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Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

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Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#101

Post by bad_alloc »

neilv wrote: post #38
gesman wrote: post #15

Engaging security forces to chase women. Do they also give medals for bravery for that?

I share your concern and anger. This particular phrasing could sound like reinforcing a historical perception of women as innately weak and needing protection. I prefer to think of it as people needing help due to circumstances , and the circumstances in this case perhaps due in part to such historical perceptions.

> I share your concern and anger. This particular phrasing could sound like reinforcing a historical perception of [indigenous people/black people/jews/...] as innately weak and needing protection. I prefer to think of it as people needing help due to circumstances, and the circumstances in this case perhaps due in part to such historical perceptions.

When the persecution of a certain group of humans is this direct and the consequences of capture so severe, I think the semantics of help are irrelevant until the danger is resolved.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#102

Post by neilv »

bad_alloc wrote: post #101
neilv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your concern and anger. This particular phrasing could sound like reinforcing a historical perception of women as innately weak and needing protection. I prefer to think of it as people needing help due to circumstances , and the circumstances in this case perhaps due in part to such historical perceptions.

> I share your concern and anger. This particular phrasing could sound like reinforcing a historical perception of [indigenous people/black people/jews/...] as innately weak and needing protection. I prefer to think of it as people needing help due to circumstances, and the circumstances in this case perhaps due in part to such historical perceptions. When the persecution of a certain group of humans is this direct a…

Please don't misuse square brackets in a quote to say something the person didn't say. We don't want that to become the new destructively illiterate "literally".

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#103

Post by darkpuma »

maxxxxx wrote: post #26
Cyph0n wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weapons sanctions are guaranteed way to hit the Gulf monarchies hard. They are extremely dependent on US tech as far as I know.

The russians would be very happy to help probably.

Would the Yemeni rather fight Saudis armed with American weapons, or Saudis armed with Russian weapons?

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#104

Post by Scoundreller »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #97
Scoundreller wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to see a YouTube channel or blog where somebody systemically takes apart their computer and starts reflashing every serial number in flash/EEPROM with 0x00. It’s not like any of these are phoning home (I hope), or married together, so there’s nothing to kill clones.

> reflashing every serial number in flash/EEPROM with 0x00. It will be an amazing video, but good luck if the device in question has (very likely): * a mask-ROM / OTP-ROM for a serial number - almost all microcontrollers and EEPROMs sold nowadays has at least one permanent and unchangable UUID for hardware tracking and DRM implementation (security-through-obscurity tricks to prevent rogue competitors from copying you…

I just knew that RAM DIMMs usually have a 24 or 93 series chip on them, and figured that could be re-programmed (or replaced with a reprogrammable version if the existing chip is non-compliant).

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#105

Post by codedokode »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #71
binarymax wrote: post #11

I remember back in the 90's, when Intel was going to introduce a unique identifier in their processors that could be used for authentication purposes, it caused a huge uproar and Intel backed down. [0] Having a hardware embedded unique ID that can be (is) used for tracking a known persons location at all times is probably the most intrusive privacy violation we've ever had. That we willingly carry these things around…

Looking back, it was unbelievable to see how huge the storm caused by Intel's "processor serial number" in Pentium 3 was, that even forced Intel to withdrew it. Meanwhile, nobody has ever said anything about the serial numbers of hard drives, GPUs, motherboards, RAM modules, Ethernet MAC address, etc, etc, etc. Nowadays, basically everything comes with one UUID. Pretty illogical, isn't it? > We've long lost the war o…

Furthermore, in many OS those unique numbers are not protected from applications. For example, in Linux any application can read any hardware identifiers without any specific permissions. For comparison, in Android an application needs to have a permission to read phone or IMEI number.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#106

Post by saulrh »

Scoundreller wrote: post #89
negamax wrote: post #54

QQ: Can we not make mobiles without IMEI? Surely in today's time WiFi is ubiquitous and that will only increase with many cities installing city wide free WiFi. A simple Internet only phone with built in Tor support can push the envelope. Most of my communication is through apps. I don't think not having a number would make a huge difference

IMEI is the phone’s unique serial number, not a phone number. But everything you said still applies: why does my phone need a serial number that it phones “home” with?

For the same reason your Ethernet card and wifi chip have MAC addresses, except the cell network is a single giant address space spanning literally the entire planet. Even better, it's paid-access you wouldn't gain anything by periodically randomizing it unless you also anonymized payment. On top of all that, it's all the way down at the hardware level, and I bet that cell network equipment is sensitive enough to tell what model of phone you're using by looking at the features its silicon supports and then deanonymize you based on deviations from that model introduced by your phone case and which pocket you carry it in and how you hold it.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#107

Post by codedokode »

neilv wrote: post #32
binarymax wrote: post #11

I remember back in the 90's, when Intel was going to introduce a unique identifier in their processors that could be used for authentication purposes, it caused a huge uproar and Intel backed down. [0] Having a hardware embedded unique ID that can be (is) used for tracking a known persons location at all times is probably the most intrusive privacy violation we've ever had. That we willingly carry these things around…

The opposition to that, Clipper chip, and V-chip are three of the specific examples that come to mind when I think of cultural changes among CS techies. My impression is that there used to be more awareness, concern, and forward-looking/vision about such things. (I even recall techies being shunned for doing the tiniest fraction of invasiveness/recklessness that some major companies do today, yet those companies are…

The culture was different in 90s. I remember that Windows used to ask a permission to connect to Internet to search for drivers. Today they just collect whatever telemetry they want without giving an option to disable it. I guess the reason for change is that their customers were mostly power corporate users then and now it is mostly ordinary people.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#109

Post by exabrial »

binarymax wrote: post #11

I remember back in the 90's, when Intel was going to introduce a unique identifier in their processors that could be used for authentication purposes, it caused a huge uproar and Intel backed down. [0] Having a hardware embedded unique ID that can be (is) used for tracking a known persons location at all times is probably the most intrusive privacy violation we've ever had. That we willingly carry these things around…

Just wait for ipv6 then, where Nat is no longer providing casual anonymity.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#110

Post by amluto »

moftz wrote: post #73
amluto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So can SGX (under certain circumstances). So can your hard disk, your NIC, and probably your firmware via DMI.

Right, but those components typically don't have unchecked access to the rest of the system via back doors.

Your NIC is at least as dangerous as ME if you don’t have the ME connected to the network.
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