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Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

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Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your phone doesn't have a removable battery, how do you know if it's really off?

low power devices now exist that can live of small traces of power. Even with the battery removed, how can you be sure it's still not listening?...

This is why you should never take phones into any kind of sensitive meeting or at least put it into a faraday bag.

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This capability has been known for many years. From 2006: >"The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them," James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. "Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone's location to within just a few feet," he added. Source: http:…

> The fact that BlackBerry designed around this early on leads me to suspect (as an outside observer with an imagination) that mass metadata collection was known by folks in industry back in the 90s. Wouldn't a simpler explanation be that it was just over-designed for 90s-era threats in a way that hardened it to some more recent threats?

It is definitely a simpler explanation.

Consider however that none of their US based competitors managed to do address those threats in a meaningful way.

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I'm being a bit slow here, but what was happening? Why was your gps showing you in the middle of the police hq?

A bug in the imsi catcher not properly relaying the info, so I was seeing the imsi catcher's location data temporarily instead of my own.

Isn't the phone just displaying its location based on the GPS signal? I don't get how intercepting your phone's transmissions would cause it to report an incorrect location.
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