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Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

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Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#111

Post by Daishiman »

underikar wrote: post #97
AsyncAwait wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liberal segment of the population checking in; that's a complete strawman - we're in favour of gun control because we don't trust our fellow citizens to be responsible with them, NOT because we trust the government. Regarding state vs federal control; I think you'll be surprised how many liberals are happy with individual states de-criminalizing marihuana and such, there's actually a lot of agreement with libertarian…

> Many of us are concerned about abuses of state power to roll back progress on abortion, teaching evolution, secularism etc. The problem is that you can't pick and choose. If you want limited federal government you have to protest just as loudly against Common Core (federal involvement in education), gun control, environmental action, etc. And the same applies with regards to executive overreach - re: border control…

> The problem is that you can't pick and choose.

This is absolutely false. Governments throughout the world can have extreme levels of control over certain aspects of life while being powerless in other, due in no small part to the willingness of people to accept this control, culturally and politically.

Germans are big on effective bureaucracy and a social safety net that works, yet they're some of the biggest sceptics in privacy, to the point where most people use cash for most transactions.

Americans have a complete unwillingness for a unified ID to the point where all states have to improvise with drivers' licenses and other forms of ID which are not uniform and imperfect next to most other countries' ID cards. Again it's a cultural issue.

Even though most of the state's power comes through the form of silent bureaucracies, people's willingness to accept that power always factors in. If people care enough, the state just can't push on with certain things.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#112

Post by Daishiman »

r00fus wrote: post #59
mschuster91 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any sales to US firms could be curtailed or punished. That doesn't really restrict the NSA, CIA, FBI or any other agency/PD from buying their services. After all, that's what "black budgets" are for.

Most of these firms use private contractors to do the dirty work. Unless contractors can bypass legal oversight, they'll be constrained as well.

Overseas contractor hired by a shell corporation gets the phone sent outside of the US. Boom.

All this assuming they even care about legal compliance, which I am sure that under the correct circumstances it won't matter one bit.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#113

Post by andrepd »

lisivka wrote: post #105
afthonos wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the asymmetrical warfare argument…weird. Afghanistan as a nation has been in a state of massive system failure for decades. Is that really the hope guns offer? “If the government goes ballistic, our guns will ensure we end up like Afghanistan”?

What wrong with Afghanistan? They are still free after number of massive invasions.

"Afghanistan is an impoverished least developed country, one of the world's poorest because of decades of war and lack of foreign investment. As of 2014, the nation's GDP stands at about $60.58 billion with an exchange rate of $20.31 billion, and the GDP per capita is $1,900. The country's exports totaled $2.7 billion in 2012. Its unemployment rate was reported in 2008 at about 35%. According to a 2009 report, about 42% of the population lives on less than $1 a day."

"A January 2010 report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that bribery consumed an amount equal to 23% of the GDP of the nation."

What's wrong indeed.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#114

Post by CamperBob2 »

andrepd wrote: post #113
lisivka wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What wrong with Afghanistan? They are still free after number of massive invasions.

"Afghanistan is an impoverished least developed country, one of the world's poorest because of decades of war and lack of foreign investment. As of 2014, the nation's GDP stands at about $60.58 billion with an exchange rate of $20.31 billion, and the GDP per capita is $1,900. The country's exports totaled $2.7 billion in 2012. Its unemployment rate was reported in 2008 at about 35%. According to a 2009 report, about…

I don't think that Afghanistan makes a good citation for any side of a general argument about gun control policy in the US. Like s_m_t said, their geopolitical milieu is just too different to be relevant. (I'm tempted to say the same of their culture, but I don't really believe that, having grown up in a Bible Belt state.)

However, the Afghan example does effectively rebut shadowfiend's specific point about guerilla warfare being ineffective against a superpower. They call Afghanistan the "Grave of Empires" for a reason, and it's not because they have a really awesome regular army.

Now, in defense of shadowfiend, it's easy to show that he or she is wrong historically, but I suspect that technological development is beginning to favor state power. Guns or no guns, to be an effective guerilla you have to be able to blend in. But you can't really hide anymore... not in the jungles, not in caves, not in the streets and alleys and suburbs and slums, and not in cyberspace. I guess that's sorta our fault.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#116

Post by arca_vorago »

defunctirl wrote: post #102
arca_vorago wrote: post #93

On a similar note, back when cell phones were just getting started, I started parsing the ownership of the cell towers. I noticed an unusually high correlation of Israeli companies owning them (back before the phone companies themselves really started investing in them). Now think about the purpose of an imsi catcher/stingray. The Israelis seem to be on the edge of cybersecurity across the board. I know while in Iraq…

Any specific resources/links re: that final comment? Not something I've ever read about, although I could imagine.. Not discrediting your statement, genuinely curious.

Just a quick duck duck go search returns these:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/24/spy_vs_spy_america_and_i...

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/16/israel-wont-stop-spying-u...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/12/israeli-spying-in-the...

http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-nsa-document-highlights-isr...

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#117

Post by dandersh »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #81
na85 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone and word choice in this post throws into stark relief the enormity of what you don't understand about left-leaning people.

What I understand is that nobody should fear a state monopoly on violence more than the left. What I don't understand is why they don't understand that.

What they understand, that you don't, is that arms are not the only means to resistance and that they are not a particularly effective one at that.

Furthermore they are watching the Black Lives Matter movement (which you apparently have never heard of) and how the 2nd Amendment Crowd (not all, but probably most) is responding by expressing their support for state violence.

Personally I'm not a fan of gun control (guns are overrated) but I also laugh at suggestions like yours in light of how subservient and ingratiating the 2nd Amendment zealots are towards the police and military.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#118

Post by EdHominem »

shadowfiend wrote: post #95
CamperBob2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know where to start. But you're going to anyway, right? Do you have any sources on your first claim? I'm not your personal reference librarian, but you might start with a few of the more reader-friendly popular accounts and see where your interests take you. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago is worthwhile; also Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free , and perhaps Ma Bo's Blood Red Sunset . The ide…

> All told, you'd have to cite about 100,000,000 civilian gun deaths to catch up with the records set by modern governments who weren't as afraid of their citizens and subjects as they should have been. Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks. My goodness, this is an absol…

> Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks.

That's a red-herring though because it doesn't describe an ethnic cleansing.

In an ethnic cleansing police move house to house, dragging the unwanted people into the street. In that scenario, small arms are effective in slowing or stopping the problem, at least long enough to receive foreign aid, etc.

> The only thing guns do is make one less afraid of one's government if one fails to comprehend the absolutely beastly military power that it can bring to bear against one were it to decide to do so.

They probably won't be bombing many cities because they see themselves as ruling that area. (Even in Syria, the dictator isn't using building-levelling bombs very much because he wants to take the city back.)

The situation for those in Aleppo is horrible but if they weren't fighting back they'd all be dead in a ditch already.

> Gun control, by the way, is tangential to the question of how absurd this particular argument is. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's a bad idea, but it's certainly not a bad idea because the government is afraid of folks with guns.

No, that's not what history shows. Gun control (a lack thereof) wouldn't have changed the course of our wars, but would have changed the genocides. Scapegoats are only valuable if they're weak.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#119

Post by defunctirl »

arca_vorago wrote: post #116
defunctirl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any specific resources/links re: that final comment? Not something I've ever read about, although I could imagine.. Not discrediting your statement, genuinely curious.

Just a quick duck duck go search returns these: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/24/spy_vs_spy_america_and_i... http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/16/israel-wont-stop-spying-u... http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/03/12/israeli-spying-in-the... http://www.timesofisrael.com/new-nsa-document-highlights-isr...

Cheers!

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#120

Post by cxseven »

golergka wrote: post #30
cxseven wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad Google made the boot password the same as the screen unlock password. Since virtually everyone wants to be able to quickly unlock their phone, this makes security a Hobson's choice.

Well otherwise the user will most likely forget the separate boot password as phones typically get rebooted once a month or so.

Forcing boot passwords to be the same as what unlocks the screen guarantees that they're so weak that they might as well not exist. Meanwhile, users who want real security are fucked.

The same kind of boneheaded removal of features in the name of simplicity is behind Android Pay requiring your phone to have a locked screen -- because that supposedly solves the problem that used to exist of users having to enter a PIN twice when they'd unlock the screen and then unlock Android Pay.

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