It's not just iPhones that record vast amount of data that can be easily geo-located and reconstruct person's movements, networks, and personal communication - any cell phone going back 15 years stores data through log files, message and SMS traffic that can be reconstructed and retrieved to create pretty comprehensive profiles of usage and location. Devices that do forensic extraction (UFED) are quite widespread and in use throughout police forces intelligence agencies as well as most cellular carriers around the world. For those of you for whom this is a revelation, I'd advise you to take a look at this website of a leading provider of UFEDs. There are some interesting videos, and once you're done, take a look at where this company has it's permanent representatives. http://www.cellebrite.com/forensic-products/ufed-physical-pro.html Time for a reality check. Mobile phones are essentially digital dogtags so if you're concerned about the ability they have to track your movements and communications - do like Osama, use exclusively off-line means through trusted intermediaries. Otherwise accepting that cell phones are a risk to privacy is just the flip side of the convenience that these devices bring. With or without Apple networks are essentially spiderwebs - that's the essence of modern signals intelligence. It's worrisome that there are a lot of myths among the activist community about cell phone security. True, you can "drive up the negatives" and make it more difficult for a casual actor to scan or obtain PII from your phone ( so I I agree with Nathan) - but if you're up against well resourced opponents, most of these tools plain ineffective and their very presence on your phone may be more of a giveaway that actually makes you more of a a target of interest. Unfortunately security is not a product or something you can buy shrink-wrapped in code. Its practice and process and ultimately comes down to the risks you're willing to take in the service of an objective or cause. And if you want to play in the big tent, it's good old-fashioned tradecraft and not better toys that make a difference. Rafal On Apr 20, 2011, at 5:43 PM, Frank Corrigan wrote:

I am aware of the general principle of mobile phone tracking, it is just that most people assume this data is only accessible via cell tower providers or via a court order/lawful request, not recorded on the device itself and accessible in an easy to read format to anyone who has access and inclination or has impounded it for law enforcement purposes. I suppose it's a bit like the Windows IE index.dat files. Now of course anyone crossing a USA border can have such devices taken away and such location data easily copied for later in-situ analysis.

Frank

----- Original message ----- From: "Nathan Freitas" <nathan@freitas.net> To: "Frank Corrigan" <email@franciscorrigan.com>, "Liberation Technologies" <liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu> Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:20:13 -0400 Subject: Re: [liberationtech] iPhones/iPads secretly track 'scary amount' of your movements

On 04/20/2011 03:55 PM, Frank Corrigan wrote:

...

More reasons for activists/protesters in hostile (ordinary) environments not to bring along their mobile phone, latest cell connected gizmo.

... and return to megaphones, flags, smoke signals, carrier pigeons and frantic arm waving instead? If our ordinary environments are truly hostile, then either we give up ever using a mobile phone, or we find some way to address the problem.

Don't get me wrong, this latest revelation on mobile privacy is indeed scary, and Apple better fess up. I just think we can fix these issues, instead of allowing them to be disempowering.

In this case at least, turning your phone into "airplane mode" would have stopped the phone from broadcasting its availability to and registering with mobile towers. This would stop the active triangulation of your location from being logged into the local iOS database.

I have an "airplane mode" icon on my Android phone home screen. Anytime I am not expecting an important call, or am reachable by another means (email, IM, irc), I generally activate it. Not only does it reduce my location footprint data trail, but it also saves quite a bit of battery life!

I also like Google's Latitude Dashboard which encourages user to really "own it" when it comes to mobile location data tracking. They have a really pretty UI, charts, etc, that can show you how many minutes a day you spend at home, the gym, work or your local pub. Their point is that if government and mobile phone operators already have this data, why shouldn't you (the user and human being tracked) also benefit from it?

https://www.google.com/latitude/history/dashboard

All in all, we shouldn't cede the advantage technology can bring to the movements and causes we care about because developers at Apple and Skype (see their recent issue with Android app data permissions) are clearly make very bad decisions about how they implement their closed-source software.

Best, Nathan

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