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Speculation On Large-Scale Phone Location Snooping
An anonymous reader recommends a speculative blog entry by Chris Soghoian up on CNet. Soghoian makes a convincing case that the NSA could be using loopholes in the law to gather real-time location information on the mobile phones of millions of people. There is no hard evidence that this is happening, but the blog post sheds light on the dense undergrowth of companies populating the wireless space that could be easy pickings for a National Security Letter with a gag order attached. "While these household names of the telecom industry [AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint] almost certainly helped the government to illegally snoop on their customers, statements by a number of legal experts suggest that collaboration with the NSA may run far deeper into the wireless phone industry. With over 3,000 wireless companies operating in the United States, the majority of industry-aided snooping likely occurs under the radar, with the dirty work being handled by companies that most consumers have never heard of."
Gag orders themselves are not legal:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I can think of no greater service the press performs than to inform the population of a pending trial/investigation.
The right to investigate the government's actions is reserved to the people. Period.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
You jest, but isn't it a little sad that one must be an amateur cryptographer to have some privacy?
that's how i used to view owning a car, but after a while people stopped inviting me to get-togethers...
but seriously, there's relying on your friends when you accidentally leave your phone at home or in the car, and then there's treating your friends as walking pay phones. perhaps it's not as bad as telling people that you quit smoking and then bumming cigarettes off of everyone else. but it's still a pain in the ass trying to reach someone who doesn't have a cellphone.
i guess it all depends on your social life. maybe your friends are cool with it, or maybe you just don't need to use a cellphone very often. but i couldn't live without my cellphone. since getting a cellphone in high school i've lost the ability to remember people's phone numbers. this led to a rather embarrassing situation at the hospital when i couldn't tell the nurse what number to dial to reach my girlfriend.
the NSA could be using loopholes in the law
Why use loopholes when they don't have any qualms about outright breaking the law?
"What would be the motivation for *real-time* tracking of millions of people? "
Urban Planners would like to know.
You don't watch them. You just keep a log.
After a leak occurs, you cross-reference the reporter's path with the paths of everyone that had access to the information. When you find one person who was in the same place as the reporter for a half hour the day before the story broke, chances are you've identified the whistleblower to retaliate against.
Or you pick out whoever your most vocal critic is for the day and find out where their dirty little secrets are. Use whatever you learn to discredit them.
If you need something done, find a random person's secrets and blackmail them.
You need to blackmail someone in particular? They live a perfectly clean life? Find their associates and use (blackmail) them to pressure your target.
I think it's a good idea to assume that anything you post to the internet will be recorded and connected to you.
Even though today (eg my posting as AC) the connection is not possible, it might be in the future. After all, we see today algorithms being used to connect and relate data in ways that have never before even been considered. Who can say that in the future there won't be even cleverer ways of doing this?
And I know that this of course has a chilling effect on your speech; I'm not saying that I think this is OK or a good think etc. I think it's pretty scary, actually. But to be pragmatic, it's probably best to try to play it safe.
TL;DR: Watch what you say on the internet.
Is this because you don't want the NSA to know that you go to KFC, or is it because you don't want the FBI to know that you don't go to Taco Bell?
Just think, every time you borrow a phone, you expose yourself to voice analysis by the NSA.
I wish I had delusions of importance. Or was actually important.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
If you can vote, please vote for Congresscritters and a President who explicitly endorse an end to this bullsh*t.
The point isn't that we all think we're important enough to be spied upon. (OK, maybe some of us do. :-) ) One could just as well argue that only criminals have something to hide, thus, we shouldn't encrypt our data.
The problem is this kind of behavior really shows a disregard for:
As citizens, we need to be naturally suspicious. Our government cannot something we take care of occasionally, when American Idol is not on TV. Rather, we have to constantly watch, and hold our government accountable.
Here we go again. it isn't what they have to hide, it's the things that you don't want to tell people. Just because it's the government *gasp!* it doesn't give them the right to force everyone into revealing what kind of underwear they're wearing. You might not value your privacy and have no problem giving out information, but at what point will you start to have a problem with it? At that point, you're no different than those of us who prefer to give out no unnecessary private information at all. And still, neither group has anything to hide. Does it make sense now?
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Privacy advocate(n): Someone so boring no one would bother spying on them.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
People need to think rationally about this instead of being paranoid. It's entirely possible the NSA or others have this kind of ability, but it's not going to happen through a host of some number of 3,000 obscure wireless companies. As you increase the number of organizations you're dealing with, the risk of exposure reaches 100%.
but i couldn't live without my cellphone.
You know what? I think you would be ok if you didn't have a cell phone.
Can you imagine the scrutiny you'd be inviting to your doorstep if you were the first one to buy a setup like that? Not only that, but look at how difficult it has been to instigate widespread use of PGP -- it's growing (and fast!), especially with more user-friendly interfaces such as Ubuntu's, but the sad reality is that most people really don't care.
I ask the exact same question all the time, and from fellow slashdotters, you'll get a 'hear hear', but from John Q. Public, you're more likely to get a 'I prefer my false sense of security over your privacy rights'. Downright aggravating, I know.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
* GPS (It knows where you are)
* No way to remove battery (You can't turn it off)
* No multitasking/process monitoring without jailbreaking (You can't see what it's doing)
* No video capabilities (You can't record the police-- which is one of the few dangers to the state, these days.)
Interesting that a device so compelling in so many ways is crippled in such specific ways.
Oh, and of course... it's AT&T.
Since when does anyone have the right to call me and expect an answer? Last I checked, the only person who gets to decide this is me, and most of the time I'm not interested in getting calls. Sure, friends sometimes complain that they can't call me whenever the urge takes them, but I point out that the phone is there for *my* convenience, not theirs, and that I'm the one paying for it so I'm the only one that gets to decide how it's used. They know that if they need to contact me, email is far more likely to get a response in a timely fashion than anything else.
Most of the time my cell sits in a desk drawer, powered off. I take it out when I think *I* might have a need for it, not when I think *someone else* might have a need for it. Since those occasions are fairly rare, I spend much of my day blissfully unbothered by people who think they just *have* to call me and interrupt whatever it is that I'm doing, because god knows, whatever they have to say is far more bloody important than whatever it is I'm doing at the time!
Encrypted phones have been available for years, they basically use a sort of VoIP over a data connection to share information. However, that won't help too much because that use would signal you as someone who:
a - is hiding something and
b - has enough money to do so (those things are WAY overpriced, I think they're about USD 1000/piece).
I find it amusing that after 8 years of Bush someone displays mildly unwarranted optimism in thinking that the law is still applied to agencies like the NSA.
These agencies can do a superb job (and have done), but their apparent desire to escape control and oversight suggests that exactly that oversight and control is needed. Disappointing.
You jest, but isn't it a little sad that one must be an amateur cryptographer to have some privacy?
Why? Why is that sad? That has been true, throughout all of history. The more people you interact with, the less privacy you have. The equation has remained the same time immemorial.
That's because Privacy at the levels some seem to think they are entitled to now, is incredibly hard and basically does not work without much diligence.
What we can all be happy with though is the fact that larger amount of interconnected data render us not invisible, but instead anonymous. Yes people CAN track your cell phone, along with tens of thousands and millions of people in the same city. Yes you are watched by a hundred hundred cameras on your way to work. But who cares, because NO ONE can sift through all that data unless they have a very specific purpose, and even then the data is so lossy the value in it is practically nil.
Just look at England, a camera network set up specifically basically to spy on the public. The fact that it has no impact on the crime it was meant to deter and punish means that even when you try to keep the data organized, there is so much that you will fail.
So smile for the camera, because chances are it's the only thing that will ever see you. You are not important enough to watch, and if you were no systems are really good enough to watch you all the time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can't be blackmailed if you have no secrets...
Lets say one day you protest something the government does that you don't like, lawfully exercising your free speech and rights to petition the government for a redress of grievance. Now you have popped up on the government's radar screen. They then go check the voluminous records they have started keeping on every American!
There are millions of laws on the books many of them are complex and hard for the average person to follow. How many of them have you broken and don't even know about it.
All the government has to do now is go back and go through your call logs and other electronic traces with a fine tooth comb looking for one to bust you with.
Your best friend is a member of several environmental groups, one of them the government suspects of environmental terrorism. You were in close proximity to this drug dealer, that mafia guy, some guy who got busted for breaking into homes.
Even though you are a law abiding citizen can you be sure that every single person you ever have come in contact with is, or was as well? That is the true danger of this. Guilt by association or proximity.
I hope this clarifies things for you somewhat...
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Because that's considered polite on our society? I've been in the bathroom when people walked in accidentally before. I survived the experience.
Why is this kind of non-news blogspam being allowed on /.?
"Well, they could do it...." is only acceptable when there is some evidence that "they" are actually doing it.
After all, the author of the blog post could be a child rapists and murder, but there is no evidence he actual is.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.