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Moscow Subway To Use Special Devices To Read Data On Passengers' Phones
dryriver writes "'The head of police for Moscow's subway system has said stations will soon be equipped with devices that can read the data on the mobile telephones of passengers. In the July 29 edition of Izvestia, Moscow Metro police chief Andrei Mokhov said the device would be used to help locate stolen mobile phones. Mokhov said the devices have a range of about 5 meters and can read the SIM card. If the card is on the list of stolen phones, the system automatically sends information to the police. The time and place of the alert can be matched to closed-circuit TV in stations. Izvestia reported that 'according to experts, the devices can be used more widely to follow all passengers without exception.' Mokhov said it was illegal to track a person without permission from the authorities, but that there was no law against tracking the property of a company, such as a SIM card.' What is this all about? Is it really about detecting stolen phones/SIM cards, or is that a convenient 'cover story' for eavesdropping on people's private smartphone data while they wait to ride the subway? Also — if this scheme goes ahead, how long will it be before the U.S., Europe and other territories employ devices that do this, too?"
...pockets. Coming to your next pair of pants.
note to self: When visiting Moscow, pack mylar bags.
The Return of Soviet Russia
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xyfjp3_simpsons-return-of-the-soviet-union_fun
What if the phone is turned off , or if the battery was removed ?
i have no sig
How is this any different from license plate readers tracking where your car goes? Sure it takes special equipment to read your SIM, that takes a special camera. This is public information. Just because you cannot read it with your eyes doesn't make it public. (If you phone happens to answer anyone that asks for it's identity that is public)
It might recover a few phones, it also lets the operator of the device know where everyone is.
As for this being done elsewhere, who says it isn't being done? It is not like they will put up a sign on the doorway saying "we are scanning your SIM cards." This is a little box, does not even take a camera lens to be hidden.
"The head of police for Moscow's subway system..."
He knows NOTHING about technology, but wants to make decisions about it.
As someone said above, electromagnetic signals can be stopped by wrapping a phone with aluminum foil. People would not be able to use their phones on the subway, which is probably not possible anyway unless antennas have been installed in the tunnels.
To say their reasoning is thinly veiled is to say Santa Claus is alive and well at the North Pole. Tracking "stolen" phones not is it about.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
And what happens when a thief steals a phone and plants it in the bag of an unsuspecting commuter?
trains track you
Is it really about detecting stolen phones/SIM cards, or is that a convenient 'cover story' for eavesdropping on people's private smartphone data while they wait to ride the subway?
Why would they bother when they can just force the local cellular providers to let them access this data directly and easily
There will be no secure communication until we, the people, take control of the networks, both wired and wireless. Mesh networks should replace the centralized infrastructures that we use today.
In post-Soviet Russia, trackers run on subway!
How long will it be before the US employs a system like this? Pfft. The US has probably had a system like this in place for a while.
Tracking the SIM is ridiculous for detecting stolen phones. A thief that is not brain dead will turn it off immediately and discard the SIM, if they don't do so already. If you really want to stop mobiles from being stolen, the simple solution is IMEI blocking at phone company level. The IMEI cannot be changed since it is normally written in write-once memory, and it may even be illegal to change. The wikipedia article is super clear in the first lines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Station_Equipment_Identity . A phone blocked at IMEI level is useless since it cannot be used even with a different SIM, so the sale value is almost nil, only valuable for parts. Tracking IMSIs can be used for other purposes, like tracking non-stolen phones or more interesting the owners. The article is quite scant on details, so not a lot can be assumed.
Who is to say that the US is not already using this technology. If not for police surveillance, then in grocery stores to see how many times you walk past the cigarettes before buying Tylenol...
Not sure what this would accomplish... tracking of an individual? The moment the target steps out of the subway, they could track them via cell towers. Read data off the SIM card? Go for it, I don't store any data on my SIM... my phone's internal memory has all the space I need. Also, if I'm a thief, the first thing I do after I steal a phone is remove the battery, and possibly throw away the SIM. What else could they hope to accomplish with such a system?
Well, now it'll be really easy to arrest all those gay people.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cell-Phone-Signal-Blocker-Jammer-Pouch-Case-Handset-Function-Bag-Anti-radiation-/390635594777?pt=US_Cell_Phone_PDA_Cases&hash=item5af3b22419
problem solved.
the casual thief might get caught by this, for a while. .. when I started writing this, I was thinking "SIM cards aren't RFID, are they?" I was wrong. So maybe they're just reading RFID tags?
What's the cost of an RFID-blocking smartphone wallet these days? Passport wallets that advertise RFID blocking are about $20 us or so...
It is probably been in place for some time, and they probably have far more intrusive devices they don't tell you about
I can't wait to see how James Bond gets around this one.
I may be naive, but I was under the impression that SIM cards required electrical contact to interface with. Is there some special trick the Russian's are using, or is there a radio device in Russian SIM cards, or all SIM cards? Or are they co-opting the phone somehow?
It isn't as if they hide each new stage of project 1984. You may have noticed how many new technologies BOAST about their ability to wirelessly connect to near-by receivers. The idea is simple- everything becomes some form of electronic bug.
We, the owner, should be in charge of such functionality, when it operates, and what it is allowed to share, but the trend is in a very different direction. The tiny, highly integrated SoC designs in modern mobile devices are a far cry from the old desktop PC. They are, for a start, vastly more sophisticated- the essential PC architecture hasn't had an overhaul in a decade+ and still does most things through the x86 CPU cores. In comparison, the mobile computer has a mass of powerful dedicated hardware blocks that boost functionality beyond the control of the user.
For their own reasons, Moscow is stating its intent to 'scan' all the devices on the person of all who enter the main station. This smells like security theatre propaganda- those waves of conditioning that gradual adjust how the majority think and act. Putin acts like an ultimate mob boss, and those that cross him don't tend to stay alive for long. But Putin is the opposite of a brute like Stalin. Putin wants the best of both worlds- authoritarian control of the entire empire (and yes, there is a growing Russian empire once again), with a West Europe lifestyle for ordinary citizens. In Russia, it is kinda true that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Why? Because if you have nothing to hide, you are far from being significant enough for Team Putin. Putin already controls the sheeple. It is the people with power/influence that Putin needs to remind to stay on the 'right' side.
In America, where millions of sheeple will willingly install the NSA spy platform, the Xbox One, in their living rooms and children's bedrooms, total surveillance continues at a level beyond anything from Putin's wildest fantasies, or from the history of the USSR. Obviously, when the Russians need it, they also have access to the NSA surveillance database systems (that's the problem with total surveillance- so many people are involved, controlling or limiting access is impossible).
Anyway, if you visit a nation like Russia on business, and don't take precautions to protect your confidential information, you deserve everything that happens to you. The same, of course, applies just as well to the reverse- foreign business people coming to the USA.
Yes, it is illegal to track a person without permission from the authorities, but there is no law against tracking the property of a company, such as a SIM card, and since there is still Soviet law in Russia, there is in fact no property at all except property owned by companies, so no citizen owns any property, and all property is owned by foreign owned companies under laws governing their property, and all people do not own their smartphones, and everything can be tracked on their smartphone. Yes.
is MR. Big Brother to you, my dear tovarich :)
A stolen phone resalable.
Change the IMEI for phones that need it (There was an article here a while back with a number of chinese phones having the *SAME* IMEI and thus cutting... what tens to hundreds of thousands off when the IMEI from one of them was blocked? Since the phone companies worked by SIM ID not IMEI the phones had all worked fine on the network until the IMEI blacklist happened.)
And secondly: Either wiping and reprinting, or simply reprinting the device ID sticker inside the battery case.
While the former may be difficult I'm sure the latter would be well within the abilities of most criminals involved in fencing of stolen cellphones.
Given the shoddy quality of some of the PRODUCTION labels, you might not even be able to tell the difference.
It really doesn't matter whether those Russians want their secret police back or they are genuinely interested only in tracking stolen phones. Either way, this is still old Russia once again: promising cutting-edge technology be designed, built, and massively deployed for a purpose that >99% of people will never see for themselves. At least if somebody figures it out the system doesn't actually exist, they're a criminal that isn't going to want to speak up for fear of giving away their criminal behavior. They used to have to make the ones who notice...disappear.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
I couldn't understand from TFA what information can this device retrieve that the operator antennas could not retrieve already?
It looks more like an excuse to give money to some company that provides a redundant service...
All you need to track a phone is the ability to spoof a tower such as a microcell while the direct connection is broken by being underground. Easly captured is the phone's electronic serial number along with the info from the SIM card such as the subscriber number and user's mobile number.
FUD may indicate you can read all this, with photos, texts, contact lists, etc. You can't read memory with the memory powered off. Some phones do remain on even when turned off as evidenced by iPhone roaming charges on cruise ships while off and stored in luggage. This is an exception to normal off is off for phones.
The truth shall set you free!
"People do not wrap their phones in tinfoil."
Obviously, they can, and that prevents the usefulness of that method of spying.
So i guess you are not allowed to own your own phone.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Moscow Subway doesn't plan to "read data on passangers' phones". They are simply setting up femtocells to report if a phone with a flagged number comes close. So if someone steals a phone from you on the subway (happens all the time :( ) you simply need to inform station personnel and police would have a chance to catch a thief.
Technically, it can be used for tracking. But why bother? Cell phone companies must provide tracking records to law enforcement on request anyway.
This has nothing at all to do with tracking political dissidents or LGBT activists.
We don't spy on people, we only read the contents of computers and cell phones. We don't track people we only trace IP addresses, browsers and SIM cards and license plates.
accept ALL interference. Including "lost my iphone" broadcasts. Russians are such rank amateurs. In soviet america we do as we please! at least our government does, anyway.
It is easier to NOT steal something than it is TO steal something.
Besides... go get yourself arrested for NOT stealing a mobile phone.
People: don't steal. Really. It's not that hard to not do.
Wait. The U.S. isn't doing this already?
No, they don't have a gadget which can read my SIM card inside my phone.
They can monitor the phone communications to determine the IMEI, but there ain't no "SIM card scanner".
Problem solved.
Yes, the power switch is more effective. However, some phones may not actually stop transmitting until the battery is removed.
My point, which I didn't make effectively, is that it is easy to avoid transmission of electromagnetic energy.
"Totally ineffective." When the reception is extremely poor, GSM phones cannot find a provider and stop frequent transmission.
...is anyone else disturbed that the Moscow subway system has/needs its own police department? Just how bad is the crime there, anyway?
I never done it but I assume that if I were going to use a stolen phone, I would probably use a different sim card. Otherwise, they would call the numbers that showed up on their phone bill. Also, if it's reading the sim card because it's illegal to track phones does that mean it's using the phone as a transmitter? If it's not and querying the sim directly, it probably wouldn't matter if the phone was off or not.
This is only done for our safety. Our government is only doing what's good for us.
Moscow is in Europe, so it would already be "Europe" employing these devices. In the EU this would definitely be very illegal, but unfortunately Russia isn't in the EU. It is under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights though, who I assume would have some strong words to say about it.
Just take the battery out of your phone while on the subway. Those sims don't send or receive if they don't have power. Now in the case of an iphone SORRY but you better own it before getting on the subway.
So, is it becoming time to turn into Reg the Blank or Tyler Durden and start burning the whole shit to the ground?
There is no free society any more, there is no anonymity.
FTW
However most receivers are also transmitters and pretty much all computers are. Ever hear of TEMPEST?
In Soviet Russia, train catches YOU!
They didn't track down santa through his cellphone, while sending a drone nuking his elfy-base?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..