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Burner Phone 101

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Re: Burner Phone 101

#151

Post by thinkingemote »

This post has an obvious rewritten-by-LLM smell to it. That's okay and increasing common but it's giving me a kind of funny feeling with regards to the content which I'd like to examine more.

Firstly, What's the current opinion on using third party LLMs by the infosec community? Secondly it's more philosophical: do activists on the ground embrace this new tech or fight against it? Or is it an amoral tool, like what a phone is considered to be? Is there a distinction between the big third party APIs and local on device use?

(If it helps, the feeling is a bit like a seeing a Linux developer use an Apple mac for development)

Re: Burner Phone 101

#152

Post by kome »

giggyhack wrote: post #114
schoen wrote: post #39

When I was working at EFF, I started writing (but never finished) a couple of essays along the lines of "the degree of trackability of mobile phones is an unfortunate accident, and we should fix it". It basically comes from routing requirements (especially to receive incoming phone calls) combined with billing requirements (to make people pay for their connectivity) combined with the empirical requirement to see whic…

I absolutely understand the sentiment and the goals that citizens should, by default, not be tracked. However, how do you square that with the proof, time and again, that truly secure and encrypted networks are primarily use by criminals (drug/human traffickers, and plenty of other people) who, through their trade, make the world a shittier place for the rest of us?

Your reasoning is so biased that it is hard for me to wrap my head around it, but at the same time it's very common because it confuses the tool with the crime. Criminals use cars and phones, too, but we don't ban them for everyone.

The argument ignores the catastrophic cost of the solution: destroying privacy for all of us. Creating a backdoor for police doesn't just hinder criminals; it makes everyone's data, from journalists to your medical records, vulnerable to hackers and abuse.

I believe we stop crime with good policing, not by building a system of total surveillance that sacrifices the very freedom we're trying to protect.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#153

Post by coderatlarge »

Arainach wrote: post #130
tmpfs wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. By your logic me and the majority of people using Signal are criminals. As the other commenter mentioned please provide proof for these hyperbolic claims.

>By your logic me and the majority of people using Signal are criminals False. "The majority of X are Y" does not imply that any particular X is Y. I don't have data for Signal. I use it extensively. Even setting aside that the American legal system makes everyone a criminal several times a day so that the laws can be selectively enforced against anyone who becomes a target, I have no data on whether the majority of…

maybe we need a law against selective enforcement of laws. together with the comprehensive statistics collection agency that would be required to enforce it.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#154

Post by coderatlarge »

eduction wrote: post #65
schoen wrote: post #39

When I was working at EFF, I started writing (but never finished) a couple of essays along the lines of "the degree of trackability of mobile phones is an unfortunate accident, and we should fix it". It basically comes from routing requirements (especially to receive incoming phone calls) combined with billing requirements (to make people pay for their connectivity) combined with the empirical requirement to see whic…

Stellar reasoning. Did you ever get to the point of hypothesizing good ways to align incentives to make this happen? It is hard to tell (having not thought much about it) whether this is a “smart well meaning engineers need to make new standards” problem, a “we need to harness the power of corporate greed problem,” or something else.

isn’t detailed information about the user equal to additional billing power? perhaps the only disincentive that exists to having that information would be such overwhelming risk/liability that it would outweigh the profit potential of having it in the first place. it seems to me the relative incentives have reached a oretty stable equilibrium…

Re: Burner Phone 101

#155

Post by pcthrowaway »

neilv wrote: post #61

> Strong PIN, not biometrics And also be aware of "shoulder surfing", which is different today in 2 ways it wasn't in the past. In the past, the risk was something like someone looking at you type in your PIN on a bank ATM, or maybe your password on an computer keyboard. Today, shoulder surfing is mainly different in 2 ways: (1) near-ubiquitous high-resolution surveillance camera networks, which can be places/scale a…

In addition to surveillance cameras and video of movement, AI can also determine what keys your pressing on a keyboard of an airgapped computer, merely by the sounds you make when you type

Re: Burner Phone 101

#156

Post by jjkaczor »

miki123211 wrote: post #148
giggyhack wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely understand the sentiment and the goals that citizens should, by default, not be tracked. However, how do you square that with the proof, time and again, that truly secure and encrypted networks are primarily use by criminals (drug/human traffickers, and plenty of other people) who, through their trade, make the world a shittier place for the rest of us?

This is the "witch hunt" problem. If you have two networks, one encrypted and one not, and the unencrypted network is significantly easier / cheaper to use or has better network effects, that's where most people will naturally flock. The only ones who will put in the effort to use the encrypted one are criminals and a few principled technologists / civil libertarians. In such a world, the mere fact of using the encry…

Historically in the US - yes.

However, with the current "regime change", the targets of tracking are expanding exponentially to basically anyone who says or does anything the current leadership does not like.

This has been warned about repeatedly with this type of tracking for decades - when "bad actors" take power and abuse that power, then everyone becomes a target. Fascists love data collection, aggregation and data-based decision-making.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#157

Post by jajko »

bigiain wrote: post #147
2rsf wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't buying a SIM traceable by itself? if for example the shop has CCTV recordings or the email where you got the eSIM

Normally, unless (as I mentioned in another reply) you buy your SIM at a going-away party for a foreign student or backpacker who's leaving the country and doesn't need a local mobile number any more. (Then you just need to worry about the CCTV recording of the place where you pay cash tor the pre paid Visa cards you use to top up the prepaid SIM...)

That would be properly dumb thing to do, giving trivial-to-track thing very much tied to your identity to some random folks... why on earth would anybody smart ever do that?

Then you suddenly end up locked by ICE or worse when having layover stop at Miami for example.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#158

Post by teekert »

Terr_ wrote: post #133
schoen wrote: post #39

When I was working at EFF, I started writing (but never finished) a couple of essays along the lines of "the degree of trackability of mobile phones is an unfortunate accident, and we should fix it". It basically comes from routing requirements (especially to receive incoming phone calls) combined with billing requirements (to make people pay for their connectivity) combined with the empirical requirement to see whic…

> combined with billing requirements There's a certain flavor of US libertarian that complains that they should only be taxed for exactly the road-surfaces they personally use in proportion to how much they use them. In response, I like to point out to them that their dream of "fair billing" can't occur without a nightmare of surveillance, making it easy for the government (or road-owners, and indirectly the governme…

Agreed, I always think that all these taxes should indeed just go through fuel. Want a bigger, heavier, more polluting car? Want to drive like a F1 driver? Fine, you pay more. Want to drive a long distance? You'll pay per distance*car_size. Want to go electric? You'll pay tax on electricity in concordance with it's economic price and influence on the planet.

One problem in the EU is is that this would need to be rolled out across the EU, because we already have large difference in price ranges for fuel leading to weird situations neer the border.

Re: Burner Phone 101

#159

Post by ygritte »

giggyhack wrote: post #114
schoen wrote: post #39

When I was working at EFF, I started writing (but never finished) a couple of essays along the lines of "the degree of trackability of mobile phones is an unfortunate accident, and we should fix it". It basically comes from routing requirements (especially to receive incoming phone calls) combined with billing requirements (to make people pay for their connectivity) combined with the empirical requirement to see whic…

I absolutely understand the sentiment and the goals that citizens should, by default, not be tracked. However, how do you square that with the proof, time and again, that truly secure and encrypted networks are primarily use by criminals (drug/human traffickers, and plenty of other people) who, through their trade, make the world a shittier place for the rest of us?

So get ready to be legally bound to leave your front door unlocked because some people store stolen loot behind locked doors!

Re: Burner Phone 101

#160

Post by _Algernon_ »

giggyhack wrote: post #114
schoen wrote: post #39

When I was working at EFF, I started writing (but never finished) a couple of essays along the lines of "the degree of trackability of mobile phones is an unfortunate accident, and we should fix it". It basically comes from routing requirements (especially to receive incoming phone calls) combined with billing requirements (to make people pay for their connectivity) combined with the empirical requirement to see whic…

I absolutely understand the sentiment and the goals that citizens should, by default, not be tracked. However, how do you square that with the proof, time and again, that truly secure and encrypted networks are primarily use by criminals (drug/human traffickers, and plenty of other people) who, through their trade, make the world a shittier place for the rest of us?

Better remove the locks on your house and bathroom and set up a public webcam while you're at it. After all, I'm not sure you're not a criminal, and to be sure of that I — and the rest of society — need to be able to observe you in your bathroom.

"innocent until proven guilty" exists for a reason.

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