RE: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[Trei, Peter]

Sunder wrote:


>I've been ignoring this list for a while, so sorry for the late
posting.

>I remember sometime in late 99, I had one of the early blackberry 
>pagers, the small ones that ate a single AA battery which lasted about
a 
>week or so, and had email + a small web browser inside of it.  It
wasn't 
>the blackberry phone.  Anyway, long story short, one day, said pager 
>crashed (it is a computer after all) and I was trying to figure out how

>to reboot it, so I thought, fuck it, and removed the battery, the
fucker 
>stayed ON!  For over 15 minutes!

>Gee, I wonder why anyone would design a cell phone or pager to be able 
>to stay on after its battery is pulled out.  Yeah, yeah, it's just a 
>capacitor or an internal rechargeable battery, but why would you want 
>such a feature?


There is a damn good reason. PDAs, pagers, and cellphones often hold a
great deal of info the owner regards as valuable, and which they don't
want to lose - phone lists, email, addresses, etc. Battery changes are a
potential source of loss, since (until recently) all these devices used
volatile memory. Adding a capacitor to give the user a few minutes grace
to fumble with his AAs is an essential feature.

Most users, for better or worse, aren't cypherpunks or terribly
conscious about personal privacy, and regard preserving their data as a
very high priority.

All the PDAs I've dealt with (and I've written SW for a number of them)
have a 'hard reset' protocol - usually pressing the power button while
engaging the recessed reset button - which clears out all memory. 

Peter Trei

Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[R.A. Hettinga]

At 9:43 PM -0400 9/28/05, sunder wrote:
>Gee, I wonder why anyone would design a cell phone or pager to be able
>to stay on after its battery is pulled out.

To protect whatever's in the then-volatile memory?

cf Pournelle on conspiracy and stupidity...

>Are we just too paranoid?

See below.

Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"When I was your age we didn't have Tim May! We had to be paranoid
on our own! And we were grateful!" --Alan Olsen

Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[sunder]

Tyler Durden wrote:

Actually, depending on your App, this would seem to be th very 
OPPOSITE of a moot point.

-TD


Indeed!

I've been ignoring this list for a while, so sorry for the late posting.

I remember sometime in late 99, I had one of the early blackberry 
pagers, the small ones that ate a single AA battery which lasted about a 
week or so, and had email + a small web browser inside of it.  It wasn't 
the blackberry phone.  Anyway, long story short, one day, said pager 
crashed (it is a computer after all) and I was trying to figure out how 
to reboot it, so I thought, fuck it, and removed the battery, the fucker 
stayed ON!  For over 15 minutes!


Gee, I wonder why anyone would design a cell phone or pager to be able 
to stay on after its battery is pulled out.  Yeah, yeah, it's just a 
capacitor or an internal rechargeable battery, but why would you want 
such a feature?


Fast forward to 2005.  Most cell phones are after all small computers 
with a transceiver, microphone, and speaker, and recently GPS 
receivers.  And now we have reports of the GPS info being transmitted 
all the time, "oops! it's a bug, we meant to turn it off." uh huh.  Just 
how much work would it be to reprogram the soft power off key, so it 
shuts off all the lights, and display, but still transmits GPS info, 
just less often?  Or also transmit audio?  What are the odds that the 
code on the phone already comes with this feature built in?


Of course, if it was legal to scan on cell phone frequencies, you might 
be able to confirm what it's sending and when, but of course, it's not 
legal to do that.  Even to your own phone.


Of course some phones are more equal than others.  For example, T-Mobile 
SideKick, which if you write an email and decide to cancel it, but 
you're out of range, exposes its evil self with "Sorry, we can't let you 
delete the email you're composing, because it hasn't been sent to the 
server yet!"  Gee, I wonder what that means?  Nah, it's just a bug.  (Of 
course, this is a totally owned platform, where T-Mobile owns your data, 
not you, oops, make that the hackers of a few months ago..)
Oh and if said phone is running out of batteries, it starts to complain 
loudly until you recharge it.  Um, yeah, it likes being on at all 
times.  You can "hear" it transmit occasionally when it's near amplified 
computer speakers or your car radio. 

Fun that, but could be useful.  Especially if you "heard" it transmit 
while it's supposedly "off." (I've honestly not heard it transmit while 
it's off)


Are we just too paranoid?  Nah, that's just a bug in human firmware, 
we'll fix that in the next brainwashing session.


(BTW: what the fuck's up with all the weirdo subject lines?  There's a 
perfectly good "From: " line in all SMTP headers, we don't need this 
shit in the subject line for fuck's sake!  What's this, the return of 
Jim Choate?)

Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[Tyler Durden]

Actually, depending on your App, this would seem to be th very OPPOSITE of a 
moot point.

-TD


From: Gregory Hicks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Gregory Hicks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to  see 
if it's always  transmitting your location [priv]]

Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:11:10 -0700 (PDT)


> From: "Tyler Durden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to 
see if

it's always  transmitting your location [priv]]
> Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:56:33 -0400
>
> Are you sure?

No, but the phone now SAYS that location info is OFF except to E911...

Whether or not it actually IS turned off is a moot point.  How to check?

Regards,
Gregory Hicks

> -TD
>
>
> >From: "R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >Subject: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to  
see

> >if   it's always transmitting your location [priv]]
> >Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:05:31 -0400
> >
> >At 2:59 PM +0200 9/22/05, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> > >For my Treo phone, I found the location option under "Phone
> > >Preferences" in
> > >the Options menu of the main phone screen.
> >
> >Bada-bing!
> >
> >Fixed *that*.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >RAH

---

I am perfectly capable of learning from my mistakes.  I will surely
learn a great deal today.

"A democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding on what to have for
lunch.  Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the results of the
decision." - Benjamin Franklin

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they
be properly armed." --Alexander Hamilton

Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[Gregory Hicks]

> From: "Tyler Durden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if 
it's always  transmitting your location [priv]]
> Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 12:56:33 -0400
> 
> Are you sure?

No, but the phone now SAYS that location info is OFF except to E911...

Whether or not it actually IS turned off is a moot point.  How to check?

Regards,
Gregory Hicks

> -TD
> 
> 
> >From: "R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >Subject: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to  see  
> >if   it's always transmitting your location [priv]]
> >Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:05:31 -0400
> >
> >At 2:59 PM +0200 9/22/05, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> > >For my Treo phone, I found the location option under "Phone
> > >Preferences" in
> > >the Options menu of the main phone screen.
> >
> >Bada-bing!
> >
> >Fixed *that*.
> >
> >Cheers,
> >RAH

---

I am perfectly capable of learning from my mistakes.  I will surely
learn a great deal today.

"A democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding on what to have for
lunch.  Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the results of the
decision." - Benjamin Franklin

"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they
be properly armed." --Alexander Hamilton

Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[Tyler Durden]

Are you sure?
-TD



From: "R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to  see  
if   it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:05:31 -0400

At 2:59 PM +0200 9/22/05, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>For my Treo phone, I found the location option under "Phone
>Preferences" in
>the Options menu of the main phone screen.

Bada-bing!

Fixed *that*.

Cheers,
RAH

--
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[Riad S. Wahby]

"R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Fixed *that*.

I've had my location off (as much as is possible) since I had my first
phone that had the option, a Samsung A500.  Unfortunately, that phone
had a firmware bug (never fixed while I had it) such that, when it was
in non-location mode, upon losing contact with the network, it would be
unable to reconnect (thus, unable to place or receive calls) until
powered off and then on again.

The moral of the story: very few people turn the location stuff off.
Otherwise, they'd have fixed this bug much sooner, as it made the phone
more or less unusable for those who cared to do so.

-- 
Riad S. Wahby
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[R.A. Hettinga]

At 2:59 PM +0200 9/22/05, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>For my Treo phone, I found the location option under "Phone
>Preferences" in
>the Options menu of the main phone screen.

Bada-bing!

Fixed *that*.

Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

[EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting your location [priv]]

[Eugen Leitl]

- Forwarded message from David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -

From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:57:50 -0400
To: Ip Ip 
Subject: [IP] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's always transmitting 
your location [priv]
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.734)
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]



Begin forwarded message:

From: Declan McCullagh 
Date: September 21, 2005 6:22:26 PM EDT
To: politech@politechbot.com
Subject: [Politech] Request: Check your cell phone to see if it's  
always transmitting your location [priv]


Related Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-05008.html
And a column I wrote on this a while ago:
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-5064829.html

-Declan

 Original Message 
Subject: Always-on location tracking in cellphones
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 18:04:30 -0400
From: Richard M. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 'Declan McCullagh' 

Hi Declan,

We have talked before about the FCC mandate which is requiring all U.S.
wireless carriers to provide location information to emergency operators
accurate to about 150 feet on all 911 calls as part of the Enhanced 911
program (http://www.fcc.gov/911/enhanced/).  To meet this FCC  
mandate, my
Verizon Wireless Treo 650 cellphone includes some kind of GPS tracking
technology.  The Treo also has an option to select if location  
information
is sent in to Verizon for all calls or only 911 calls.

I was a bit surprised to learn that my Treo defaults to always sending
location information.  After a bit of initial confusion, I got  
confirmation
from both Palm and Verizon Wireless that my observation about the  
default
was correct.  However, Verizon Wireless told me this is a mistake and  
going
forward, they plan to change the default to "911 calls only".

I'm curious now when other models of cellphones transmit location
information to carriers.  Can folks on Politech check their  
cellphones and
phone manuals to see what kind of controls there are over location
information and send me the results?  I'll also need the make and  
model of
the phone and the wireless carrier.

For my Treo phone, I found the location option under "Phone  
Preferences" in
the Options menu of the main phone screen.

Thanks,
Richard M. Smith
http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com



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