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Ask Slashdot: How To Bypass Gov't Spying On Cellphones?
First time accepted submitter jarle.aase writes "It's doable today to use a mix of virtual machines, VPN, TOR, encryption (and staying away from certain places; like Google Plus, Facebook, and friends), in order to retain a reasonable degree of privacy. In recent days, even major mainstream on-line magazines have published such information. (Aftenposten, one of the largest newspapers in Norway, had an article yesterday about VPN, Tor and Freenet!) But what about the cell-phone? Technically it's not hard to design a phone that can switch off the GSM transmitter, and use VoIP for calls. VoIP could then go from the device through Wi-Fi and VPN. Some calls may be routed trough PSTN gateways — allowing the agencies to track the other party. But they will not track your location. And they will not track pure, encrypted VoIP calls that traverse trough VPN and use anonymous SIP or XMPP accounts. Android may not be the best software for such a device, as it very eagerly phones home. The same is true for iOS and Windows 8. Actually, I would prefer a non cloud-based mobile OS from a vendor that is not in the PRISM gallery. Does such a device exist yet? Something that runs a relatively safe OS, where GSM can be switched totally off? Something that will only make an outgoing network connection when I ask it to do so?" And in the absence of a perfect solution, what do you do instead? (It's still Android and using the cell network, but Red Phone — open sourced last year — seems like a good start.)
The only way to win is not to play...
Or, buy a new handset and phone number for every call and only pay cash.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I buy a $15 cell phone at Staples. It comes with $10 in minutes. Then I chuck it.
Once you jump through all those loops, who will you be talking to? And if such a person exists, he probably already knows what you are going to say, so why bother calling? :)
The NSA needs to be flooded with false positives. They need to have so many false positives generated that their illegal, unconstitutional spying is rendered moot.
On the other side, we need to surveille every member of Congress and the Executive and have their every move published on a publicly available site. After all, if they have nothing to hide then they shouldn't worry, right?
In a perfect world the President and every member of Congress who signed off on this unconstitutional behavior would be impeached. But I know this is not a perfect world. So instead I will advocate a world where we turn the panopticon on itself and make them suffer three times for what they make us suffer.
Tyrants must always be hoisted on their own petards.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
How about Ubuntu Touch? Linux core, can run VPN, TOR all the other goodies, and being OSS and linux you are free to investigate code and roll you own solutions on top of it.
Silence is a state of mime.
There is absolutely nothing you can do because the government has root for any given phone (if nothing else through a warrant). Own the network and you own anything going through it. Your encryption means jack when their are appliances that do nothing but decrypt and re-encrypt traffic at very high rates of speed. You could get a separate phone just for having private conversations (ala drug dealer). You would quickly find out that they can determine that number (doesn't matter how you got that phone). Once they know that number they can just tap that through the same phone system.
Want some level of privacy and to ensure that the government at least has to get a warrant to read your supposed to be private conversations? Go old school, visit this antique shop called a Post Office and buy a roll of stamps and envelopes. There is well established legal doctrine that says snooping on your mail can only be done with a warrant.
Don't like my answer? Call your congress critter and demand change.
The trick is to hide in plain sight. Most of the time if you seem legit and do nothing obvious you're flying below the radar.
It's waiting for you.
"What makes you worth tracking?"
As the cost of this approaches $0, it's pretty easy to make tracking any given person's life worth more than it costs to do it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I mean, come on, she was just a ballerina/dancer in Hawaii, what did she have to hide from the NSA? Sure, her boyfriend Edward Snowden was involved in government affairs, but just one of a gazillion contractors.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
its like the idiots who think the supermarkets are tracking them personally with the loyalty cards. stores want aggregate data and purchase bundles to do loss leader promotions. they really couldn't care what you buy personally
Bullshit. Careful who you call idiot, lest you look even more the fool.
There are encrypted GSM phones with end-to-end encryption when talking to a similar phone. They're overpriced and hard to buy, but available. The source code is available so you can see how it works. It's classic Diffie-Hellman 4096-bit key exchange to establish a session key, followed by 256-bit AES encryption for the data.
It's too bad OpenMoko tanked. That was a totally open source phone down to the hardware level. That plus Cryptophone-compatible code would have been trustworthy.
It sounds like you want a phone with
No, it sounds like he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about at all.
Example:
" Technically it's not hard to design a phone that can switch off the GSM transmitter, and use VoIP for calls"
I've never seen a phone that wouldn't let you shut off the GSM transmitter, nobody needs to "design" this it's already there.
I can't speak for iPhones or Windows devices, but with Android you can shut off everything associated with cell phone carrier use any time you want, and install any kind of VOIP client you feel like using.
"Android may not be the best software for such a device, as it very eagerly phones home."
Bullshit. There's nothing in the Android OS which phones home or anywhere else. Yes, there are some applications which do it, but you can shut those off. And if you're extra paranoid just go install a custom ROM and don't run the spyware applications.
Funny how a privacy-oriented app like TextSecure (text app from the makers of Red Phone, mentioned in TFS) wants to access my Device ID, SIM serial number, and Subscriber ID...