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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

#431

Post by fomine3 »

koonsolo wrote: post #376
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They can locate anyone's phone on demand. The services that do this can generate a likely street address from GPS or tower triangulated location. This is how many criminals now get caught while on the run. It isn't magic police work but rather the personal tracking device everyone carries. Likewise some spree killers have been tracked down by geofencing phones known to be around all crime scenes and zeroing in on…

Cell phones are only connected to 1 tower afaik. So no triangulation is possible, only the tower they are connected to, which is very broad.

Carrier aggregation is a thing since LTE-Advanced

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

13of40 wrote: post #416
horsestaple wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is the largest country with english speakers, but it does not have the majority of speakers [1] (just India plus Pakistan have as many). So your assumption would be wrong, even based on statistics. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English...

That's why I qualified it with "native" - the US has by far the most English-as-a-first-language people. In my head everyone speaks like an Anglo guy from Idaho, and since HN is text-only, metaphorically speaking the lights are out, so I'm left without a clue where other people are sitting or where they are from. In other words, if you found yourself in a dark room with a thousand English speakers who all sounded lik…

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by michael1999 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #294
michael1999 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The microphone does need to be connected to the phone. Not so much the camera.

Does it? The OS must be able to send audio to the phone modem (bluetooth, homepod, etc), so it seems reasonable to me that it wouldn't have direct access to the microphone and that would go via OS also.

Not in theory, but certainly historically. Last I read, there was still an AT command channel present. Some of that IP is super old.

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

#434

Post by bunga-bunga »

Animatronio wrote: post #419
xcdzvyn wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally ridiculous. China is literally committing genocide. They are kidnapping innocent people and harvesting their organs.

What is ridiculous is that China is vigurously criticised in every news outlet in the West on every occasion, while the French gov't gets away with almost everything. Can you explain that?

They’re literally protesting right now in the streets in France, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

No country is a saint, but you should stop with the whataboutism.

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

#435

Post by akikoo »

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?

E.U. is planning to purchase Pegasus for law enforcement purposes:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230609IP...

"They want EU rules on the use of spyware by law enforcement, which should only be authorised in exceptional cases for a pre-defined purpose and a limited time."

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

#437

Post by notfed »

realusername wrote: post #152
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 don't have any backdoor and they don't mandate ones. This is meant for using zero days legally

Oh. We've been doing that for decades in the US.

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

#438

Post by hackmiester »

hocuspocus wrote: post #339
ubermonkey wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triangulation by cell tower is really, really accurate.

Not really, best in class network probes will regularly give you positions that are wrong by a few km, you need quite a bit of cleaning to reconstruct accurate paths. That's why something like MDT was added to 3GPP standards and emergency calls trigger a hard GPS fix.

Sure, that seems like something that could happen. However, meanwhile, in practice, my friend was having a mental break and the cops narrowed my friend's location down to 3 possible houses in a neighborhood.

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

#439

Post by hackmiester »

ROTMetro wrote: post #402
sidewndr46 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police need a warrant to demand that data. Nothing stops the provider from handing it over willingly.

Hopefully this new 'the Government can't compel companies' trial shuts this down as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36614678 Either corporations are allowed to be 'pressured' by the government or they aren't. But of course the legal system will make themselves a nice carveout for their uses like always.

It won't shut it down. The cops aren't compelling or pressuring the providers to give the info. They're just doing it.

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

#440

Post by hackmiester »

nine_k wrote: post #301
ubermonkey wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triangulation by cell tower is really, really accurate.

Doesn't such tracking require a warrant? Looking at call logs may require less.

No, no need for a warrant. If the cops ask nicely (as opposed to making a demand), and the provider provides the info, there was no need for a warrant. That is the common process today.
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