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Motorola Is Listening
New submitter pbritt writes "Ben Lincoln was hooking up to Microsoft ActiveSync at work when he 'made an interesting discovery about the Android phone (a Motorola Droid X2) which [he] was using at the time: it was silently sending a considerable amount of sensitive information to Motorola, and to compound the problem, a great deal of it was over an unencrypted HTTP channel.' He found that photos, passwords, and even data about his home screen config were being sent regularly to Motorola's servers. He has screenshots showing much of the data transmission."
The NSA would like to thank Motorola for their cooperation.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"A company that listens to its users"
It's all for "improved customer experience." If they know to whom you're talking, or what pictures you're taking, or what documents you're reading or writing, or where you are at any given moment, they can better tailor their services to fit your needs. I'm surprised this isn't patently obvious. /snark
It seems every device, every internet service, basically every communication node that we use has been turned into something that is beyond George Orwell's worst nightmare. As long as there is continued complacency on the part of people using this technology, the invasion of privacy will continue to grow. This of course assumes that it could get much worse. The only options at this point are to stop or drastically reduce using these networks while we attempt to build our own.
Technically, the Government isn't listening to your phone calls. Google is, then they share with the NSA. Sharing is caring.
Where does the signature go?
This is just Google collecting all of the worlds data, just like they said they were doing to do.
Motorola's future press release will contain something along the line of "It was mistake!?"
I know, that sounds like the lead-in to a joke - but not this time.
In the US, anyway, Congress established quite some time ago that companies had more rights to our personal information than most of us would want them to have. So it's not surprising when we find out the NSA (or whoever) has carte blanche to our information - and also that Congress doesn't grok why we get upset about it.
Europeans ostensibly have much stronger protections in this regard; but it seems to me there's a lot of "wink, wink, nudge nudge" going on over there, and those "protections" are mainly in place so their officials can posture indignantly whenever news like this comes out. In practice I don't think there's much of a difference on either side of the Atlantic.
So what's the big deal about yet another large entity slurping our personal information? Whether they're public or private - according to the folks elected to represent us, we shouldn't be upset about it...
#DeleteChrome
It's a server side social service from motorola,see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoblur
I'm sure they feel they can write anything they want in an EULA, but I can't see how this is legal.
This is actively taking your data for their own purposes, and should be something with criminal penalties.
And Google recently added terms to the permission for the Android keyboard update which wants more access to your personal information -- forcing me to conclude that any device you buy these days is actively working against you, and is best kept in airplane mode as much as possible.
You don't own and control it -- the assholes in marketing do.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You can RELOAD the device's OS with custom ROMs that don't do this crap. If it was discovered Apple does this (and who's to say they don't) what choice have you? And Windows phone? Don't even start.
Part of the reality of "security" is taking responsibility for your own. Security is not a product you can buy. It's not something that other people can do for you (because that's tyranny). It's a personal responsibility and it takes knowledge and understanding to do. Tough luck to all those people who have neither the inclination nor the ability to learn.
This is why you run stock android, or one you built yourself not some blur BS.
"An article you wrote for your personal website has appeared on the main page of both Slashdot and Hacker News, and you were not the submitter in either case."
I haven't logged onto this account in ages, but if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
By any chance is anybody else beginning to, against their own better judgement, stop caring about this type of thing because there seems to be nothing we can do about it?
There is no justifiable excuse for this or prism etc.. etc.. but we are clearly powerless to do anything and I think my mind needs a defence mechanism.
So maybe Apple or Motorola or someone do have a copy of the infamous Rob Ford Smoking Crack video in their archives.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
On November 12, 2011, Trevor Eckhart published a report indicating that Carrier IQ software was capable of recording user keystrokes.
Droid X2 was a Verizon phone so it shouldn't have Carrier IQ on it.
If it was discovered Apple does this (and who's to say they don't)
We know they don't because there are many hundreds of millions of people using Apple devices now, and lots of developers using network proxy monitoring tools in development that see all network traffic from the devices to boot.
Basically if Apple were doing this we would have known long ago, and there would be no shortage of people to shout about it continuously on Slashdot and elsewhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even if this is true, they certainly ought to encrypt it. Don't dropbox, google drive, and skydrive encrypt their transfers?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
What is this crap, and why do they always get it wrong?
Yes, I do want to seamlessly sync my mail, sms and contacts across my devices.
Except none of the solutions proposed really do that well...
(Or maybe I'm not typical, having multiple PCs and mobile devices, including iOS and Android?)
Photos too? Hell, why not. Picasa from Google used to be OK...
But now, after the "success" of FB, it seems that you can't have simple sync solution anymore; everybody is pushing unwanted, privacy-leaking, "social" features down our throats.
Just please fucking stop!
https://whispersystems.org/
Moxie Marlinspike sends his regards.
Good people go to bed earlier.
This. Fight back!
If this is true that Motorola is spying on everything you do, stealing your goddamn IMAP and facebook passwords then sue their asses and press criminal "wiretapping" charges.
Silly consumer, the CFAA only makes more or less anything you do with or to a computer a felony if you aren't a corporation...
These are not the droids you are looking for... Look at the Chinese! Look at the evil Chinese! They're spying on us!
Well, of course they are. But look at it this way:
When the Chinese spy on you, what can they do to you based on the data it gathers?
When the your own government spies on you, what can it do to you based on the data it gathers?
Somehow, I feel safer sending my data to the Chinese...
... and which one has a private fighter jet for its executive (no s)?
Singe capitulard mangeur de fromage
The Burp Suite used by the investigator is a Java tool with a non-FOSS license. Blah.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Of these three...
1. ExxonMobil
2. Verizon
3. Oracle
4. Google
CarrierIQ was scumbag marketing bullshit, and wasn't "required" to be on anything. Since that's your jumping-off point, it's pretty much safe to disregard anything else you've got to say.
Censorship of this subject isn't a winning strategy
No, but modding down idiotic falsehoods works pretty well. (And the poor schmucks who feed you. I suppose I deserve it.)
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/11/googles-3-top-executives-have-8-private-jets/
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
I'm wondering if I get charged for this?
It's a good thing that everyone's on unlimited data plans in the U.S.
so I need a FOIA to restore my backup now?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If I was a criminal I'd be investing in HPT. Homing Pigeon Technology. Which the NSA will have to counter with trained hawk no doubt.
Thank you for your complaint - please remain seated and an NSA agent will be by soon to "assist" you....
Somehow, I feel safer sending my data to the Chinese...
Same reason I'm comfortable using Kaspersky at home - I doubt the FSB gives a damn about me.
[ ] It was the NSA.
[ ] The NSA forced us
[ ] We need this information to make our products suck less
[ ] We have no idea why this is happening, it must be a bug
[ ] Hey, you're not suposed to notice
You forgot "all of the above".
My traffic logs at home show that the Nexus Tablet is by far the most prolific chatter box on the network, some of the traffic was headed to China for some reason, one of the apps pinging home.
*shrug* it's all pretty sketchy now a days.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
No, Google sells your eyeballs. Well, rents them.
Not unless it can put adverts on them. It sells advertising space like newspapers.
I watched a Bill Maher video yesterday in which a conservative politician who clearly believed that cleanliness (and short hair) is next to godliness claimed to believe in "adaptation" but not a certain fish story when confronted by a historically unelectable Canadian politician about whether he believed in antibiotic resistance (in which the evolution of the resistance trait was greatly accelerated by careless overuse).
I actually cut the guy some slack. There's no reason why he can't logically believe in the special theory of evolution (local adaptation) without necessarily believing in the general theory of evolution (the ascent of complexity from primordial origins). To believe in one without the other requires a larger than average mental judgement in between. Unfortunately, he lamely fell back on invoking the missing link. Bzzzzt. Thanks for playing.
Clearly he hasn't checked in with the Out of Africa theory lately, which was speculative until we began to read DNA in the early 1980s with all the proficiency of a clever three year old. Right now we're at about year two of a ten year post-graduate program in speed reading for lifeforms with facet eyes. Things have changed. If there were any region of the globe over the past 10,000 years (or 100,000 years) where the genetic lineage of any species of quadruped (Noah being the patron saint of charismatic megafauna) is constricted to a single breeding pair, we'll surely find it soon on the rising flood of sequence data. Dude groomed for rapture should be worrying about the missing crink, not the missing link.
I can't say I have a higher opinion of "blame the government". It's like blaming calcium for arthritis, on the grounds that sans calcium, arthritis as we know it would no longer exist. The problem here is that calcium is just the implementation. The specification is to have a load bearing structure nimble enough to evade and pursue (aka biosecurity). A large branch of the solution space descends from elbows and kneecaps.
One of the major functions of a large population is agreeing on the threat enough to achieve cohesion in the threat response. This is mirrored in the organism by how the fight/flight response is balanced on a knife edge, and how the hormones that prime this metabolic state also tamps down immune response. Guess what, libertarians, that's a centralized response.
You can discard the implementation (government as we know it), but you can't discard the specification. Unfortunately, contrary to the most vociferous howls, the problems are actually rooted in the specification, not the implementation.
Just like replacing an aging software system, while it's absolutely certain that the worst points of friction in the existing system will go away, new points of friction are extremely likely to take their place, unless you stumble upon the "silver bullet" solution paradigm (social media won't let you down). I tend to be fairly reluctant to stick up my hand when a surgeon promises to cure my arthritic knee by lopping off my leg and grafting on a tentacle to replace it. I worry that might bring with it new problems every bit as annoying as the previous problem.
The present state of the NSA and the legislation around it is pretty much an unbroken story since the end of the first world war. (The Germans did not invent Enigma on a fall afternoon in 1939.) I vaguely recall reading in the The Puzzle Palace (or something similar from the same era) that before the U.S. government passes a law preventing secret agencies from spying on American citizens there was already a secret law on the books exempted a certain no such agency from being beholden to any such future law.
Democracy it turns out is a lot like the human immune system. It shuts down on a dime in the presence of an acute threat, as defined by the pulsed secretion of some small gland. Once you get to the place where the small gland sees a lion in every box of Cracker Jack, democracy is reduced to vestigial status, until
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
God is imaginary
which one has a private jumbo jet for its executives:
I'm going to guess "any one that thinks it's worth having". While it's fun to mock companies for having an expensive private jet, it might actually be worth having if the executives need to be physically present in several places quickly, without the delays of security or the risk of missing flights. There are no hubs, layovers, or transfers, and while on board the executive can stay in constant contact with the company without distraction.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Of these three multibillion-dollar corporations, which one has a private jumbo jet for its executives:
1. ExxonMobil
2. Verizon
3. Oracle
4. Google
"Don't be evil"? My ass.
Probably the one that only hires people who know how to count.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Whatever phone you choose, you go to XDA devs website, droidforums, and the like and read to make sure that all the features you want work on the phone you chose. Many ROMs will not be 100% functional except on the device the developer used. I have the Moto Droid 4 with the locked bootloader and no ROM that I can find will operate every piece of hardware properly. One of the ROMs can't make the GPS work, another can't get the camera to work, some are buggy as hell. Just read those forums and make sure it is soemthing you can live without. Personally, I don't want a device that doesn't function at least as well as built. For this reason I have my Droid rooted but it still runs that crappy Motoblur and guess what? The camera works, the GPS works, and I stripped most of the bloatware so the UI isn't laggy. I was trying to uprade ROMs this past January so maybe by now they have finally work the bugs out. Cyanogenmod of any version wasn't fully compatible. I HOPE someone on here can prove me wrong cause I'd love a stripped ROM.
He bought the phone in 2011, before Google completed their purchase of Motorola Mobility, likely before Google even made the offer. Google had nothing to do with putting the spying code into this particular phone.
Correct, but as owners of Motorola Mobility became their responsibility, this information was being sent to Motorola Mobility which has been owned by Google for quite some time, so Google knows about this and continues to allow this privacy violation. You are right that they didn't put it there and they probably (certainly give them the benefit of the doubt) haven't done it since buying Motorola Mobility but that doesn't mean they can ignore the fact that it exists and knowingly allow it to continue.
Having no cell phone would require far more geographic knowledge of where the pay phones are in a given part of town, in case one needs a ride home after the city buses stop running for the night or for the weekend.
But open source prevents this from happening because the source is constantly being looked at!
No, open source doesn't keep it from happening. Providers can stick any cruft in there that they want.
What it does do is make it much more likely to be discovered when some fool DOES stick it in there. Don't be surprised if you hear about a lot more bad stuff found in open source than you do in closed source, as a result. (At least until the bad guys wise up.) Try to find the malware in Microsoft's stuff, for instance. B-)
(Of course this stuff was found with a packet sniffer before anybody found it in the code. So it's an apples-to-oranges comparison and open/closed source has nothing to do with it.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
if some douche stores pictures of his GFs ass on picasa and photobucket, then i hope he gets what he deserves.
I think they used their own money and share it.
The idfa feature has nothing to do with Apple tracking you. It has everything to do with *others* tracking you - or rather, limiting how others track you.
Prior to iOS6, third party apps would access your devices UDID and use it to track your device. There was no way for a user to disable or limit this. In iOS6, Apple shut that down and forced advertisers to use the idfa instead. The idfa is something you as a user can reset or turn off to limit how advertisers track you. The feature is a pure win for user privacy and anyone who claims otherwise is either a complete idiot or thinks his audience is.
Mmmm.. Donuts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O.B.I.T.
Nothing is secure you have to go in with this in mind. There is only secure enough for x.
He was using MotoBlur, so... duh?
As HTC pointed out, they were *required* to install it by the US Networks on all phones the network sell, it was found on most other US phones too . I'll call them 'networks' rather than carriers so you don't mix them up.
What color is the sky in your world, that "the US Networks" are a government agency?
There's legitimate paranoia, and there's being a fucking nutter. See that speck in the distance behind you? That's the line.
lol. good one. wish I had mod points today.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I remember a story just like this a year or so ago and there's even a video on YouTube about it with the "creepy conspiracy music" and everything. Now, a very critical question I had about it but of course it wasn't answered... Is he taking screenshots of the ADB Log as he has his phone plugged in? Or is he logging connections from his home router? And yes, this does matter.