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 _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE