Re: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
Thomas Shaddack wrote: [...] Suggested countermeasure: When true anonymity is requested, use the card ONLY ONCE, then destroy it. Makes the calls rather expensive, but less risky. Make sure you can't be traced back by other means, ranging from surveillance cameras in the vicinity of the phone booths to the location data from cellphones (because, as it's well-known but often overlooked, the cellphone networks know the location of every active phone). In local pubs round where I live it is not at all uncommon to find people buying selling SIM cards, swapping them, or just handing roudn to friends family members. If these persons are involved in activities which would be disapproved of by the law, I imagine that they would be very unlikley to be anything that could be called terrorism. More likely doing casual work without paying tax, using drugs deprecated by governments, trading in unauthorised DVDs, perhaps employing illegal immigrants. (Allegedly that is - as far as I am aware the apparently oriental gentleman who walks round pubs and clubs late at night offering DVDs and CDs for a pound is in full complience with all local copyright laws) There was a notorious murder locally (Damilola Taylor) which the police took a logn time to charge anywone for. When they finally got round to it, some of the evidence turned on mobile phone records. One piece could not be used, because the court was satisfied that the family and friends of the accused persons swapped and shared phones so frequently that there was no way to connect the use of a phone with an individual.
RE: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
And yet one would've thought that a smart radical would have been able to purchase a measly couple of 50 lb bags of (NH4NO3) without having to call all over the place and brag about it, and for cash at that. You don't want it known, don't say it on the phone.. Just like a bunch o' pussys that'll crack the first time they fall into the clutches of the man. -Max At 09:39 PM 3/26/2004, Black Unicorn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nichols was dumb enough to actually be caught in possession of a card used in at last part of the conspiracy. Other cards that seem to be linked to Nichols were used to locate or obtain ANFO and call the rental agency for the Ryder truck as well as other numbers linked to the crime. That is public knowledge at this point. Clearly, logs are available to law enforcement vis-a-vis pre-paid calling cards when they wish to use them. Given the time between the bombing and the capture of at least one of the cards (3-4 days) I suspect those logs are available for at least a few days. Given that the prosecutors claim to be able to link the ANFO purchase via calling cards it is probably a lot longer. What is confusing are the reports that the calling card (or one of them) bore the name Daryl Bridges. Pre-paid cards don't have names imprinted on them. They would have to have a spot to write them in deliberately. I haven't seen this on any and why would anyone (particularly as part of a criminal conspiracy) do such a thing? Keeping calling cards from leaking information probably isn't possible. Limiting the information leaked to that which is already known or is useless is probably the best bet. Using separate cards for separate operations / cells and immediate disposal seems pretty critical. Note something else, however. I haven't heard of any instances of real time calling card interception. One was described here on the list but that presupposes that a degree of surveillance already exists around the subject. All bets are pretty much off in that event. Calling cards are after the fact evidence, not preventative evidence. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of R. A. Hettinga Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 7:10 PM To: Thomas Shaddack; Cypherpunks Subject: Re: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards At 7:51 PM +0100 3/26/04, Thomas Shaddack wrote: I strongly suspect the usage logs exist for individual cards, allowing to back-trace the phonecalls done with the given card, thus tracing the identity of the card's owner by the call patterns. Of course. How do you think they caught the Oklahoma City bombers?
Re: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
At 01:51 PM 3/26/2004, Thomas Shaddack [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Suggested countermeasure: When true anonymity is requested, use the card ONLY ONCE, then destroy it. Makes the calls rather expensive, but less risky. Make sure you can't be traced back by other means, ranging from surveillance cameras in the vicinity of the phone booths to the location data from cellphones (because, as it's well-known but often overlooked, the cellphone networks know the location of every active phone). Better yet, take another 10 minutes, get change from a laundromat, and use coins! Leather gloves, and avoid the cams (hats sunglasses)! Of course, I'm assumin' a fixed payphone, so the cell phone worries, not to worry... -Max
RE: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
At 12:41 AM 3/27/04 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And yet one would've thought that a smart radical would have been able to purchase a measly couple of 50 lb bags of (NH4NO3) without having to call all over the place and brag about it, and for cash at that. You don't want it known, don't say it on the phone.. All true except that the McVeigh Patriots used a few tons of the stuff. Still, they were in Ag country, should not have been too tough. Frankly, the militia's opsec sucked. At least they depleted the pool of Fed-employee offspring before they could reproduce. Bonus points for that. 10 credits on Sharon before Mushareff. 20 credits on .iq .mil death toll 750 when above is decided. Clark under oath: priceless
Re: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
At 01:05 AM 3/27/04 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 01:51 PM 3/26/2004, Thomas Shaddack [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Suggested countermeasure: When true anonymity is requested, use the card ONLY ONCE, then destroy it. Better yet, take another 10 minutes, get change from a laundromat, and use coins! Or, give the card to some random homeless person, preferably while their ability to consolidate new memories is impaired. Keep them feds busy!
RE: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
At 08:39 PM 3/26/04 -0600, Black Unicorn wrote: Keeping calling cards from leaking information probably isn't possible. Limiting the information leaked to that which is already known or is useless is probably the best bet. Using separate cards for separate operations / cells and immediate disposal seems pretty critical. Moral of the story: when using your 802.11b card for those special messages beamed into someone else's LAN, (just before you incinerate it after its sole use), make sure you bought it in another city, with cash of course. It is rather surprising that paranoid americans (albeit a few years ago) would be so clueless when UBL Palestinian targets^H^H^Hleaders are getting a grip. -- Herod:Jeebus::Bush:Osama
Re: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
At 10:51 AM 3/26/2004, Thomas Shaddack wrote: Each prepaid Trick phone card has its unique serial number. The payphone reads it from the card. The busted person (let's call him target) used the same card for multiple phone calls, thus becoming the card's number known as the target's temporary identity. What do you mean by Trick? Is that a local brand name, or are you implying there's something special about this card? Normal phone cards let their issuers know in almost-real-time that they're being used, because they're spending money from a specific debit account, not digital cash tokens. It's not like old-fashioned monthly phone bills, which didn't need to be in real-time because they knew where you lived (and weren't real money anyway*, except for international calls requiring settlements.) Some cards have more information - many brands can be recharged using a credit card, which might identify the user. The interesting part was that the phone company knew in realtime when the card was used - enough in real time to dispatch a police patrol car to the location. ... I strongly suspect the usage logs exist for individual cards, allowing to back-trace the phonecalls done with the given card, thus tracing the identity of the card's owner by the call patterns. Well, of course - databases are much easier these days now that megabits/second and gigahertz are slow and terabytes are small and cheap, and calling card companies _are_ fundamentally in the business of doing database queries and updates, not telecommunications. They're even easier for new competitive phone companies than for the old monopolies, because they don't have an embedded base of antique data structures. An initial call to someone might not be easily traced in near-real-time, unless the recipient was a usual suspect set up for it, because that's backwards from the normal database structures. But once you've done the medium or hard work to identify the source of the call after the fact, and gotten lucky by finding it was from a phone card company in your country, setting up a forward trace for future calls from that company shouldn't be very difficult. It's the kind of feature that might only be useful to police and other stalkers, but maybe the phone company had operational reasons for building it, and it looks for data in the Simple Matter of Programming direction, not the Huge Difficult Sieve Through Everything direction. Bill Stewart
Re: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
At 7:51 PM +0100 3/26/04, Thomas Shaddack wrote: I strongly suspect the usage logs exist for individual cards, allowing to back-trace the phonecalls done with the given card, thus tracing the identity of the card's owner by the call patterns. Of course. How do you think they caught the Oklahoma City bombers? :-). Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards
Nichols was dumb enough to actually be caught in possession of a card used in at last part of the conspiracy. Other cards that seem to be linked to Nichols were used to locate or obtain ANFO and call the rental agency for the Ryder truck as well as other numbers linked to the crime. That is public knowledge at this point. Clearly, logs are available to law enforcement vis-a-vis pre-paid calling cards when they wish to use them. Given the time between the bombing and the capture of at least one of the cards (3-4 days) I suspect those logs are available for at least a few days. Given that the prosecutors claim to be able to link the ANFO purchase via calling cards it is probably a lot longer. What is confusing are the reports that the calling card (or one of them) bore the name Daryl Bridges. Pre-paid cards don't have names imprinted on them. They would have to have a spot to write them in deliberately. I haven't seen this on any and why would anyone (particularly as part of a criminal conspiracy) do such a thing? Keeping calling cards from leaking information probably isn't possible. Limiting the information leaked to that which is already known or is useless is probably the best bet. Using separate cards for separate operations / cells and immediate disposal seems pretty critical. Note something else, however. I haven't heard of any instances of real time calling card interception. One was described here on the list but that presupposes that a degree of surveillance already exists around the subject. All bets are pretty much off in that event. Calling cards are after the fact evidence, not preventative evidence. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of R. A. Hettinga Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 7:10 PM To: Thomas Shaddack; Cypherpunks Subject: Re: Anonymity of prepaid phone chip-cards At 7:51 PM +0100 3/26/04, Thomas Shaddack wrote: I strongly suspect the usage logs exist for individual cards, allowing to back-trace the phonecalls done with the given card, thus tracing the identity of the card's owner by the call patterns. Of course. How do you think they caught the Oklahoma City bombers?
