. So I can ... drumroll ... turn them off _at_ _will_. Mode of operation: stealth. from time to time, i press a button turn GSM radio on, check voicemail, download all messages, turn GSM radio off. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Germany - Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
Here 2 links, that might be interesting - This is at least my german research I made some time back... http://chaosradio.ccc.de/ds2005-337.html http://www.datenspuren.de/2005/vortraege/GSM%20Abhoeren%20Datenspuren.pdf http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-Catcher The First 2 links belong together - They were made back in 2005 by Frank Rieger and are about how to pinpoint and tapp mobile phones (is slightly outdated... ;-) ) Another thing I managed to spot is this (this time english) -- A Man-in-the-Middle Attack on UMTS http://www.cs.stevens.edu/~swetzel/publications/mim.pdf Pls DO take a look... Greetings, C Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
Wow that's alot of replies for something i wrote so quickly. I didn't really mean it all seriously, and im all for being untrackable and all, like you guys say. But if they wanna track me, then fine, they can if they want. I just pity the fool that's gonna sit and monitor my boring life. Jay Vaughan wrote: On Nov 26, 2007, at 1:19 AM, flexd wrote: If you just obey the law, when will they ever need to track you? When you're a political dissident who is investigating the crimes of officials and politicians. ; -- Jay Vaughan ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
2007/11/26, Jeff Andros [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On 11/25/07, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip Can people ever be compelled to supply truthful GPS information to LEO as long as open source cellphones are legal? OK, legal matters aside, your network operators ALWAYS know where your phone is: cell towers can triangulate the position of your phone(it's like reverse GPS... multiple receivers on a single source). Most of the phone IF and only IF the phone GSM radio is ON. That was the what i wholeheartedly support this open platform that gives its users the control to turn -any- of its radios on or off at will (of the operator...). meant, I assume. Phone stays on (so I can web browse via wifi, see my agenda, hear music, see videos, etc,) but no one must know where you are. People used the argument if you didn't do anything wrong in this thread, but they tend to forget: 1. all tech is crackable; 2. bad guys can crack the tech; 3. if you can't turn off the radios, bad guys can know where you are. navigation, at least here in the US uses this technology... not GPS. Which firmware the phone runs is a non-issue.. they don't ask you they ask for that data. Technically the only way to prevent this is to not transmit. It is technically possible to re-write the GSMD to power down the GSM module unless you are placing a call (You'd still be traceable whilst actually placing a call, but not traceable otherwise) the downside is, you wouldn't be able to receive calls. This is a mode of operation that wouls suit me fine. I turn the radio on, the operator sends me a you missed a call from XYZ or a you have voicemail message (80% of the time, at least), I return the call, I turn the radio off again. Stopping the cell towers from tracing you wouldn't help either: It would be possible to set up an alternate antenna farm that decodes enough of the GSM signal to identify the transmitter. Pretty much at this point you should be realizing that there are only two possible ways to fix this: one is the legal things we're not talking about, because that's not my area of expertise (besides, I'm not sure how effective it would be), the other is to stop using any kind of transmitting device... technically anything that uses electricity. -- Jeff O|||O But you can always minorate the problems! ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
flexd wrote: Wow that's alot of replies for something i wrote so quickly. I didn't really mean it all seriously, and im all for being untrackable and all, like you guys say. But if they wanna track me, then fine, they can if they want. I just pity the fool that's gonna sit and monitor my boring life. The purpose of privacy is not to protect the majority from being snooped on. The majority is immune from tracking, simply for not stepping out of line. The purpose of privacy is precisely so that people CAN step out of line. Most of the people who do not conform to what is called standard practices at the time are weirdos, imbalanced or criminals, but every once in a while the people stepping out of line is doing so because they truly and honestly see something the majority doesn't. If they persist enough, their non conformist behavior of today will become the norm tomorrow, simply by dint of it being better. And this is where giving up privacy really hurts everyone, as a society. It makes stepping out of the norm even more difficult than it already is, and thus sells our tomorrow for some theoretical gains today. If people were discouraged from stepping out of line 20 years ago, we wouldn't have free software today. Shachar ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
On Monday 26 November 2007 03:36, Piotr Duda wrote: Ian Darwin pisze: [...] And you can power off any cell phone, [...] This could not be enough. At the beginning of this list there was some discussion about a case where feds recorded chats of some mafia guy with his own car's mobile, which was turned off. IIRC that was possible because they remotely changed his phone firmware in the first place... True, stuff like that is possible, at least with some phones. But removing the battery is still a very effective way to make sure your phone is really shut, by the time they find a way to make 'm work without electicity you will hear about it. AVee -- Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. -- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
On Monday 26 November 2007 12:51, Shachar Shemesh wrote: flexd wrote: Wow that's alot of replies for something i wrote so quickly. I didn't really mean it all seriously, and im all for being untrackable and all, like you guys say. But if they wanna track me, then fine, they can if they want. I just pity the fool that's gonna sit and monitor my boring life. The purpose of privacy is not to protect the majority from being snooped on. The majority is immune from tracking, simply for not stepping out of line. The purpose of privacy is precisely so that people CAN step out of line. Most of the people who do not conform to what is called standard practices at the time are weirdos, imbalanced or criminals, but every once in a while the people stepping out of line is doing so because they truly and honestly see something the majority doesn't. If they persist enough, their non conformist behavior of today will become the norm tomorrow, simply by dint of it being better. And this is where giving up privacy really hurts everyone, as a society. It makes stepping out of the norm even more difficult than it already is, and thus sells our tomorrow for some theoretical gains today. If people were discouraged from stepping out of line 20 years ago, we wouldn't have free software today. A point well made. There are several others as well. When it comes to large scale survailance you also must ask if you trust everybody who has or might gain access to this information, now and in the future. Access to the current location of you and other members of your household might, for example, easily reveal there is currently nobody at home. A know a certain 'profession' where this is very usefull information... And there are quite a few more arguments, a lot of them can be found here: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_pr.html Be sure to read the comments also. AVee -- AMAZING BUT TRUE ... There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
Everyone would take out the battery just because they have a feeling that the might be bugged? You'd have to set the time/date anew everytime etc.. It would be much more convenient if somehow you could be sure that when its off it really is, and I think with OM you can be quite sure :) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
Jeff Andros [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: OK, legal matters aside, your network operators ALWAYS know where your phone is: cell towers can triangulate the position of your phone(it's like reverse GPS... multiple receivers on a single source). I wonder how well this works on average. If this would work well enough I don't believe we'd be seeing all the integrated GPS units for the claimed purpose of servicing E911. Those things do add a real cost to the phone that cell phone providers are eating. If I were to try to mask the location of a cell phone, I'd simply stand within a few blocks of a cell tower and put the phone in the focus of a deep parabolic dish pointed at the cell tower of interest. I'd like to see the neighboring towers pick up a phone that is commanded to run at low xmit power with what is effectively a tight beam talking to the closest tower. But I do agree, hiding one's general location to within a few cell-tower radii is not possible. -wolfgang -- Wolfgang S. Rupprechthttp://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/ IPv6 on Fedora 7 http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/fedora/ipv6-tunnel.html ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
I remember discussions of this on usenet many years ago. (in the AMPS days) I seem to remember a company selling software that cellular companies could run on their switches to triangulate phones. It was used to catch cloners and supposedly worked quite well, at least in well covered areas like major cities. Ostensibly, it worked by commanding the phone to switch between several towers and used the fact that the towers are each comprised of three directional antennas to determine your location. I always wondered why we needed fancy phones with extra and costly GPS hardware in them to be able to track emergency calls when this sort of triangulation should be possible at the base station. I'm not well versed in TDMA technology, but I seem to remember that the phone needs to track round trip time to the tower in order to transmit within its alloted time slice. I would think that information could also aid in location finding if transmitted back to the base station and require no extra hardware. Even older phones could transmit time slice delta information with a firmware update. A lot of Hams like to hold fox hunts where they work together in order to track down a transmitter. So there should be quite a few people well versed in attempting things like this. A dejanews search reveals the following and a bunch of other interesting threads: (take a look at the bottom of the thread) http://groups.google.com/group/alt.2600/browse_thread/thread/350942b847f8a85/e5bcc84ba00ce053?lnk=stq=triangulate+group%3A*cellular*#e5bcc84ba00ce053 -Steve Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote: Jeff Andros [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: OK, legal matters aside, your network operators ALWAYS know where your phone is: cell towers can triangulate the position of your phone(it's like reverse GPS... multiple receivers on a single source). I wonder how well this works on average. If this would work well enough I don't believe we'd be seeing all the integrated GPS units for the claimed purpose of servicing E911. Those things do add a real cost to the phone that cell phone providers are eating. If I were to try to mask the location of a cell phone, I'd simply stand within a few blocks of a cell tower and put the phone in the focus of a deep parabolic dish pointed at the cell tower of interest. I'd like to see the neighboring towers pick up a phone that is commanded to run at low xmit power with what is effectively a tight beam talking to the closest tower. But I do agree, hiding one's general location to within a few cell-tower radii is not possible. -wolfgang ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
/. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/196229from=rss please don't let the rest of the world fall under the same privacy stranglehold. i wholeheartedly support this open platform that gives its users the control to turn -any- of its radios on or off at will (of the operator...). thank you fic and openmoko! i can't wait to get some of these for my friends... justin daly ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
If you just obey the law, when will they ever need to track you? justin daly skrev: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/196229from=rss http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/196229from=rss please don't let the rest of the world fall under the same privacy stranglehold. i wholeheartedly support this open platform that gives its users the control to turn -any- of its radios on or off at will (of the operator...). thank you fic and openmoko! i can't wait to get some of these for my friends... justin daly ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
I agree with you, obey the law. But many people want privacy at all costs, even if they are obeying the law. I know its a distorted idea and thought, but people want the ability to not be limited, and the ability to do something illegal :P -bk On Nov 25, 2007, at 6:19 PM, flexd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you just obey the law, when will they ever need to track you? justin daly skrev: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/196229from=rss http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/196229from=rss please don't let the rest of the world fall under the same privacy stranglehold. i wholeheartedly support this open platform that gives its users the control to turn -any- of its radios on or off at will (of the operator...). thank you fic and openmoko! i can't wait to get some of these for my friends... justin daly --- - ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
If they suspect you anyway. Quote: *In some cases, judges have granted the requests without even requiring the government to demonstrate probable cause that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime * I wonder how difficult it would be for criminals or the music industry to obtain that data? In Germany, our bloody joke of a government has just passed a law that orders companies to keep this data for half a year! On Nov 26, 2007 1:19 AM, flexd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you just obey the law, when will they ever need to track you? justin daly skrev: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/196229from=rss http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/196229from=rss please don't let the rest of the world fall under the same privacy stranglehold. i wholeheartedly support this open platform that gives its users the control to turn -any- of its radios on or off at will (of the operator...). thank you fic and openmoko! i can't wait to get some of these for my friends... justin daly ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
flexd wrote: If you just obey the law, when will they ever need to track you? Are you serious? Or was that tongue-in-cheek? That's entirely the wrong kind of question to ask. The question is: if you just obey the law, why would they need to track you? And so, why do they need these powers over everybody instead of just over known criminals? Please read the original /. article before you respond. In fact, please respond on /., not here. This list is for discussions about OpenMoko phones. And you can power off any cell phone, not just an OpenMoko phone. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 01:19 +0100, flexd wrote: If you just obey the law, when will they ever need to track you? Ah. The old if you don't have anything to be afraid of argument. It's pretty tired, but if you insist ... 1) The law is an ass. There's a big difference between breaking the law and doing something wrong. Take prohibition, or abortion, or sedition, etc. These are all areas where the law is contrary to most people's values. For example, say I stand on a corner and proclaim that I support the Iraqi resistance in their efforts to remove the illegal occupying forces from their country. That's sedition. In my country ( Australia ), that statement ( or this email ) is enough to get me locked up for 7 years for 'undermining the national interest'. With emerging cellphone technology, not only can my mobile be used to locate me on the corner, but it can also be used to record what I say and transmit it to the police. Particularly with voice recognition technology, I can see the situation approaching where just uttering the right words with your phone in hearing distance will result in a quick visit from the police. While our laws are so blatently stupid, it's quite unwise to hand more power to police to persecute people from breaking said laws. 2) Even when you're NOT breaking the law, there are still quite valid concerns about the all-seeing-eye. Cellphone tracking could easily be used to identify myself and other activists at a public meeting. While 'guilt by association' has largely been written out of the lawbooks in most countries, this doesn't stop police ( illegally, mind you ) keeping a database of 'persons of interest' and their groupings. Anyone who has attended a few anti-war demos will tell you that the police keep quite a large file of known activists, who get targeted, arrested, dragged off, beaten up, and dumped a couple of km away from the demo, pretty much immediately after turning up ... 'known troublemakers'. There was quite a bit of this happening in Canberra in 2003 when Dubya visited. It happened again for the APEC demo here not so long ago. The problem is that in a lot of cases, their definition of 'troublemakers' is not based on whether they've broken any laws, but simply includes all known activists. For example the list of 'excluded persons' from the APEC designated area was basically just a list of leading activists who had been working on the demonstrations - none of them had actually done anything wrong, or even been accused of doing anything wrong. The list was completely arbitrary. 3) The other side doesn't play by these rules. At the APEC demo, the police attacked our debriefing meeting, snatched a couple of members, and dragged them off. When we jumped up to stop them, they arrested another round of us, claiming that we were 'obstructing a police officer'. They then released the original group. This demonstrates that they were actively soliciting a response from us, and using this response to base their trumped-up charges on. There was a girl from Actively Radical TV, who was doing a documentary on APEC. She was filming our meeting. She got EVERYTHING that the police did on video. When they realised this, they ordered her to hand the tape over. She refused, and turned around and ran. They chased her, tackled her to the ground, arrested her, and seized her video. She was the ONLY person they held overnight ( everyone else they released within 6 hours ). They never gave her tape back to her, as it had evidence against them. So should we play ball with them, when they refuse to be accountable themselves? There are people with things to hide, sure. But this is no reason to hand our remaining rights over to anyone, and particularly not the police. Dan ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
Joe Pfeiffer With an extreme effort of will, I'm not responding with a libertarian post. Please, let's not go off into politics here Ok. For a technical slant. Can people ever be compelled to supply truthful GPS information to LEO as long as open source cellphones are legal? We can all get highly creative in what data we supply to the unwashed masses. -wolfgang -- Wolfgang S. Rupprechthttp://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/ IPv6 on Fedora 7 http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/fedora/ipv6-tunnel.html ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
On 11/25/07, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip Can people ever be compelled to supply truthful GPS information to LEO as long as open source cellphones are legal? OK, legal matters aside, your network operators ALWAYS know where your phone is: cell towers can triangulate the position of your phone(it's like reverse GPS... multiple receivers on a single source). Most of the phone navigation, at least here in the US uses this technology... not GPS. Which firmware the phone runs is a non-issue.. they don't ask you they ask for that data. Technically the only way to prevent this is to not transmit. It is technically possible to re-write the GSMD to power down the GSM module unless you are placing a call (You'd still be traceable whilst actually placing a call, but not traceable otherwise) the downside is, you wouldn't be able to receive calls. Stopping the cell towers from tracing you wouldn't help either: It would be possible to set up an alternate antenna farm that decodes enough of the GSM signal to identify the transmitter. Pretty much at this point you should be realizing that there are only two possible ways to fix this: one is the legal things we're not talking about, because that's not my area of expertise (besides, I'm not sure how effective it would be), the other is to stop using any kind of transmitting device... technically anything that uses electricity. -- Jeff O|||O ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: /. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request
On Nov 26, 2007, at 1:19 AM, flexd wrote: If you just obey the law, when will they ever need to track you? When you're a political dissident who is investigating the crimes of officials and politicians. ; -- Jay Vaughan ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
