The fact that this topic is even up for discussion in this day and age pretty much guarantees that my next phone, will be the absolute dumb as a rock variety. It will make calls, it might have rudimentary texting ability, and the battery will most certainly be of the removable flavor.
The only folks who will truly lose out will be the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
They have to promote the idea your data is safe ( which is likely total BS ) so folks will continue to buy their hard/software.
When the trust goes, so do their profits. Make no mistake about it, THAT is their one and only concern. Money is the only motivating factor behind any of the aforementioned companies. Their claims about protecting us from $evil is merely to keep their little profit-makers from going into full panic.
US technology companies are walking a razor's edge right now. One slip, and they're done. If they are found to be cooperating ( willingly or otherwise ) with the government on expanding the surveillance state, the public backlash ( and refusal to utilize their product ) will likely bring about the end of the company in a hurry. The trust in these companies is already very, very thin. ( Already gone for many of us ) A slight push is all it will take for the general public to lose faith in them completely and that's the risk they have to consider.
Once the trust is gone, so are any potential profits. May as well shut the lights off.
The CEO's of these companies had best understand that their entire existence is on the line here. An awfully big gamble to take if they decide to play ball with the government. All it would take is for another whistle blower to divulge some more dirty little secrets ( and we all know how good the Government is at keeping data safe:| ) and that would be the end-game.
Are you really willing to put your life's work on the line for something that you KNOW will be illegally abused in the future ?
Who do you think the people will hold responsible ? The Government or your company ? Who stands to lose the most from this deal if it becomes known ?
I believe the leadership of this country are the ones failing to understand " the fundamental lessons of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 ".
That lesson being: Quit trying to force your will on the rest of the world. Regime changes to install US friendly governments tend to piss a lot of people off. Maybe the leadership should take a good look at our foreign policy and realize " The more we intervene in the Middle East, the greater the likelihood of retaliatory action. " ( Retaliatory action. See entry: Planes flying into buildings )
The short version: Don't want to worry about terrorism ? Quit bombing shit.
I also don't think our leadership understands that they are the only ones truly afraid of a terrorist attack against this country. Most of us realize the odds are right up there with winning the lotto, so we don't tend to put a lot of concern into the matter. To be honest, I am far, FAR more concerned with our own Governments behavior and Law Enforcement than I am any potential terrorists.
As for any actual terrorists, you guys are targeting the wrong folks. Blowing up people who have zero say so in the decision making process is a complete waste of everyone's time. It may make the news for a day or two, vanish just as quickly and absolutely nothing will have changed. Put some thought into what you're doing and weigh the likely outcome vs what you hope to achieve.
Only law enforcement and / or the government can afford the good toys. When have you EVER seen an off the shelf radio system with decent encryption and on the fly rekeying abilities ? Yeah, me either.
Just be mindful the channel is open and be selective in what you say. In fact, knowing you're transmitting in the clear AND knowing they're listening to it can be very useful if you say the right things.
As for AR prices, an Acog optic will set you back $1500. Very easy to get to $3k when you start swapping in high-quality ( read that accurate ) parts. Add on a decent lighting system, a tax stamp or two and maybe a suppressor and you'll be shocked at how much you just spent.
It's interesting how many posts belittle the folks in question. Yet, you should realize that sometimes the other side just refuses to take no for an answer and diplomacy just doesn't work.
I belive this country was born of the same " weekend warriors " who finally had enough of the Crowns bullshit those many years ago.
You either stand up for your beliefs, ( right or wrong ) or stand aside as those with power crush them for you.
One of the reasons schools aren't year round here is because AC is quite expensive to run during the Summer months when it's 105f outside:|
So to save money, they shut off the AC during those months. They save all sorts of $ on electricity, but the heat coupled with the humidity makes a perfect breeding ground for mold.
Is why the school smells so lovely when it starts back up. The cleaning staff has barely had time to bleach everything and wipe it down before everyone comes back.
Want to see some serious shit ? Call OSHA out to inspect a school about a month before it reopens. It's unlikely it will open at all once they've done their thing.
This is only an issue until they make a mistake and arrest the wrong person for a debt that may or may not even exist. ( The courts never make a mistake right ? Like the parking ticket I received in Lubbock, yet have never set foot anywhere near it:| )
Then the police, the city and the company will understand how costly that mistake will be.
There are many millions of folks who believe that both Senate and House salaries are far too high for what they do. Especially for some of the utterly ridiculous ideas and statements they tend to come up with from time to time.
I mean, they don't really NEED $175k per year ( not even going to go into their retirement and other perks ) to pass laws they don't even bother reading do they ?
We really need a better method of determining who will make decisions for this country. The one with the most money to throw at a campaign or the winner of the popularity contest really isn't turning out so well these days. The state of our economy is good evidence of this.
Chuckle. Perhaps we should mandate a very specific PH.D degree plan that would be required for all those who wish to lead this country. Prove they actually have the snap to handle the job and the intellect to understand it in the first place. At least we would be able to select a qualified candidate if we forced the education requirements upon them.
Everyone also knows that those who built the phones intentionally made it so we cannot disable that little "feature" without rendering the device inoperable.
Since we have no means of disabling it, other protections must be in place to safeguard the data. Thus, just flashing a badge or a NSL isn't sufficient. ( nor lucrative government contract deals )
Target a specific device with a warrant and few will have any issues with it. ( other than the government )
Keep up the mass surveillance and this house of cards you've built is going to come crashing down on you once American products are blacklisted due to being untrustworthy.
Considering a previous report that the TSA has a tendency to miss 95% of weapons that subjects brought with them to " test " the TSA's effectiveness
and
Considering the odds of your firearm going missing when you jump through all the hoops to transport one properly thanks to the airlines basically being the equivalent of a modern day thieves guild.
( The folks at the airport managed to cut off one of my locks on the Pelican Case I was using to transport mine. They only stopped presumably because the remaining lock was sporting one of the TSA Hologram stickers that effectively says "We've inspected it, it's definitely a firearm. Don't open it. " )
The odds for keeping your firearm from going missing are better if you just pack it in your carry on apparently:D
Providers can accommodate the letter of your request by redefining "the programming" as a single act of the play (or screenplay or teleplay), or what would become a single chapter of the DVD, or the like, and then deeming a whole movie to become a playlist of several such "programmings". Would that satisfy you?
It would not. The same practice under a different name would just put the final nail in their own coffin.
Can you imagine how much the movie industry would suffer if they stopped the film every fifteen minutes so they can feed you ads about what medications you should be asking your doctor about ? Or why driving a $manly-vehicle in $state is manly ? No one would go. The movie industry would implode overnight.
If television wanted to emulate the movie approach where they set aside the advertising block ahead of the main show, I would be cool with that. Or, they could do it at the end of the show. Would be cool with that too.
Sprinkled within the show every ten minutes or so ? Not so much.
Cable and satellite doesn't insert the commercials, the network does. They just broadcast what the network gives them.
Do you guys even fucking understand basic shit?
Who inserts it is irrelevant. The point remains the same without going into micro-detail about how the damn thing works.
You want to remain a player in this game ? Then you had best rethink your strategy. I don't CARE who inserts the commercials because unless you do something about it, more and more people will move to the providers who do not.
Dunno about your company, but mine is pretty adamant about letting you know that "The use of this computer system and / or network is subject to monitoring at all times" and that, by utilizing it, you consent to such monitoring. It's pretty much the gist of the login banner every morning. It's also present in every single device I log into throughout the day.
If you want to talk to your $person via IM, do it with your own device. Don't use company assets to do it with. Even if you get clever and encrypt the messages, they won't find it amusing and will probably just fire you. Corporate security doesn't like to come across emails and / or messages they can't read.
To be honest, no matter how much they claim the inability to break or bypass smartphone encryption, I can't bring myself to believe it.
All this posturing and publicity designed to push the idea that they're currently incapable of obtaining the contents of any targeted phone is very likely just bullshit.
I treat my phone as if it is fully compromised. No apps loaded, never log into any website that requires a login, don't check email with it. If I ever snap, you can be sure my Evil Plan won't reside on my phone. . . lol
No matter how much Apple / Google or even the Government claim otherwise, I will never put enough trust into their products to use them as they are intended.
My next phone will very likely be a simple flip phone. Dumb as a rock and does one thing: makes calls.
We've had precision guided nuclear capable weapons systems for years. Just to pick one ( since it was my particular specialty for years ): the Tomahawk Cruise Missile.
The Block III variant came in four fantastic standard flavors that could be ship, air and even sub-surface launched:
109A - Nuclear Tipped with a W-80 Warhead. Dial-a-yield of 5kt or 150kt. ( Google the W-80 for more info ) 109B - Anti-ship flavor. Conventional warhead. 109C - Land-attack flavor. Conventional warhead. 109D - Land-attack flavor, sub-munitions dispensing warhead.
This is just the Tomahawk. I haven't kept up with the other cruise missile variants, gravity or guided smart-bombs, or even the advances ( if any ) in the ballistic missile platforms.
So, I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss is about since we've had selective yield weapons since at least the late 70's. Personally, since there is no putting the genie back in the bottle, I would prefer a much smaller yield high precision device over the city-flattening strategic overkill ones that defined the Cold War era.
Folks may argue that the desire to use them would increase since they're not as terrible as their strategic brethren, but some of these weapons are older than many of the folks reading this and have had this capability the entire time. Yet, we haven't been tossing them around en-masse during our many, many conflicts around the world over the years. Unlikely we're going to start now.
A wired solution that reported "everything is ok!" if you cut the wires or the power went out would be equally stupid.
A good wired solution would use supervised alarm circuits. These have a resistors incorporated into the circuit, usually one in series and one parallel.
In this manner cutting the wires would produce a true open. Twisting the wires together would show a true closed. In normal operation neither of those two conditions would exist.
In addition, some wired systems actually send pulses or heartbeat style data packets to the supervisory system. Coupled with your resistance setup, tampering with the wiring would be rather difficult indeed.
The bigger problem is relying on a security system that can be disabled by snipping a cable either in front of the house or several houses down (for example the cable box in front of my house serves 4 houses). Now, I don't know the current details on Xfinity home - cutting the cable line may well still allow the alarm to activate. But it certainly isn't going to notify anyone (Comcast's monitoring office, the police, the home owner) that there was a break in. Other systems use (for example) Verizon's cell network to report so that they cannot be disabled so easily.
Cutting the broadband cable won't do anything for you.
The Xfinity flavor ( as well as most others ) contain a cellular backup within the unit to utilize in the event the broadband connection dies.
Broadband connectivity is determined via periodic heartbeat packets coming and going to the monitoring system.
So, while you can cut the cable, you'll also need a cellular jammer based on whatever flavor of cellular they're utilizing. Most homes using this level of alarm tech aren't worth going through all this trouble to break into to begin with.
Most of the newer alarm system offerings have switched over to wireless sensors vs the old school method of hard-wiring them.
( Hard wire is the way to go, but you really need to do it as the home is being built. Trying to retrofit a wired system after is a major undertaking. )
I'm curious to know if the other vendors using wireless sensors also suffer from the same vulnerabilities as the Xfinity one does. ( ADT, AT&T Digital Life, etc. )
We don't have to live through it. We've seen first hand how well it worked out for all the other countries who went through it over the years. Even had to send troops over to help deal with them. ( See: WWII )
Learning from your own mistakes is expected. Learning from the mistakes of others is what sets folks apart from the average ones.
Slashdot Mirror
is not to play.
The fact that this topic is even up for discussion in this day and age pretty much guarantees that my next phone, will be the absolute dumb as a rock variety. It will make calls, it might have rudimentary texting ability, and the battery will most certainly be of the removable flavor.
The only folks who will truly lose out will be the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
They have to promote the idea your data is safe ( which is likely total BS ) so folks will continue to buy their hard/software.
When the trust goes, so do their profits. Make no mistake about it, THAT is their one and only concern. Money is the only motivating factor behind any of the aforementioned companies. Their claims about protecting us from $evil is merely to keep their little profit-makers from going into full panic.
Stingrays were originally designed to be used by the military and intelligence agencies.
Note how quickly the slippery slope brought them down to the local law enforcement level where they're using them without a care in the world.
Apparently FBI NDA's trump Constitutional Rights these days. :|
It has quite a lot to do with public perception.
US technology companies are walking a razor's edge right now. One slip, and they're done. If they are found to be cooperating ( willingly or otherwise ) with the government on expanding the surveillance state, the public backlash ( and refusal to utilize their product ) will likely bring about the end of the company in a hurry. The trust in these companies is already very, very thin. ( Already gone for many of us ) A slight push is all it will take for the general public to lose faith in them completely and that's the risk they have to consider.
Once the trust is gone, so are any potential profits. May as well shut the lights off.
The CEO's of these companies had best understand that their entire existence is on the line here. An awfully big gamble to take if they decide to play ball with the government. All it would take is for another whistle blower to divulge some more dirty little secrets ( and we all know how good the Government is at keeping data safe :| ) and that would be the end-game.
Are you really willing to put your life's work on the line for something that you KNOW will be illegally abused in the future ?
Who do you think the people will hold responsible ? The Government or your company ? Who stands to lose the most from this deal if it becomes known ?
I believe the leadership of this country are the ones failing to understand " the fundamental lessons of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 ".
That lesson being: Quit trying to force your will on the rest of the world. Regime changes to install US friendly governments tend to piss a lot of people off. Maybe the leadership should take a good look at our foreign policy and realize " The more we intervene in the Middle East, the greater the likelihood of retaliatory action. " ( Retaliatory action. See entry: Planes flying into buildings )
The short version: Don't want to worry about terrorism ? Quit bombing shit.
I also don't think our leadership understands that they are the only ones truly afraid of a terrorist attack against this country. Most of us realize the odds are right up there with winning the lotto, so we don't tend to put a lot of concern into the matter. To be honest, I am far, FAR more concerned with our own Governments behavior and Law Enforcement than I am any potential terrorists.
As for any actual terrorists, you guys are targeting the wrong folks. Blowing up people who have zero say so in the decision making process is a complete waste of everyone's time. It may make the news for a day or two, vanish just as quickly and absolutely nothing will have changed. Put some thought into what you're doing and weigh the likely outcome vs what you hope to achieve.
Only law enforcement and / or the government can afford the good toys. When have you EVER seen an off the shelf radio system with decent encryption and on the fly rekeying abilities ? Yeah, me either.
Just be mindful the channel is open and be selective in what you say. In fact, knowing you're transmitting in the clear AND knowing they're listening to it can be very useful if you say the right things.
As for AR prices, an Acog optic will set you back $1500. Very easy to get to $3k when you start swapping in high-quality ( read that accurate ) parts. Add on a decent lighting system, a tax stamp or two and maybe a suppressor and you'll be shocked at how much you just spent.
It's interesting how many posts belittle the folks in question. Yet, you should realize that sometimes the other side just refuses to take no for an answer and diplomacy just doesn't work.
I belive this country was born of the same " weekend warriors " who finally had enough of the Crowns bullshit those many years ago.
You either stand up for your beliefs, ( right or wrong ) or stand aside as those with power crush them for you.
One of the reasons schools aren't year round here is because AC is quite expensive to run during the Summer months when it's 105f outside :|
So to save money, they shut off the AC during those months. They save all sorts of $ on electricity, but the heat coupled with the humidity makes a perfect breeding ground for mold.
Is why the school smells so lovely when it starts back up. The cleaning staff has barely had time to bleach everything and wipe it down before everyone comes back.
Want to see some serious shit ? Call OSHA out to inspect a school about a month before it reopens. It's unlikely it will open at all once they've done their thing.
This is only an issue until they make a mistake and arrest the wrong person for a debt that may or may not even exist. ( The courts never make a mistake right ? Like the parking ticket I received in Lubbock, yet have never set foot anywhere near it :| )
Then the police, the city and the company will understand how costly that mistake will be.
There are many millions of folks who believe that both Senate and House salaries are far too high for what they do. Especially for some of the utterly
ridiculous ideas and statements they tend to come up with from time to time.
I mean, they don't really NEED $175k per year ( not even going to go into their retirement and other perks ) to pass laws they don't even bother reading
do they ?
We really need a better method of determining who will make decisions for this country. The one with the most money to throw at a campaign or the
winner of the popularity contest really isn't turning out so well these days. The state of our economy is good evidence of this.
Chuckle. Perhaps we should mandate a very specific PH.D degree plan that would be required for all those who wish to lead this country. Prove they actually
have the snap to handle the job and the intellect to understand it in the first place. At least we would be able to select a qualified candidate if we forced the
education requirements upon them.
Everyone also knows that those who built the phones intentionally made it so we cannot disable that little "feature" without rendering the device inoperable.
Since we have no means of disabling it, other protections must be in place to safeguard the data. Thus, just flashing a badge or a NSL isn't sufficient. ( nor lucrative government contract deals )
Target a specific device with a warrant and few will have any issues with it. ( other than the government )
Keep up the mass surveillance and this house of cards you've built is going to come crashing down on you once American products are blacklisted due to being untrustworthy.
Considering a previous report that the TSA has a tendency to miss 95% of weapons that subjects brought with them to " test " the TSA's effectiveness
and
Considering the odds of your firearm going missing when you jump through all the hoops to transport one properly thanks to the airlines basically being the equivalent of a modern day thieves guild.
( The folks at the airport managed to cut off one of my locks on the Pelican Case I was using to transport mine. They only stopped presumably because the remaining lock was sporting one of the TSA Hologram stickers that effectively says "We've inspected it, it's definitely a firearm. Don't open it. " )
The odds for keeping your firearm from going missing are better if you just pack it in your carry on apparently :D
Oh there will never be a shortage of overpriced real estate. You can always buy some of that :)
This is the same Verizon who promised FIOS for everyone and failed to deliver on it.
Deeds, Verizon. Not words.
Providers can accommodate the letter of your request by redefining "the programming" as a single act of the play (or screenplay or teleplay), or what would become a single chapter of the DVD, or the like, and then deeming a whole movie to become a playlist of several such "programmings". Would that satisfy you?
It would not. The same practice under a different name would just put the final nail in their own coffin.
Can you imagine how much the movie industry would suffer if they stopped the film every fifteen minutes so they can feed you ads about what medications you should be asking your doctor about ? Or why driving a $manly-vehicle in $state is manly ? No one would go. The movie industry would implode overnight.
If television wanted to emulate the movie approach where they set aside the advertising block ahead of the main show, I would be cool with that. Or, they could do it at the end of the show. Would be cool with that too.
Sprinkled within the show every ten minutes or so ? Not so much.
Cable and satellite doesn't insert the commercials, the network does. They just broadcast what the network gives them.
Do you guys even fucking understand basic shit?
Who inserts it is irrelevant. The point remains the same without going into micro-detail about how the damn thing works.
You want to remain a player in this game ? Then you had best rethink your strategy. I don't CARE who inserts the commercials because unless you do something about it, more and more people will move to the providers who do not.
It really is that simple.
Easy choice.
He who doth not innundate me with commercials will be the one I choose to pay.
The only way I will tolerate commercials is if they are placed at the beginning or the end of the programming. I'm sure many others feel the same.
Cable / Satellite providers: You had best take that last sentence to heart if you wish to remain a choice at all.
Dunno about your company, but mine is pretty adamant about letting you know that "The use of this computer system and / or network is subject to monitoring at all times" and that, by utilizing it, you consent to such monitoring. It's pretty much the gist of the login banner every morning. It's also present in every single device I log into throughout the day.
If you want to talk to your $person via IM, do it with your own device. Don't use company assets to do it with. Even if you get clever and encrypt the messages, they won't find it amusing and will probably just fire you. Corporate security doesn't like to come across emails and / or messages they can't read.
I can see the phone number giving way to an IPV6 addess eventually, but it's not going to transform into some messenger app.
To be honest, no matter how much they claim the inability to break or bypass smartphone encryption, I can't bring myself to believe it.
All this posturing and publicity designed to push the idea that they're currently incapable of obtaining the contents of any targeted phone is very likely just bullshit.
I treat my phone as if it is fully compromised. No apps loaded, never log into any website that requires a login, don't check email with it. If I ever snap, you can be sure my Evil Plan won't reside on my phone. . . lol
No matter how much Apple / Google or even the Government claim otherwise, I will never put enough trust into their products to use them as they are intended.
My next phone will very likely be a simple flip phone. Dumb as a rock and does one thing: makes calls.
We've had precision guided nuclear capable weapons systems for years.
Just to pick one ( since it was my particular specialty for years ): the Tomahawk Cruise Missile.
The Block III variant came in four fantastic standard flavors that could be ship, air and even sub-surface launched:
109A - Nuclear Tipped with a W-80 Warhead. Dial-a-yield of 5kt or 150kt. ( Google the W-80 for more info )
109B - Anti-ship flavor. Conventional warhead.
109C - Land-attack flavor. Conventional warhead.
109D - Land-attack flavor, sub-munitions dispensing warhead.
This is just the Tomahawk. I haven't kept up with the other cruise missile variants, gravity or guided smart-bombs, or even
the advances ( if any ) in the ballistic missile platforms.
So, I'm not entirely sure what all the fuss is about since we've had selective yield weapons since at least the late 70's.
Personally, since there is no putting the genie back in the bottle, I would prefer a much smaller yield high precision device
over the city-flattening strategic overkill ones that defined the Cold War era.
Folks may argue that the desire to use them would increase since they're not as terrible as their strategic brethren, but some
of these weapons are older than many of the folks reading this and have had this capability the entire time. Yet, we haven't been
tossing them around en-masse during our many, many conflicts around the world over the years. Unlikely we're going to start now.
A wired solution that reported "everything is ok!" if you cut the wires or the power went out would be equally stupid.
A good wired solution would use supervised alarm circuits. These have a resistors incorporated into the circuit, usually one in series and one parallel.
In this manner cutting the wires would produce a true open. Twisting the wires together would show a true closed. In normal operation neither of those two conditions would exist.
In addition, some wired systems actually send pulses or heartbeat style data packets to the supervisory system. Coupled with your resistance setup, tampering with the wiring would be rather difficult indeed.
ADT for life
FYI, even ADT has switched to wireless sensor setups. My parents house is outfitted with them.
The bigger problem is relying on a security system that can be disabled by snipping a cable either in front of the house or several houses down (for example the cable box in front of my house serves 4 houses). Now, I don't know the current details on Xfinity home - cutting the cable line may well still allow the alarm to activate. But it certainly isn't going to notify anyone (Comcast's monitoring office, the police, the home owner) that there was a break in. Other systems use (for example) Verizon's cell network to report so that they cannot be disabled so easily.
Cutting the broadband cable won't do anything for you.
The Xfinity flavor ( as well as most others ) contain a cellular backup within the unit to utilize in the event the broadband connection dies.
Broadband connectivity is determined via periodic heartbeat packets coming and going to the monitoring system.
So, while you can cut the cable, you'll also need a cellular jammer based on whatever flavor of cellular they're utilizing. Most homes using this level of alarm tech aren't worth going through all this trouble to break into to begin with.
Most of the newer alarm system offerings have switched over to wireless sensors vs the old school method of hard-wiring them.
( Hard wire is the way to go, but you really need to do it as the home is being built. Trying to retrofit a wired system after is a major undertaking. )
I'm curious to know if the other vendors using wireless sensors also suffer from the same vulnerabilities as the Xfinity one does. ( ADT, AT&T Digital Life, etc. )
Because sending a SWAT team is an appropriate response for flying a model aircraft. . . . :|
This country is a lost cause.
Pssssst
We don't have to live through it. We've seen first hand how well it worked out for all the other countries who went through it over the years. Even had to send troops over to help deal with them. ( See: WWII )
Learning from your own mistakes is expected. Learning from the mistakes of others is what sets folks apart from the average ones.