Re: For Liars and Loafers, Cellphones Offer an Alibi
At 07:21 AM 6/26/04 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/technology/26ALIB.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
The New York Times
June 26, 2004
For Liars and Loafers, Cellphones Offer an Alibi By MATT RICHTEL
Eventually the cellphones will be able to tell another phone approx where they are. Remember the 911-locator fascism? So the 'victim' would ask the 'liar' to press a button authorizing disclosure of the approx location. The marketing reason would be to help people find others geographically. But it can also be used to evidence (or not) your location. "Look mom, I'm *not* at the mall or Cheech's house, I'm at the library." Of course all these locations will be in a database which performs a kind of latitude/longitude Name Service so Mom won't have to fire up a browser and go to a mapping page. GPS/911 services + wireless + inet bridging. I wouldn't be surprised if DoCoMo wasn't working on it now..
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
At 07:21 AM 6/26/04 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/technology/26ALIB.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
The New York Times
June 26, 2004
For Liars and Loafers, Cellphones Offer an Alibi By MATT RICHTEL
Eventually the cellphones will be able to tell another phone approx where they are. Remember the 911-locator fascism?
I hate to break the news to you Major, but GPS enabled phones cannot be instructed to turn off the GPS feature for law enforcement queries (e.g., 911). Turn it on or turn it off, makes no matter.
I wouldn't be surprised if DoCoMo wasn't working on it now..
Already complete. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Eventually the cellphones will be able to tell another phone approx where they are. Remember the 911-locator fascism?
I hate to break the news to you Major, but GPS enabled phones cannot be instructed to turn off the GPS feature for law enforcement queries (e.g., 911). Turn it on or turn it off, makes no matter.
Can it be disabled by hardware hack of the phone, a mikropower jammer, or using an "unofficial" firmware?
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Eventually the cellphones will be able to tell another phone approx where they are. Remember the 911-locator fascism?
I hate to break the news to you Major, but GPS enabled phones cannot be instructed to turn off the GPS feature for law enforcement queries (e.g., 911). Turn it on or turn it off, makes no matter.
Can it be disabled by hardware hack of the phone,
Likely
a mikropower jammer,
Only if you are willing to forego the phone as well, in which case, just remove the battery pack :-)
or using an "unofficial" firmware?
Almost certainly, although I do not have expertise in cellular firmware, so I am just making an educated assessment. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
a mikropower jammer,
Only if you are willing to forego the phone as well, in which case, just remove the battery pack :-)
I am assuming here that the phone has a dual receiver, one of the GPS signal and one of the cellular service itself. As both operate on different frequencies, it should be possible to jam one while keep the other's service intact. As we can feed the jamming signal right into the antenna of the receiver which we can physically access, we can use very very small powers, which lowers the chance of the jammer to interfere with other devices we perhaps would like to keep in operation, and makes us less susceptible to be annoyed by the FCC goons.
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
a mikropower jammer,
Only if you are willing to forego the phone as well, in which case, just remove the battery pack :-)
I am assuming here that the phone has a dual receiver, one of the GPS signal and one of the cellular service itself. As both operate on different frequencies, it should be possible to jam one while keep the other's service intact.
Ahhh... My bad: I had not considered my audience when I replied :-) Yes, I suppose that the more technical amongst us could selctively jam only the one signal, however, cellular phones are mighty low power devices, and I would not hazard a guess as to whether it would be possible not to overpower the wanted signals on something like this. Even if this is doable, it is out of reach of Jane Citizen. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Yes, I suppose that the more technical amongst us could selctively jam only the one signal, however, cellular phones are mighty low power devices, and I would not hazard a guess as to whether it would be possible not to overpower the wanted signals on something like this.
Not that low power. (Though we maybe just disagree on the definition of "low" here. But even then it's still pretty strong, when we compare a several watts transmitter on a "cancer tower" half-mile away with a transmitter of similar size, but couple hundreds miles away on the low orbit. Which is largely compensated with the correlation methods used to retrieve the GPS signal from under the noise floor, which is something necessary to keep in mind when considering advanced jamming approaches; mere output power comparisons don't have to be a reliable way when such factors are in the game.)
Even if this is doable, it is out of reach of Jane Citizen.
If a J. Random Hacker with the necessary capabilities is within her reach, the countermeasure is available to her regardless of her own tech skills. With continuing outsourcing, there should be enough out of work engineers available who are sufficiently hungry to risk working for the underground market.
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Yes, I suppose that the more technical amongst us could selctively jam only the one signal, however, cellular phones are mighty low power devices, and I would not hazard a guess as to whether it would be possible not to overpower the wanted signals on something like this.
Not that low power. (Though we maybe just disagree on the definition of "low" here.
I guess I'm a little old fashioned. To me, ~250-300mw is low power.
Even if this is doable, it is out of reach of Jane Citizen.
If a J. Random Hacker with the necessary capabilities is within her reach, the countermeasure is available to her regardless of her own tech skills.
You assume that Jane's only problem is equipment procurement. Alas, Jane's biggest problem has not changed much in the last 100 years: knowledge. Jane doesn't know this is an issue that she might need help with.
With continuing outsourcing, there should be enough out of work engineers available who are sufficiently hungry to risk working for the underground market.
I've wondered over the last several years why such a market has not been more openly extant. This thought has occurred to me many times since the last 70's - the stuff you want is available, but barely, even if "legal". -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden
"J.A. Terranson"
You assume that Jane's only problem is equipment procurement. Alas, Jane's biggest problem has not changed much in the last 100 years: knowledge. Jane doesn't know this is an issue that she might need help with.
People who don't know they need such help don't. If you're ignorant you're not paranoid. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org
On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Even if this is doable, it is out of reach of Jane Citizen.
If a J. Random Hacker with the necessary capabilities is within her reach, the countermeasure is available to her regardless of her own tech skills.
You assume that Jane's only problem is equipment procurement. Alas, Jane's biggest problem has not changed much in the last 100 years: knowledge. Jane doesn't know this is an issue that she might need help with.
We have a large unwitting helpmate: the Media. Their primary motivation is the eyeballs, the Nielsen ratings; which can be exploited for Spreading The Word. Technology, while difficult to understand for mere mortals, together with its handlers, has its appeal - not entirely dissimilar to witchcraft of the Medieval Times; see the popularity of the topic of computer security breaches between journalists. They will get it wrong. But Jane can be corrected; the important task for the Media is to make her aware about the possibility and get her to ask. At that stage, the incorrectness in the media reporting can be corrected. If Jane becomes aware about at least a subset of the possibilities, the Media did their job.
With continuing outsourcing, there should be enough out of work engineers available who are sufficiently hungry to risk working for the underground market.
I've wondered over the last several years why such a market has not been more openly extant. This thought has occurred to me many times since the last 70's - the stuff you want is available, but barely, even if "legal".
It's not as wide as it should be. However, it's far from nonexistant; there are eg. alternative firmwares for DVD drives, with stripped zoning, firmwares for cellphones with removed operator lock, and many other goodies. I suppose the fundamental problem here is the lack of skilled-enough people, combined with closed technology; it's rather difficult to disassemble a program from binary, takes a lot of time and in many cases is impractical. Another problem is the technology the electronics is being manufactured now: everybody can work with 2.54mm DIL chips, not everybody can work with 0.125mm SMD chips, and only a selected few have access to technology necessary for BGA chips. :( This could be partially offset by some hypothetical new generation of visual disassemblers, showing code not as an endless stream of instructions but as a graphical representation of the execution flow, perhaps using some tricks from atomic-level visualisation of huge and complex biochemical structures, eg. proteins and intracellular structures. Another hope, closer and more realistic one, is in the emergence of smaller manufacturers, voluntarily opening their devices in the hope for market advantage (the Linksys box mentioned here may be a good example). The remaining problem is the hardware level. Hopefully somebody with enough skills and a good idea appears (or perhaps already appeared) and designs a way how to make work with the tiny chips easier for a garage workshop; there are trends along this direction already, I saw a mention of a reflow oven for SMD boards, made of a toaster. Never lose hope, and never stop doing things. If you can't solder, code. If you can't code cryptosystems, code tools. If you can't code at all, write articles and spread awareness. If you can't even write, talk with friends. If you don't have any suitable friends, at least read and learn yourself. Even an otherwise meaningless act may mean a lot if it comes at the "wrong" place and the "wrong" time. See the "Patriot Ants" approach I mentioned couple weeks ago in the Zombie Patriots thread.
On Sun, Jun 27, 2004 at 02:02:24AM +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
Can it be disabled by hardware hack of the phone, a mikropower jammer, or using an "unofficial" firmware?
Jamming GPS is no problem, but then they'll just triangulate you within the cell. The only way to prevent that would be to switch off, andn to pull the battery (unless the firmware is open source, and peer-reviewed). -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Eugen Leitl
Jamming GPS is no problem, but then they'll just triangulate you within the cell. The only way to prevent that would be to switch off, andn to pull the battery (unless the firmware is open source, and peer-reviewed).
A little poking around on google reveals that all but the most recent Sprint phones don't support GPS at all. They rely for location on AFLT, advanced forward link trilateration. That is, they look for multiple towers, then report their delay readings to the network, allowing triangulation. More recent phones from Sprint must support real GPS, since Qualcomm offers chipsets with GPS support, which they wouldn't do unless their only customers (Sprint phone manufacturers) wanted it. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org
More recent phones from Sprint must support real GPS, since Qualcomm offers chipsets with GPS support, which they wouldn't do unless their only customers (Sprint phone manufacturers) wanted it.
I was looking at getting a Sprint phone last week - every model I looked at had a GPS chip. -J
At 12:28 PM 6/27/2004, Jack Lloyd wrote:
More recent phones from Sprint must support real GPS, since Qualcomm offers chipsets with GPS support, which they wouldn't do unless their only customers (Sprint phone manufacturers) wanted it.
I was looking at getting a Sprint phone last week - every model I looked at had a GPS chip.
Do any of them let _you_ see the GPS results (which would be useful), or are they only available to Big Brother and maybe advertisers?
Jack Lloyd
I was looking at getting a Sprint phone last week - every model I looked at had a GPS chip.
Try the Sanyo SCP-8100. It does network-assisted location only. It also has a much more sensitive frontend than anything from Samsung, has a reasonably nice-looking screen, and isn't too big. It's old enough that it should be cheap, too. -- Riad S. Wahby rsw@jfet.org
One phone I'd like to recommend against is the SideKick. I've no idea if it's got a GPS receiver or not - likely it doesn't need one since it's GPRS and can use tower timing as discussed before. I'm recommending against it, because while I love the phone and its features, it's too big brotherish. Example: if you write an email while it's out of range of a cell tower, and hit send, it will store the email into the Send folder. If you then try to delete that email from the Send folder it will give you an error saying "I can't do this right now because I need to first synchronize with the server." Which means even emails you want to erase will be first sent to the server! It does have an ssh client, a web browser, and an AIM client, but I use these with caution, especially the SSH client. It's also got a USB 2.0 plug and an IR transceiver, but I've not been able to make any use of either, nor seen any options to enable/disable them. For all I know the IRDA could always on and will talk to anyone, etc. You don't "own" anything on this phone despite the appearance to the contrary. I was also considering Palm phones, but Palm OS is piss poor at memory protection so any application can clobber/read/spy on any other, so if there's spyware in the code that talks to cell towers, you're at its mercy, and it can read anything you've got in it.
On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Eventually the cellphones will be able to tell another phone approx where they are. [...] The marketing reason would be to help people find others geographically.
At least with GSM, the base station always knows the approximate distance to the phone (this is needed by the GSM protocol, for reasons related to time slot management in the presence of finite speed of light, but it might be possible to hack the phone's firmware to fool it, or to register with fewer base stations than usual). The GSM network's database knows the exact locations of all the base stations. Add a little software to do triangulation from multiple base stations, and the GSM network knows the location of the phone, to an accuracy that depends chiefly on the base station density. Add a layer of user interface software, and you're done. No cooperation from the phone is necessary, except what the phone would normally do in order to register itself with base stations so that it can receive calls. No GPS or other non-GSM protocols are necessary. This is already offered as an extra cost service (branded "Look for me") by Vodacom in South Africa. It's targeted at parents who want to know where their children are, and the phrase "with their permission" is included in current advertising. As the seeker, you send an SMS (text message) to a special number to "register" your phone as a user of the locator service, and to ask for the location of another phone. The network sends a message to the target phone, and the user must reply to give permission to be located. Then the network sends a text message to the seeker, telling them the location of the target. I don't know whether the target's permission is asked every time, or just once per seeker; I do know that it's not just once globally. In any case, the "permission" is just a flag in a database, and is not really needed by anybody with back-door access to the GSM provider. --apb (Alan Barrett)
participants (9)
-
Alan Barrett -
Bill Stewart -
Eugen Leitl -
J.A. Terranson -
Jack Lloyd -
Major Variola (ret) -
Riad S. Wahby -
Sunder -
Thomas Shaddack