271–280 of 622 posts
Removing this ability also prevents emergency services from determining device location in case its owner goes missing.
No > The limit precise location setting doesn't impact the precision of the location data that is shared with emergency responders during an emergency call. https://support.apple.com/en-us/126101
Earlier quoted context omitted.
American carriers have a different protocol than the EU. The EU (and probably EU derived networks) uses a """secret""" SMS format that's opt-in, but the 911 system works differently. The 911 feature can be activated fully remotely, the 112 feature is supposed to only activate when dialing an emergency number.
Wait wait, so if I know the "secret" SMS format I can text someone's phone and get their coordinates back?
The format is not secret either, it's just binary encoded.
This has been the case since the e911 project in the 1990's and is mandatory. Prior to this I would reset the message waiting indicator on their phone continuously to see what cells and cell sectors they were moving through but that would basically just show what road or roads they may be on and what direction they are going very roughly. Assisting the FBI with tracking kidnappers or at least that is what they told me.
There are loads of other tags that can be set on someones phone. My favorites were priority override and caller-id blocking override. This was before SS7 spoofing was so prevalent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We aren't going to remove the security state What security state? They aren't doing this for anyone's safety. This is the surveillance and parallel construction state. > What needs to happen is accountability. No agency can have this power and remain accountable. Warrants are not an effective tool for managing this. Courts cannot effectively perform oversight after the fact. > The only way to stop the rampant abuse…
> They aren't doing this for anyone's safety. Strictly speaking, this is not completely true. When you call an emergency number, it’s very good that they can see exactly where you are. That was how this was sold 15+ years ago. But of course, that’s basically the only use case when this should be available.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reticulum gets around a lot of these problems, as the (better) encryption is app-level (or even more fine-grained.) Its also not tied to lora, so you can interop easily with other transports. I made a websocket transport for it, and there is already TCP and UDP, and a couple non-lora radio transports. I also made a (works on web) js and Arduino client lib, and it has a few native client libs, so it can sort of be use…
I only recently discovered Reticulum, only to then learn that the developer has retired from working on it. Do you know if there's still any community members carrying the torch?
Anyone know why apple specifies this feature requires a supported carrier? Why would the carrier matter?
Most of those features are not user visible and are compatibility hacks - ie. "use lower profile in video calls if country = FR".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been wondering this for a while and maybe someone has a clue. Based on the very “bursty” nature of LoRA, how much does an adversary need to spend to radiolocate it? What’s the threat model there?
$20? These networks do not try to hide your location and triangulating known frequencies is trivial.
TL;DR, this is nothing new.
Carriers have offered location of your device for 911 calls for years now, through a set of metadata called Automatic Location Identification (ALI).
This is only provided to 911 (police & fire) by carriers alongside your 911 call.
Mobile Device Manufacturers can also provide "precise location" to 911 for the same calls, but that's a separate form of data and closely secured.
Bottom line - Carrier data has always been less precise, but more readily available. Device data (i.e. Apple and Google) is more precise, but harder to access.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We aren't going to remove the security state What security state? They aren't doing this for anyone's safety. This is the surveillance and parallel construction state. > What needs to happen is accountability. No agency can have this power and remain accountable. Warrants are not an effective tool for managing this. Courts cannot effectively perform oversight after the fact. > The only way to stop the rampant abuse…
> They aren't doing this for anyone's safety. Strictly speaking, this is not completely true. When you call an emergency number, it’s very good that they can see exactly where you are. That was how this was sold 15+ years ago. But of course, that’s basically the only use case when this should be available.