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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

#121

Post by mr_toad »

rsync wrote: post #53
nugget wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary reason we care about Saudi is oil. US policy makers seem to view them as a necessary evil until we transition to renewable energy. No real effort is made to influence reforms. In fact, the more culturally isolated Saudi is from Europe and other countries, the better it is for the US, in terms of dependency. At some point after “peak oil” SA seems likely to experience extreme social upheaval - perhaps even…

"The primary reason we care about Saudi is oil." This is true. "US policy makers seem to view them as a necessary evil until we transition to renewable energy." This is false. There is nothing at all necessary nor evil, relative to the United States. We use the middle east to establish a protection racket on oil flows to the rest of the world . The United States gets zero, or near zero, oil from Saudi Arabia. The sam…

Oil is essentially a fungible commodity.

A reduction in Saudi production increases prices everywhere.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#122

Post by saulrh »

Scoundreller wrote: post #113
saulrh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tel…

Is this where I admit that I change my MACs whenever I can to something random when I find the option in my device config?

Yep. Although, as I pointed out, IMEI randomization doesn't do anything if your payment and use authorization isn't also anonymous.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#123

Post by RachelF »

Scoundreller wrote: post #85
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Changing the IMEI number of a phone is illegal in many countries.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#124

Post by jxramos »

autoexec wrote: post #70
neilv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I even recall techies being shunned for doing the tiniest fraction of invasiveness/recklessness that some major companies do today I remember uninstalling software and dismissing it as spyware for just phoning home. The very idea of a program regularly pinging some remote host to indicate the your machine was turned on and connected to the internet was offensive. Now basically every program does this, usually excus…

I think this assessment is very apt, I've long wanted to get the chops to visualize all the action taking place on my network access. It's all so hidden and under the hood, it would be very revealing for a YouTuber to do a walkthrough to show how leaky apps and websites are and what sort of payloads are coming off their devices to remote targets.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#125

Post by ddxxdd »

jwr wrote: post #78
colechristensen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a delicate game being played. If you are friendly with SA you can put pressure on them to improve. If you declare them an evil enemy would the outcome be better? There is a path to walk and it is not easy to find the right one when you have to deal with reality not just idealism. The natural resources in the middle east are important to the world and it is not so simple as an 'us vs. them' because there are…

> would the outcome be better? Yes. The world would be a better place if people did the right thing. It's not complicated, really. In this particular case: see a regime that dismembers journalists and hunts women who "run away"? Don't deal with that regime, or anything that is related to it. To point out the obvious, invading other countries, bombing "terrorists" without due process, meddling in affairs of people acr…

>Of course, with a statement like that, there will always be plenty of butsayers. "But..." [and here goes a list of various muddy reasons why everything is relative].

I'll start off by saying that in a world without Saudi oil, the world economy will collapse, and the economic prosperity implicitly assumed by our modern progressive values will evaporate, leaving us with a Stone Age economy and the Medieval values that come with it.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#126

Post by maxxxxx »

nugget wrote: post #33
colechristensen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a delicate game being played. If you are friendly with SA you can put pressure on them to improve. If you declare them an evil enemy would the outcome be better? There is a path to walk and it is not easy to find the right one when you have to deal with reality not just idealism. The natural resources in the middle east are important to the world and it is not so simple as an 'us vs. them' because there are…

The primary reason we care about Saudi is oil. US policy makers seem to view them as a necessary evil until we transition to renewable energy. No real effort is made to influence reforms. In fact, the more culturally isolated Saudi is from Europe and other countries, the better it is for the US, in terms of dependency. At some point after “peak oil” SA seems likely to experience extreme social upheaval - perhaps even…

"The primary reason we care about Saudi is oil. "

There is also the Israel question which makes the US position pretty complex.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#127

Post by m23khan »

selimthegrim wrote: post #68
m23khan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly speaking, when it comes to Muslim countries and women, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Turkey and perhaps Indonesia among some others have a great record (relatively). But biggest improvement seems to be coming from Pakistan of all the places. Saudis and other strict regimes should look into changes that enforces protection and rights and freedom for women. The more well educated and economically integrated women are (…

What laws has Pak government passed recently?

Not much needs to change in terms of Pakistani law -- laws have always favored liberal views and freedom for women in Pakistan. Its just last 20-30 years have been bad socially for Pakistan.

Things have started to turn corner now - media and social activists have rightly pressed case for empowering women and there are number of influential Pakistani female politicians now. Government have started silencing hardliners and have started distancing themselves.

I hope that soon Pakistanis start pushing their girls for better education and to start females to work at all levels of Pakistani economy. This is one thing that is really killing Pakistani economy and is prime reason behind our high population growth. As a Pakistani man, I see good things hopefully for women in Pakistan.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#128

Post by autoexec »

jxramos wrote: post #124
autoexec wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I even recall techies being shunned for doing the tiniest fraction of invasiveness/recklessness that some major companies do today I remember uninstalling software and dismissing it as spyware for just phoning home. The very idea of a program regularly pinging some remote host to indicate the your machine was turned on and connected to the internet was offensive. Now basically every program does this, usually excus…

I think this assessment is very apt, I've long wanted to get the chops to visualize all the action taking place on my network access. It's all so hidden and under the hood, it would be very revealing for a YouTuber to do a walkthrough to show how leaky apps and websites are and what sort of payloads are coming off their devices to remote targets.

> I've long wanted to get the chops to visualize all the action taking place on my network access. It's all so hidden and under the hood

You should look for tutorials on Wireshark or better yet get a Pi-hole and block ads over your entire network while you get trustworthy stats on where your traffic is going. That's probably the easier and more useful option. Casual packet inspection used to be much easier. Common traffic like HTTP, DNS, or SMTP are increasingly encrypted, but it used to be that you'd see everything pass over the wire plainly. A lot of the data companies send home is encrypted too so you might be able to identify which apps or programs are generating the most traffic or sending it to same shady destinations, but don't expect to see what data they are collecting from watching the network.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#129

Post by rolltiide »

cwkoss wrote: post #116
rolltiide wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about having a service that lets someone else randomize the location of your phone. That was the primary goal and it evolved to food delivery couriers having additional services where they charge people's phones in a lockbox while they run around all day. Result: Many people's location is erroneous data. No single person's use of the service is suspicious and merely reflecting a societal sentiment…

SDR in a faraday box

going offline would be suspicious

randomly roaming around would not

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#130

Post by kalleboo »

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

iPod Touch?
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