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Pair Locking Your iPhone

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Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#161

Post by FabHK »

ekianjo wrote: post #155
lotsofpulp wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that people with lower incomes are free-er in other Western countries. They can go about their lives without worrying about healthcare, parents can bond and breastfeed for a year without stressing about work, families can go on vacations for multiple weeks, people aren’t as afraid of being abused or killed by police, etc.

The police does not kill you in most western countries because they are so useless at doing anything and don't even do their job of protecting people or going after criminals. the only metric they care about is fining people as much as possible for minor offenses.

The USA has higher crime rates (particularly homicide), despite much higher incarceration rates, than most of Europe.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#162

Post by javajosh »

saagarjha wrote: post #116
javajosh wrote: post #99

Isn't it possible that searching your phone at the border is security theater? I think it's likely that the US already has permanent, remote access to most phones.

> Isn't it possible that searching your phone at the border is security theater? I mean, many people believe that many of the things that the TSA or CBP do are a security theater. > I think it's likely that the US already has permanent, remote access to most phones. There seems to be a large number of cases where law enforcement were denied access to a device and seemingly were stymied by this fact (detaining the own…

>What makes you think that they're doing this just because?

I don't think they'd do it "just because". I think the NSA has access to all devices, but they don't necessarily share that access with lower-level agencies. And yet, the NSA wouldn't want people to know that they have such good access, and so it would be necessary to a) not act on everything, and b) maintain the appearance that they don't have that access.

I think it's likely if only because of the complexity of devices, and the fact that it is easy to hide both intentional and unintentional flaws that would permit access. Certainly there is a huge motivation to use modern devices as part of a panopticon network, which would give anyone a huge advantage in almost every aspect of life - economically, politically, and militarily. Plus, with new and egregiously powerful exploits constantly being found in the wild, who knows what's possible with the total cooperation of manufacturers?

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#163

Post by htfu »

alkonaut wrote: post #140
mosselman wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say is "Sorry, I can't unsupervise that". If you wanted to lie, you could say "Sorry it is supervised by my company, I can't unsupervise it" Alternatively you could encrypt the key or whatever, give that to a friend on a USB stick. Then, at the border, you say "I can't unsupervise that, the keys are managed by a third party." Which is technically the truth... the best kind of truth.

They'll just find you are causing trouble and put you in the little room where you'll sit for a number of hours and learn to stop thinking you could pull stunts at the border. They don't really care why you can't show a normal phone with a history of a normal life. They just want to see a normal device with normal data. There is no scenario where a technicality means you don't hand over a device they can read and the…

But a supervised device is neither wiped, locked, nor extremely uncommon, nor does the device owner usually have the means to break the pairing, so I reckon you're off base here. It is a normal device with normal data, it just can't be imaged. They can still go through it.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#164

Post by zw123456 »

I think a cool product would be a cloud phone, where your phone is actually a VM in the cloud and your physical phone would be a bland minimal image. That way if they ever look at it they find nothing. But you can access your VM cloud phone from any device even a burner. You could even buy a burner at the airport after clearing customs and then log into your VM cloud phone.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#165

Post by diffeomorphism »

ekianjo wrote: post #156
jw1224 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a few examples of ways in which a US citizen is more free than I, a UK citizen, am?

Freedom of expression has a much stronger protection status in the US than in the UK. That is one example.

If that is just one example, what is another one?

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#166

Post by DoubleGlazing »

draugadrotten wrote: post #142
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that in some cases. I used to work for a big 4 consulting firm and they had some horror stories about border device searches. The company policy for travel outside the EU was simple... Your own laptop would go into a server room and become a remote desktop host, you'd be given a blank laptop. When you got to your destination safely you'd call up IT who'd tell you where to download the VPN software and…

Why did the big 4 consulting firm think that it was so important to hide the laptop data from the government during the border search?

The big 4 consulting firms aren't single entities. Each country has its own independent branch that shares a global brand, set if principles and objectives.

The Irish branch has to comply with EU and Irish law. Think GDPR and various other laws relating to keeping financial data secure. Plus they would also have very strict contracts with their bigger clients guaranteeing the security and privacy of their super sensitive commercial data.

You would be unwise to assume that the data retrieved through a customs search of your laptop or phone wouldn't end up in your rivals possession.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#167

Post by 2rsf »

earenndil wrote: post #115
2rsf wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the benefit of Activation Lock, a thief will find it out only AFTER your phone was stolen, I doubt they will give it back to you. It's the same as with GPS / Position Car Alarms- it's great for your insurance company, but in most cases I don't want to get my car back damaged or in pieces

It's like herd immunity: if most phones have an activation lock, then thieves are less incentivized to steal them. Obviously they can still sell them for parts, but they're worth less.

In theory it's not needed since you could report your phone's IMEI as stolen and the phone would be block, for some reason it's not common among operators

https://www.gsma.com/services/gsma-imei/imei-blacklisting/

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#168

Post by FabHK »

jw1224 wrote: post #125
vinay427 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still, at least on paper, freer than many/most other Western countries in most ways AFAIK. I agree that this is a very absurd counterexample, however.

Can you give a few examples of ways in which a US citizen is more free than I, a UK citizen, am?

* In the USA, you are free to deny the holocaust. In Germany and the UK, you are not.

* In the USA, if you're a health insurer, you are free to reject customers you don't like. In Europe, you're not. (Those rejected customers, in turn, are free to cover their own health expenses or die - their free choice).

* In the USA, you're free to buy guns. In Europe, you're not.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=no+way+to+prevent+this+site%3Atheo...

* In the US, you're free to drink a beer at the age of 20. In Europe, you're not. Ah, no, just kidding, it's the other way around.

* In California, you can have a beer after 2 am. Ah, who am I kidding, of course you can't.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#169

Post by mosselman »

htfu wrote: post #163
alkonaut wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll just find you are causing trouble and put you in the little room where you'll sit for a number of hours and learn to stop thinking you could pull stunts at the border. They don't really care why you can't show a normal phone with a history of a normal life. They just want to see a normal device with normal data. There is no scenario where a technicality means you don't hand over a device they can read and the…

But a supervised device is neither wiped, locked, nor extremely uncommon, nor does the device owner usually have the means to break the pairing, so I reckon you're off base here. It is a normal device with normal data, it just can't be imaged. They can still go through it.

Exactly. The worst part of the situation at the border is the images they capture. If a person looks through your phone right then and there, the worst part is them looking at your personal stuff, which is already bad. If they take an image there is no knowing where all of your personal data will end up.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#170

Post by nobodyshere »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14
jakobdabo wrote: post #4

You can also do a hardware mod by swapping some data pins on the connector and soldering a special cable just for you.

Any reason one couldn’t remove the lightning port entirely? And charge only wirelessly (Qi), using Bluetooth for audio?

The only reason might be something only available through the lightning port. The only thing I can imagine is trying to restore from backup if the OS got messed up for some reason or the screen is broken and touch UI is not an easy option.
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