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Best Handset For Freedom?
Father Thomas Dowd writes "The images we are seeing of Iran are being captured on cell phones and the text is being twittered over SMS. Still, the government has some control over the networks, and we are all familiar with fears of wiretap technologies to spy on users. If the cell phone is the new tool of freedom, what would the best 'freedom handset' contain? I'm thinking of a device with an open OS, where each phone could be a router for encrypted messages passed through Bluetooth/WiFi/whatever, thereby totally bypassing physical infrastructures when necessary. Of course, some sort of plausible deniability encryption a la Truecrypt would also be good, in case the secret police catch you with your phone. What else might we need?"
First off, no commercial phone will come with encryption or any sort of privacy option. This means that you will either need add-on applications, or the ability to tweak the OS.
Secondly, you need an OS you can audit. This rules out BlackBerry, iPhone, and the Nokia N line. Realistically, you're going to end up with a Linux phone.
Thirdly, you need one that is well documented, with a vibrant developer and user community.
With these criteria, I can recommend the T-Mobile G1. I compiled my own OS image, I can run whatever I want (I encrypt ALL data, messages, and calls), and none of it shared with the telcos or the government (one and the same at this point).
So you get it designed and manufactured and all that fun stuff.... you still need it approved by the government to use on a wireless network. How are you going to get around that "roadblock" to freedom? Some backwater country like Iran can say that in order to use it in the country it needs to have an approved "supreme commander shut off switch".
But consider what would happen if the secret police catch an Iranian rioter with a FreeRunner. For me it might be better to carry a cheap commodity dumb phone. For secure communication use a simple voice code committed to memory. Send messages by voice or SMS. Relay through an innocent cutout. Somebody who you legitimately would talk to, but who can't be easily be pulled in for questioning.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Actually its pretty easy to tap.. and even easier to decode ( 1-to-1 relation between the waves captured and the audio transmitted)
Some of us believe freedom is worth risking our lives for. If you want to jump at shadows, that's your business, just make sure you don't try to trample my rights in the process. I'm far more afraid of our own government than terrorism.
We've had enemies for decades. Sometimes, one will get through.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
as much as I hate to say it, also in light of the happenings in Iran:
Probably the freest kind of cell phone you could have, which the Iranian people do not seem to have, is any cell phone securely taped to a Smith & Wesson.
Of course, some sort of plausible deniability encryption a la Truecrypt would also be good, in case the secret police catch you with your phone.
"We have ways of making you talk."
Plausible denial means nothing to the guy with a set of alligator clips, an old-school inverter and a honking big battery.
The real spy hates spy tech.
Each additional layer of complication introduces new risks. If he can send a message in the clear he will. What he really needs is a method or a system so familiar and mundane that no one gives it a second thought.
As a dissident, the better choice would probably be a stolen phone! Going to jail for stealing a phone will get you simple prison time and probably a beating or two. Going to jail for spying and sending videos to Western Agents could get you disappeared. Having an openmoko phone would be highly suspicious from a technology point of view (although it would probably be easy enough to hide stuff in from a bunch of police thugs.)
John
These are the governments who put taps on undersea cables. They have the best and brightest people working to hide their communcations while at the same time discover the other guy's covert communications. Iran is making nukes. You think they (or the countries that support them) can't build a receiver? Hell, I have a cell phone jammer from China and I'm nobody.
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3589/us-iraq-lie.html
(not the best site but it will do)
It worked for the first US attack on Iraq.
The fake WMDs stories worked for the second US attack on Iraq.
It shouldn't be the least bit surprising that the US is once again up to the same old shit - just the technology has been upgraded.
The regime they were rebelling against had less technology and ability to coordinate response, too. If only one side is advancing, the balance shifts in favor of that side.
There's plenty of useful news that's been reported there, but most of it hasn't been picked up by any of the major TV news outlets that I've seen. They are more interested in putting up compelling (or confusing) video from the scene than anything else. The NY Times has been following a lot of the non-traditional sources (Twitter, et al.) and culling real news from them on their own blog that's been updated frequently every day.
Known orbit, easily blinded by sufficiently powerful laser.
One that hath name thou can not otter
There are three parts to security: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability, C.I.A. If the C part is most important, then a netbook with encryption and OS on removable storage makes sense. Availability isn't so good because you can't leave it on all the time to receive messages. Once the revolution has started, availability is more important because the government will be trying to shut down networks, and there is the element of hiding in plain sight if there are a hundred thousand other people in the crowd. In that case, adapt your plans to whatever communications you have left.
If the "secret police" catch you, the fucking last thing to worry about is "plausible deniability". This isn't the White House, or the Senate. You don't get your "phone call". If the secret police catch you, you suffer. No trial, no evidence, no representation. Worrying about hiding stuff on a phone is moot. Just be glad if you are released alive.
Not today it doesn't. Who in this scenario is the puppet of the US elite?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
And prepaid cards. For the love of God, don't forget to limit yourself to PREPAID cards. And, needless to say, buy them in reasonable quantities, not too large so the store clerk remembers you, not too small so they have 20 datapoints (shop locations) giving away your location. Buy them in different stores, but make sure your home is not right in the middle of those shop locations. Preferably limit yourself to shops lying in a single direction. Do not recharge the cards if you can avoid it. Communicate using SMS and keep that phone OFF except in secure locations (and the most secure location is within a crowd, say, in a movie theater). Preferably remove the battery alltogether. SMS'es will arive within a few seconds from turning on the phone, so turn it on in a crowd, receive the sms'es, send a response if necessary and turn it back off.
Oh and, pay them cash. Long live cash for anonymity. Don't carry identification, even if that's illegal.
Don't use an open source phone. There are so few they give search parties an easy reference point. The more popular the handset, the better. If you have a friend in the phone selling business, ask for the idiot's phone. Buy secondhand, and buy a new handset (with a new, unpredictable IMEI number) regularly. Sell the old one back, because if they are sold again, the buyer will present the authorities with an easy to find, but wrong, target. There are literally thousands of secondhand phone shops in Teheran, and none of those will bother to remember their customers. Especially street stands are good.
Make sure you have another, regular phone, so that you have the option of dropping your "dissident phone" in a bin, without a search party wondering "hey why don't you have a phone". And carry some sort of hat and glasses, you'd be amazed how much they change your appearance, and it only takes 5 seconds to put them up.
And if I were in Iran. I'd put on the women's police uniform with some 20 friends, those black clothes, they make you very hard to identify, and you can't really see if it's a man or woman inside, and attack isolated police officers in those clothes.
You have got to be kidding me."Freedom Handset"?
If people really want to change the situation they are in, they will find a way to communicate their ideas.
The message is so much more important than the medium used to pass the message.
The more "security features" you add to a device, the more difficult it is for the message to get out. You have to have a device to send your encoded messages, and whomever you are trying to communicate with needs a device to receive that message.
I would think that the less complicated you can make the delivery of the message, the better the chance of your message making it to the people that you want to hear it.
The real "Freedom Handset" should be a Bull-Horn.
They call us sheeple, I wonder why?