Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 162 posts

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#91

Post by oneepic »

binarymax wrote: post #11

I remember back in the 90's, when Intel was going to introduce a unique identifier in their processors that could be used for authentication purposes, it caused a huge uproar and Intel backed down. [0] Having a hardware embedded unique ID that can be (is) used for tracking a known persons location at all times is probably the most intrusive privacy violation we've ever had. That we willingly carry these things around…

>We've long lost the war on privacy.

A bit of unnecessary FUD alarmism here. Seems like today's answer is no, probably not. It's just very difficult, requiring (i.e.) policy changes and mass adoption and transparent phone companies willing to not do dirty things with cellphones. I still think humanity can figure something out, people just have to step up.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#92

Post by themacguffinman »

binarymax wrote: post #11

I remember back in the 90's, when Intel was going to introduce a unique identifier in their processors that could be used for authentication purposes, it caused a huge uproar and Intel backed down. [0] Having a hardware embedded unique ID that can be (is) used for tracking a known persons location at all times is probably the most intrusive privacy violation we've ever had. That we willingly carry these things around…

If you're fighting against identification technology, of course you're going to lose. Identifiers have real benefits and as we've seen with American SSNs, identification, uh, finds a way. We should be fighting to exercise jurisprudence to prevent and limit abuses of identification, not dismissing unique IDs.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#93

Post by a1369209993 »

cr0sh wrote: post #66
mahkeiro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me what is worst between a theocracy and an absolute monarchy? In SA, the king is bound by no law not even the law of god. He wants you dead on spot, and then you die. Doesn't sound to me a better system.

Whereas in a theocracy, the Ruler is bound by the law of God. God wants You dead on the spot, and the Ruler is his instrument on Earth - and then You die. The Ruler is now not at fault, because God told, and used, the Ruler to do the deed. The Ruler is absolved of responsibility - God's Will. ...do you see and understand the difference?

There is no difference, and the ruler is still responsible for not refusing the god's will.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#94

Post by nottheenduser »

rsync wrote: post #53
nugget wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary reason we care about Saudi is oil. US policy makers seem to view them as a necessary evil until we transition to renewable energy. No real effort is made to influence reforms. In fact, the more culturally isolated Saudi is from Europe and other countries, the better it is for the US, in terms of dependency. At some point after “peak oil” SA seems likely to experience extreme social upheaval - perhaps even…

"The primary reason we care about Saudi is oil." This is true. "US policy makers seem to view them as a necessary evil until we transition to renewable energy." This is false. There is nothing at all necessary nor evil, relative to the United States. We use the middle east to establish a protection racket on oil flows to the rest of the world . The United States gets zero, or near zero, oil from Saudi Arabia. The sam…

The us imports roughly 9% of its petroleum from SA, (it's second largest single-source after Canada)[0], which is significant. However, I think if you polled policy makers they'd emphasize security interests over oil. SA serves as a powerful Sunni counter-balance to the largely Shiite Iran. They are huge purchasers of western arms, and often (explicitly) support western interventions.

[0] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=727&t=6

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#95

Post by droithomme »

Well gosh now, if we don't track down and capture runaway slaves/women/etc, won't society completely collapse? How could we have a modern enlightened society without this policy?

Also, very important we support Saudi/US war on Yemen and Iran. Gosh those folks are simply barbaric cavemen types!

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#96

Post by dmos62 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #85
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back, it was unbelievable to see how huge the storm caused by Intel's "processor serial number" in Pentium 3 was, that even forced Intel to withdrew it. Meanwhile, nobody has ever said anything about the serial numbers of hard drives, GPUs, motherboards, RAM modules, Ethernet MAC address, etc, etc, etc. Nowadays, basically everything comes with one UUID. Pretty illogical, isn't it? > We've long lost the war o…

Would love to see a YouTube channel or blog where somebody systemically takes apart their computer and starts reflashing every serial number in flash/EEPROM with 0x00. It’s not like any of these are phoning home (I hope), or married together, so there’s nothing to kill clones.

> It’s not like any of these are phoning home (I hope)

Firmware is largely closed-source, so all you can do is hope.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#97

Post by segfaultbuserr »

Scoundreller wrote: post #85
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back, it was unbelievable to see how huge the storm caused by Intel's "processor serial number" in Pentium 3 was, that even forced Intel to withdrew it. Meanwhile, nobody has ever said anything about the serial numbers of hard drives, GPUs, motherboards, RAM modules, Ethernet MAC address, etc, etc, etc. Nowadays, basically everything comes with one UUID. Pretty illogical, isn't it? > We've long lost the war o…

Would love to see a YouTube channel or blog where somebody systemically takes apart their computer and starts reflashing every serial number in flash/EEPROM with 0x00. It’s not like any of these are phoning home (I hope), or married together, so there’s nothing to kill clones.

> reflashing every serial number in flash/EEPROM with 0x00.

It will be an amazing video, but good luck if the device in question has (very likely):

* a mask-ROM / OTP-ROM for a serial number - almost all microcontrollers and EEPROMs sold nowadays has at least one permanent and unchangable UUID for hardware tracking and DRM implementation (security-through-obscurity tricks to prevent rogue competitors from copying your firmware).

* "firmware read-protection" - which means the only way to dump the EEPROM is performing a full-chip erase and destroy the entire firmware, commonly used in embedded systems to stop rogue competitors from copying your firmware.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#98

Post by kmlx »

aikah wrote: post #52
colechristensen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a delicate game being played. If you are friendly with SA you can put pressure on them to improve. If you declare them an evil enemy would the outcome be better? There is a path to walk and it is not easy to find the right one when you have to deal with reality not just idealism. The natural resources in the middle east are important to the world and it is not so simple as an 'us vs. them' because there are…

> If you are friendly with SA you can put pressure on them to improve. People said the exact same thing with China 40 years ago. Nobody is pressuring on them to do anything and they couldn't care less. Why do you think the royal family constantly panders to religious extremists? they are actively spreading the most orthodox version of Islam in every charity and mosque they finance. They (the royal family) couldn't ca…

> People said the exact same thing with China 40 years ago. Nobody is pressuring on them to do anything and they couldn't care less.

hm? china went from the deaths of the cultural revolution to a working society which is now, in certain regards, miles ahead of others. the massive advance of this society is due in no small part to countries such as the US (trade) and the UK (HK).

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#99

Post by InitialLastName »

Scoundreller wrote: post #85
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back, it was unbelievable to see how huge the storm caused by Intel's "processor serial number" in Pentium 3 was, that even forced Intel to withdrew it. Meanwhile, nobody has ever said anything about the serial numbers of hard drives, GPUs, motherboards, RAM modules, Ethernet MAC address, etc, etc, etc. Nowadays, basically everything comes with one UUID. Pretty illogical, isn't it? > We've long lost the war o…

Would love to see a YouTube channel or blog where somebody systemically takes apart their computer and starts reflashing every serial number in flash/EEPROM with 0x00. It’s not like any of these are phoning home (I hope), or married together, so there’s nothing to kill clones.

In many cases, a) the unique id's are in read-only parts of the flash and b) the system firmware won't work if it can't read a unique id that matches a (signed) stored ID somewhere in its system.

In many cases, this isn't for anything user-facing. Unique ID chips can be very useful for detecting factory-overrun counterfeits ("oh, your $widget does this notable, nonfunctional behavior? Where did you purchase it, perchance?").

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#100

Post by bad_alloc »

Scoundreller wrote: post #89
negamax wrote: post #54

QQ: Can we not make mobiles without IMEI? Surely in today's time WiFi is ubiquitous and that will only increase with many cities installing city wide free WiFi. A simple Internet only phone with built in Tor support can push the envelope. Most of my communication is through apps. I don't think not having a number would make a huge difference

IMEI is the phone’s unique serial number, not a phone number. But everything you said still applies: why does my phone need a serial number that it phones “home” with?

Probably for the same reason many technical horrors arise: It seemed reasonable at the time, it was the simplest solution, somebody added it to the spec for some reason.

Then things like this get used in such a way.

Post reply on HN