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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

#381

Post by tonyarkles »

koonsolo wrote: post #374
JohnFen wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the cops say “we pinged your phone”. What that entails exactly I have no clue. The cell phone infrastructure knows where your phone is. It has to in order for it to operate. The police routinely ask cell phone companies for locations of cell phones. Many (most?) not only won't require a warrant, but provide an official portal the police can use to conduct their queries without having to get a phone company employee…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but cell phone companies only know which tower you are currently connected to. So it's pretty inaccurate. The only thing that is "house accurate" is the GPS on your phone. That means they need access to your phone to get that info. Remark that GPS doesn't need to be turned on. Google mapped all Wifi's and so can locate you without GPS.

You are wrong, although I don’t know the exact mechanism. I once witnessed first-hand a somewhat shady situation where a private investigator was trying to find someone’s whereabouts for the purpose of serving them for a lawsuit. As a last ditch effort, they reached out to a somewhat shady contact who was known to have some kind of internal access to the phone system and gave them the target’s phone number and sent $200 with Paypal. 10 minutes later we get an email back with a specific address and as it turns out that address was the target’s lawyer’s office. One of the process servers goes over there and catches the target on his way out.

I was a bit shaken. I believed what you believe before then too.

Edit: Looks like it’s LBS/LCS: https://www.telecomhall.net/t/what-is-lcs-and-lbs/6374

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

#384

Post by dredmorbius »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #157
throwaway1777 wrote: post #140

Is it time to flat out abandon smartphones?

A dumb phone might not be much better. There wouldn't be a camera for them to get, but they might still be able to get the microphone.

Many dumb phones have off switches (which actually work), or better: removable batteries.

(You can simply break the circuit with a piece of paper between the battery terminal and phone contact for convenience.)

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

#385

Post by ElKrist »

olivierduval wrote: post #215

Actually it's not really a big news: * right now: Law Enforcement need the decision of a judge to do this (when they technically can, either using 0-day or maybe asking for the phone provider to upload a malicious app under their service app) * after the law: Law Enforcement will be able to do THE SAME without the need for a judge under some specific (but not really restrictive, like national security) conditions So,…

Right now: they don't have such right. After the law: they do have the right and it requires a judge's approval renewed every 15 days. I'm not talking about what the capacity of intelligence services to do it, I'm talking about what the police (officier de police judiciaire) can lawfully do.

Source: https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/justice/telephones-mouch...

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

#386

Post by rekoil »

PawgerZ wrote: post #229
skyyler wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no one implied that, stop being silly

> Y Combinator is an American company and the website is hosted in the US. What else would this imply?

I wrote a stupid message first that the person above you replied to accurately, I changed my stupid message to be less stupid while still reflecting my opinion on the matter.

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

#387

Post by dredmorbius »

lost_tourist wrote: post #170
Animatronio wrote: post #38

Meanwhile China is bad.

Both are bad, the French aren't currently forcibly sterilizing, enslaving, and genociding a culture like the Chinese are doing with Uyghers, however. So there are different levels of bad.

Not since the 1960s, at any rate.

(The legacy of colonialism in many larger European countries is ... pretty dark. France, Belgium, UK, Germany, Spain, Portugal, ...)

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

#388

Post by hypothesis »

estebank wrote: post #221
KennyBlanken wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nexus/Pixel devices literally come out of the box with Verizon background crapware installed that you cannot disable or remove even if you're not a Verizon customer. Google long sold out, friend.

That hasn't been the case for any of the Nexus or Pixel devices I bought straight from Google.

Nexus devices did have such “feature”. IIRC it was activated by a carrier SIM upon first boot and some people were quite sad after inserting say AT&T SIM into their supposedly “unlocked” phone.

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

#389

Post by kayfox »

koonsolo wrote: post #380
ubermonkey wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triangulation by cell tower is really, really accurate.

How can you triangulate if you're only connected to 1 tower?

Towers use sector antennas that can cover typically 15 degrees down to 5 degrees, so the angle from the tower is somewhat known. There are some ways to get an idea how far a device is from the tower with sufficient access, but its usually a moot point because rarely does a device get into a place where it is only being seen on one tower.

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

#390

Post by Anthony-G »

flanbiscuit wrote: post #222
KennyBlanken wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nexus/Pixel devices literally come out of the box with Verizon background crapware installed that you cannot disable or remove even if you're not a Verizon customer. Google long sold out, friend.

I use T-Mobile and I bought my Pixel 5a directly through Google at an official in-person Google store. Does my phone have this Verizon bloatware? What apps should I be looking for? I googled it and I'm only seeing people complain about this Verizon bloatware from people who bought it through Verizon.

> I googled it

Google don’t index sites which contain that kind of information. :)

More seriously, I too would have bought a Fairphone (for ethical reasons) to replace the crap second-hand Android phone that I’d been using for the past 8 years. However, I recently received a gift of a new iPhone so I probably won’t be getting a new phone for another 8 years or so. The iPhone doesn’t have any bloatware and it does have lots of options for security and privacy so I’m happy to use it from that point of view. Aside from not being able to remove the battery, I don’t think the average user can do much better than that, given that they have no insight into or control over the baseband layer.

I’ve never owned a Pixel but I’d expect (hope) that one purchased directly from Google would be similar to in iPhone bought from Apple.

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