In defence of the BBC, they are particularly sensitive to this atm. It is not unusual for journalists in the UK to be asked to remove batteries from phones, particularly when discussing certain international matters that may interest certain people. The concept of a smartphone being turned into a listening device isn't unheard of in the UK. For whatever reason, US/Canadian journalists are more trusting. I trace this…
What do the journalists do when the battery is non-removable? Do they just leave the phones "far enough away"?
Not joking: I've seen them wrapped up in layers of tinfoil.
Sell a micless phone. Actually, it's a tablet, and if you want it to go into surveillance / phone mode, you plug in your own goddamend mic. Most headsets have one. Alternatively: a phone whose "off" mode is a battery eject.
Re battery eject: How can you be sure that the removable battery is the only one?
Fair point. Proofs are hard, but on a mass-market device, considerable secondary storage would be fairly evident in a teardown.
Microcurrent devices fed by a small cap or disguised secondary battery might function. But you'd have very limited capabilities.
You might well ask how sure you are that there's not a secondary microphone on the device, to which I can only suggest you cannot be too paranoid.
I have to say, I'm very sceptical about all of this, but one day a friend showed me a product (some speakers that use the table surface for resonance) and the ad showed a couple of minutes after on Facebook. I started thinking on how devices can emit audio signatures for other devices around it to be aware of its presence. A couple of years after, Chromecast uses audio for authentication of nearby devices. I honestly…
I had a weird experience some time ago. I stayed with my family at a hotel and our room had an unusually shaped tap in its bathroom. I never looked it up online - in fact, I didn't even mention to anyone that I thought that was a very peculiar tap. But a few days after we came back, Amazon showed me that exact tap as a shopping suggestion. It felt a little creepy. I could see no connection between the site where I bo…
A previous or subsequent guest searched the tap online, and their search was associated with your account because it was from the same IP?
I had a weird experience some time ago. I stayed with my family at a hotel and our room had an unusually shaped tap in its bathroom. I never looked it up online - in fact, I didn't even mention to anyone that I thought that was a very peculiar tap. But a few days after we came back, Amazon showed me that exact tap as a shopping suggestion. It felt a little creepy. I could see no connection between the site where I bo…
A previous or subsequent guest searched the tap online, and their search was associated with your account because it was from the same IP?
That actually makes a lot of sense. I think I used their wifi.
Didn't they add this to Marshmallow? So that if the app wants to access the camera roll, but you don't allow it, it just gets an empty list of images. (I might confuse this with iOS, though. Does someone have a source?)
Unfortunately these OS level privacy countermeasures are trivial to circumvent. Instead of checking for [photo permission denied] or [camera permission denied], on supported OS versions the app can check for [empty image list] or [black camera image]. Then display the impenetrable wall, or disable the goodie, or lock out the content because it can't verify that there are N or fewer viewers, or...
I addressed this explicitly: an advanced user could create fake contacts, take or upload fake photos (for example, I might not care about EXIF data), create fake SMS's. How should an app determine the difference between a user with a new phone with few or no SMS's, and a user who has chosen to fake a few or no SMS's? More to the point, the phone could simply generate fake content algorithmically, and these algorithms could change all the time. How would an app keep up? If it helps you think about it, at this point the phone is the bot and the App is the one trying to keep a bot from successfully using its API. Surely possible, but not "trivial".
Not joking: I've seen them wrapped up in layers of tinfoil.
That's fine, if it's not recording to send later when defoiled. Better off not taking it or putting it in another room, next to a radio tuned to static. Mind you, when I'm pocket dialled I can rarely hear any conversations clearly. Doesn't take much to muffle audio input.
Unless the phone isn't simply recording, but is harvesting the mac address (or other identifier) of nearby phones in order to expose who the reporter is meeting with. Then the microphone is irrelevant.
This is why I got a shutter on m laptop camera. It's mechanicl, and I can see it's on or off. It should be a legal obligation to provide those, for camera and mic.
Regarding "legal obligation": in some countries the government may be the second main user of your camera and mic - next to you...
Well in my case there is no sim in the slot, so i can't say i care.
That doesn't stop it communicating with the mobile network. At least in the UK, you can still call emergency numbers (999, Childline, Samaritans(?)) without a SIM.
>That doesn't stop it communicating with the mobile network. At least in the UK, you can still call emergency numbers (999, Childline, Samaritans(?)) without a SIM.
You haven't been able to do this since 2009. It was changed due to the high volume of hoax calls.
You mean it's a soft-switch that tells you it does that. You have no idea if the radio is actually running at any time or not. That plus their reliability issues are why I don't like soft-switches.
True, though with airplane mode they might be skirting the law as it now touches the whole interfering with FAA requirements are. Also it would seem it would be easy to verify for anyone who opens the case what the radio does.
That's not how subversion works. The subverted system will in fact turn off wireless in airplane mode. It's turned back on by a trigger. Stays on long enough to do the job. The commenters imply they would be using it outside an airplane. So, FAA wouldn't even notice.