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Carrier IQ Responds To FBI Drama, EFF Wants More Information
New submitter realized writes "Yesterday Carrier IQ released a report (PDF) which tries to answer some questions about how their system operates. Also, after reports of the FBI using Carrier IQ data, the company responded by saying, 'Carrier IQ has never provided any data to the FBI. If approached by a law enforcement agency, we would refer them to the network operators.' Additionally, the EFF just released a report which says they believe keystroke data 'is in fact being inadvertently transmitted to some third parties,' but they would like to study carrier profiles to verify information."
Reader Trailrunner7 adds that Carrier IQ's report indicates "under some limited circumstances its software will log the contents of SMS messages sent to a user's phone, but that that the contents of those messages would not be human readable. Instead, they would be in an encoded form that could not be decoded without special software and the carriers don't have access to the contents of the messages either. The company said it has worked on a fix for the bug, which affected devices running the embedded version of the Carrier IQ agent."
The fix is to not install spyware on the phones in the first place. How hard is this to understand?
Instead, they would be in an encoded form that could not be decoded without special software and the carriers don't have access to the contents of the messages either.
Yeah, first they say they don't sniff your traffic, then they say this, then that, then they pull the "not without our secret magic decoder ring" argument. If they are working with government agencies to use this software (and it may not be the FBI), they wouldn't even have the ability to admit to it- those kinds of agreements require the company to deny everything in perpetuity.
First thing this new year, I'm migrating my phone over to cyanogenmod. I'd do it now, but I just don't have the time.
And we give you more shiny toys...
All the better to track you my dearie!
And we give you better airport security...
All the better to control you my dearie!
And we give you more in store free membership cards...
All the better to know your every purchasing move my dearie!
And we give you more places to report SSNs...
All for the illusion of importance and identification my dearie
And we give you traffic and overhead cameras...
All the better to make sure your driving safe dearie!
And we give you more more social networks...
All the better to keep you and our friends close, so we can keep you our enemy closer!
And we give you internet shaping and monitoring...
All the better to provide better content delivery my dearie!
And we give you more child porn laws and content ratings...
All the better to protect your eyes my dearie!
And we give you more drug laws and consensual restrictions...
All the better to keep you safe my dearie!
And we invade other countries and install governments...
All the better to ensure your security my dearie!
And I give you the slow erosion of all that is personal responsibility, hard work, civil liberties, freedoms, independence, free speech, and everything America ever once strived at standing for...
All the better to own you my dearie!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Apple has said that they are almost done using Carrier IQ for other methods of data collection.
http://allthingsd.com/20111201/apple-we-stopped-supporting-carrieriq-with-ios-5/
The quote is:
“We stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.”
And for the Fanboys out there I say Other methods since they will still get "diagnostic data sent to them".
I read the CIQ pdf, and the part I was most impressed with was the service quality heatmaps. It would be great if the carriers made (or were required to make) this data available. This would make it much easier to evaluate a carrier in your actual area. Instead the carriers just release vague maps that show that nearly the entire US is green. Clearly they have the data.
One thing that's bothered me about all this:
Google's street-view car inadvertently logs SSID broadcasts, which are transmitted in the clear. They 'fess up and get washed and hung out to dry. Threats from governments, demands that they turn over the data, investigations galore.
CarrierIQ sends your text messages and keypresses and location information (including your typed passwords) to various third parties including the FBI and carriers... and nothing. A handful of small entities are "seeking suit" against the company.
Where's the outrage? You'd think that CarrierIQ only affects geeks.
I've got the iPhone, how do I crib smother this Carrier IQ parasite?
Next time you drive across a bridge, toss it out the window.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Carriers don't have access to the contents of the [SMS] messages." Then how the hell do they get them to my phone in a human-readable format?
This seems to be the point everyone is missing in all this. The carrier doesn't need spyware to spy on you, THEY ALREADY SEE ALL YOUR STUFF IN PLAIN TEXT. It's not like ATT needs a warrant to open up their own network and take a look around. Nor does verizon need federal permission to log, through their data proxy, every address you ever visit, for how long and using what protocols. In point of fact, current federal law requires these companies to store this information, for a very long time.
What exactly do people think CIQ can tell the carrier that they don't already know? The pathetic answer is, real world network performance diagnostic data. Which is just about the ONLY thing the carrier doesn't already know about your handset.
Step 1: Buy a Nexus phone.
There is no step two.
FTFY.
There's nothing to turn off on my Android... CarrierIQ isn't even installed... wasn't installed from the beginning. So.. who has the spyware riddle device now? The iPhone which actually has the software installed, or the Android where it isn't? Hmmmmm