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The Unlikely Effort To Build a Clandestine Cell Phone Network
Lashdots writes: Electronic surveillance has raised concerns among Americans and pushed an estimated 30% of them to protect their privacy in some form. Artist Curtis Wallen has taken that effort to dramatic lengths, documenting how to create a "clandestine communications network" using pre-paid phones, Tor, Twitter, and encryption. The approach, which attempts to conceal any encryption that could raise suspicions, is "very passive" says Wallen, so "there's hardly any trace that an interaction even happened." This is not easy, of course. In fact, as he discovered while researching faulty CIA security practices, it's really, comically hard. "If the CIA can't even keep from getting betrayed by their cell phones, what chance do we have?" he says. Still, he believes his system could theoretically keep users' activities hidden, and while it's hard, it's not impossible.
honeypot.
Here in Australia
I've heard that things like privacy and freedom are hard to come by in Australia.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's perfectly compatible, search is not supposed to be secret. If they serve you a search warrant for you phone they should be able to go clone it etc and attempt to penetrate the crypto all they want.
No sir I dont like it.
How is that compatible with the construct of a free and open society based on the rule of law, which has allowances for "search" of a person's private effects?
Short of a Judge's orders in a particular ongoing investigation and/or court case, there is no obligation on the part of citizens to create/store/retrieve their papers/data and effects so as to make a search easier. Or even possible.
If I and someone else creates a language only we understand and converse over the telephone, we are not obligated to teach any TLAs/LEAs that are recording/monitoring how to understand our new language.
Any such requirement would likely fail court challenges due to it's prior-restraint nature.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
They're merely reclaiming their heritage as a penal colony.
Yes, the SIM can be changed, and that will change the phone number, but the phones are encoded with a IMEI number, which is like a serial number unique to each phone. The IMEI number is tranmitted to the cell towers and is how the cell providers track what kind of phone you have and other details.
The Feds have made it a FELONY to change the IMEI number of the phone, so even if you have the expensive equipment to do it, they've made it hard to get and illegal to use. This is how many organized theft rings would wipe a phone, they would change the IMEI number from the stolen phone, to either a generic IMEI number, or a legit IMEI number so the phone can't be de-activated on the cell network.
The cell phone companies use the IMEI (ESN) number for several purposes, one of them is to flag stolen phones and de-activate them on the cell network. You could change the SIM, but if the IMEI number has been reported stolen, and flagged in the DB, then the phone won't be allowed on the carrier's network. The other use the cell providers use the IMEI number is to know what phone you have. For instance, ATT requires all smart phones to purchase a data plan for it (even if you only wish to use data over wifi). If you activate ANY smart phone on their network, if you don't have a data plan for it, they will detect it and add a data plan to your account. They detect whether it is a smart phone by the IMEI number on the network.
I looked into this as I wanted to give my teen my old smart phone, but didn't want to put data on the plan for it (just calling+txt). I figured the phone was better than a feature phone, cause she could still use it on wifi, plus it holds tons of MP3's and has a nice camera etc. that aren't on feature phones. I looked into the idea of buying a go-phone (so they didn't add data to my plan), and then putting the SIM from the go-phone into my old smart phone to get it cell service. I quickly learned (from reading, not doing), that as soon as the smart phone is seen on the network (regardless of SIM used), they would add data to the plan. Needless to say, she has a go-phone.