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France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

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Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#191

Post by tiedieconderoga »

cm2187 wrote: post #105

I am confused. Are they mandating a backdoor, or is there already a backdoor, or are they allowing the police to exploit zero days? If it is the latter, it is sad that the authorities assume weak security as a given.

They may have access to backdoors in the baseband firmwares.

The baseband is an opaque binary blob that operates outside of the phone's main OS, and its contents are usually considered a trade secret by the manufacturer since it handles low-level hardware interactions with the main radios/etc.

Personally, I would be surprised if those systems weren't compromised by agreement. It's already common to see criminals and dissidents get busted because they think that turning a phone off stops it from reporting location data.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#192

Post by swader999 »

jb1991 wrote: post #162
Awelton wrote: post #126

They could at least have the decency to just secretly do it and then pretend like they aren't, like our government does. This is why physical switches and removable batteries are the only way forward.

what is "our" government? this site is worldwide..

Take your pic, most G8-20 are doing this.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#193

Post by paxys »

donatj wrote: post #180

United States, couple years ago my friend in his mid-thirties was feeling depressed after his mom died. Came over to hang out, and wasn’t responding to his sisters calls. His sister called in a welfare check on him and suddenly I have three cops knocking at my front door. They ask for him by name, say he isn’t in trouble. I go get him; he asks “how did you know where I was?” and the cops say “we pinged your phone”. W…

Despite all the technology in the world the majority of police work is still plain old-fashioned knocking on doors and making phone calls. People will always voluntarily give up all the information in the world to be seen as good citizens. In your friend's case I'm willing to bet that they asked the sister for the names of his close friends and acquaintances and yours matched up.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#194

Post by pbhjpbhj »

px43 wrote: post #113
hinata08 wrote: post #34

I regret getting a pixel, and not a fairphone with a removable battery With the current level of oversight on the police (police of police is a meme by now), and the level of cybersecurity at the government, everyone's phones will be activated within a few months. At least some government agent will have fun watching what ppl visit on the internet during their spare time, and can enable the camera to watch what they'…

A Pixel phone probably gives you the best chance of resisting this sort of attack. The most vulnerable phones are the older, cheaper phones that run outdated versions of Android. Pixel phones are generally the first to get security updates, and so the quickest to get patches when spyware companies start using new bugs.

Wouldn't a Pixel phone be vulnerable to USA giving Google a 'national security letter' saying to make your phone remotely accessible with a personalised update, say? Google seem like they could - and if paid, would - readily do that whilst other companies could hide behind lack of resources or whatever.

I just assumed that USA three letter agencies paid larger companies upfront to implement back doors; seems to fit with past form. Why would they not do that. Indeed it always struck me the debacle with Huawei where USA government smeared then to prevent their equipment being used in UK was so that USA-manufactured equipment with USA-controlled backdoors would be implemented instead ... it might only have been financial protectionism but it just seemed too big a protest.

/tinfoilwrappedforfreshness

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#196

Post by neoromantique »

paxys wrote: post #193
donatj wrote: post #180

United States, couple years ago my friend in his mid-thirties was feeling depressed after his mom died. Came over to hang out, and wasn’t responding to his sisters calls. His sister called in a welfare check on him and suddenly I have three cops knocking at my front door. They ask for him by name, say he isn’t in trouble. I go get him; he asks “how did you know where I was?” and the cops say “we pinged your phone”. W…

Despite all the technology in the world the majority of police work is still plain old-fashioned knocking on doors and making phone calls. People will always voluntarily give up all the information in the world to be seen as good citizens. In your friend's case I'm willing to bet that they asked the sister for the names of his close friends and acquaintances and yours matched up.

or they just triangulated using his cell phone, it can be very accurate in urban settings

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#197

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

drannex wrote: post #176
jb1991 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is "our" government? this site is worldwide..

Fairly certain you can apply this to nearly any government.

Any government with the resources to do it, probably is.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#198

Post by KennyBlanken »

dathinab wrote: post #76
sixhobbits wrote: post #3

what tech does this even use? Do they mean using Pegasus or similar malware that the govt has to first get onto the suspect's devices, or is this via Google/Apple or the device manufacturers that makes 'remotely and secretly activating a microphone' even possible?

This bill AFIK only covers the "they are allowed to do it" part but not the "how do they gain the capability to do it" part. But spyware which can do so exists in endless amounts, including from companies focused on selling it to governments. Hence also why in recent years physical microphone switches, or e.g. stuff like (I think it was) Apple laptops "physically" disconnecting the microphone/camera if you close the…

iSight cameras had an LED that was supposedly unbypassable. Turns out that was bullshit and it was trivial to rewrite the iSight module's firmware.

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#199

Post by mcintyre1994 »

tiedieconderoga wrote: post #191
cm2187 wrote: post #105

I am confused. Are they mandating a backdoor, or is there already a backdoor, or are they allowing the police to exploit zero days? If it is the latter, it is sad that the authorities assume weak security as a given.

They may have access to backdoors in the baseband firmwares. The baseband is an opaque binary blob that operates outside of the phone's main OS, and its contents are usually considered a trade secret by the manufacturer since it handles low-level hardware interactions with the main radios/etc. Personally, I would be surprised if those systems weren't compromised by agreement. It's already common to see criminals and…

Do the cameras/microphones need to be controlled by the baseband? Naively they seem like they should be at a slightly higher level than the main radios, and should be controlled exclusively by the OS. I'm guessing from your comment there's some reason that's not the case though?

Re: France passes bill to allow police remotely activate phone camera, microphone

#200

Post by Loughla »

ibejoeb wrote: post #149
debacle wrote: post #4

> They noted that a judge must approve any use of the provision We tried the same in the US. Our intel agencies just lied to the judges, who mostly otherwise were hip to the con and acted as a rubber stamp.

We think they lied to the judges. Or maybe there are no judges, because the entire thing is a secret system, so we can't know who the judges are or how they've ruled on the matters brought before them. All we know is that it is only used against foreign adversaries, except in the cases when it's used on Americans.

Of all of the issues in the US, I genuinely believe FISA and FISC are the largest issues today. There can be no secret courts in a real democracy (or republic or whatever else you want to call it). The government can't be by, for, and of the people if they have a recourse to lock away people that can't have the sun shine on it.

It astounds me that this is just accepted as a practice in the US. Or am I being naive?

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