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FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool (2006)
- smoldesu 3y ago> Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique "functioned whether the phone was powered on or off." Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set. It wouldn't surprise me if this is one of the big reasons manufacturers were pressured into non-removable batteries.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoNot to rain on a good theory but removable batteries require extra space in the form factor and cost in manufacturing. Where smaller is a UX goal and cost is a profit goal, being forced by shady government agencies actually seems like a second order effect.
- jklinger410 3y agoKeeping the mic live is a profit goal.
- cubefox 3y agoCost is probably negligible as phones had removable batteries since the beginning, even cheap ones.
- genmud 3y agoNot even a little consideration for this has made manufacturers ditch removable batteries. The primary driver has been increased capacity, followed closely by the ability to make them much thinner and develop water resistant handsets. All other reasons are so far below these they aren't even worth mentioning.
- jklinger410 3y ago> Not even a little consideration for this has made manufacturers ditch removable batteries. What makes you qualified to say this? Do you work for one of the large phone manufacturers?
- sonicshadow 3y agoI think some observation and a little engineering thinking makes this clear. In the early 2010s one of the biggest issues with smartphones was battery life. The packaging of the battery is limited if a requirement is to make it removable (i.e. it must be a certain shape, have connectors in a certain location, etc). If that requirement is removed, battery can be made to fill whatever space is available in the device. People drop their phones in water all the time. Then call the company and complain it's broken. People get mad when the company tells them it's their fault. If you have fewer holes in a device, it's less likely to be damaged by water. A removable battery means exposed connectors sealed by imperfect covers, making them more likely to be damaged by any water ingress. So they removed that failure point. Another issue in tech generally is end-users messing with the device internals, accidentally breaking the device, and blaming the company. Remove that failure-case by making the internals inaccessible and complaints go down. Making the device impossible to access because of a deep-state conspiracy is just a convenient mental shortcut to believe in. I'm as annoyed as the next person about less-repairable devices but I don't think it's a conspiracy, just practical engineering.
- hattmall 3y agoMy s5 had great battery life with removable battery that could be upgraded and was perfectly waterproof almost 10 yrs ago. I think the bigger driver is encouraging people to get a new phone when battery life inevitably declined. I used the S5 for about 6 years with no issues other than a couple battery replacements. My pixel didn't even make it 2 years before serious performance declines and poor battery life.
- sonicshadow 3y ago
- KeplerBoy 3y agoThe EU is mandating removable batteries in consumer appliances by 2027.
- graftak 3y agoRemovable meaning without glue or similar adhesives, and without proprietary tools. Not removable in the when you drop your phone the lid jumps off kind of way.
- wefarrell 3y agoThat reminds me of how the CIA was able to track Pablo Escobar. He had a mobile phone that he only turned on to make calls, however the CIA was able to remotely activate and track it using surveillance aircraft.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoIf conspiracy were our only worry, what a wonderful world it would be. However, dangerous developments like this happen all too often without supervillains cackling and masterminds plotting... and people make mistakes like this through innocent decisions. We don't need to worry only about conspiracy, seemingly arbitrary design choices undermine us at every turn. No one said "if only this room-sized computer were able to fit into a speck of dust and be powered by ambient temperature differentials I could spy on everyone!"... we want those things because it is convenient. Or because it can do things we couldn't do otherwise. The universe itself has it out for us.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI’ve always found it interesting people put tape over their camera but leave the microphone untouched. If I’m concerned about privacy my words carry a lot more personal information than pictures of me picking my nose while programming.
- guerrilla 3y agoYeah I don't get why everyone didn't foresee this as obvious. If you're talking about something that even has a remote chance of being used against you, you put your damned phones in another room.
- autoexec 3y agoPutting tape over the mic wouldn't stop it from hearing you. People leave their mics untouched because no amount of touching will solve the problem without permanently damaging your device or making it useless. Some devices will disable the internal microphone if it detects an external mic has been inserted and there are people who do things like take a microphone or a cheap pair of earbuds+mic and cut the cord off just past the jack so that they can leave it inserted without worry that it will collect anything. I've heard that some devices were updated to stop disabling the internal mic after an external one was inserted in response to this tactic, but haven't verified that myself. Either way, that's something that can sometimes be done or undone in software, so I wouldn't count on it. I do try to avoid bugging my own house as best I can. I opened up my PS5 controller to rip out the two internal microphones for example, but there's nothing I can do to my cell phone's mic to keep it from listening while the phone is being used/useful. Removing the battery or burying the phone 10 feet below the surface of the earth or keeping it in a lead lined box makes the phone about as useful as not having one.
- cassepipe 3y agoTells a lot about our visual bias as human beings. Most people are able to see and identify the camera but nobody really sees the tiny hole for the microphone. Only people who know it's there think about it. It's also funny because it's about control. Most people are exposing (probably too much of) their lives voluntarily but don't want to be exposed picking their noses. We are only trying to be rational beings when something important depends on it or because in certain domains we've been trained to
- boring_twenties 3y agoI never even use the microphone in my phone. I only talk using headsets and/or car Bluetooth. I wish I knew how to physically and permanently disable it.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoFill it with epoxy?
- dylan604 3y agowhat's the trade-in value after that?
- boring_twenties 3y agoI'm not concerned with that. I bought the phone for $150 on ebay and intend to use it until it becomes unusable; it's a Pixel 4A 5G, the last one with a headphone jack.
- plonk 3y agoShouldn't be that hard if you have the tools to open it?
- astrange 3y agoA motion sensor in your phone is also a microphone and might be able to pick up speech.
- rl3 3y ago>A motion sensor in your phone is also a microphone and might be able to pick up speech. It's also possible to read lips and monitor typing or writing motions using 802.11, so that's another modality. In addition, your phone's baseband could potentially be used for those same purposes given it affords access to an additional spectrum of RF.
- 3y ago
- JohnMakin 3y agoI did a fun experiment with my iPhone 12 recently. I put it in my living room in a plainly accessible area not obstructed by much. I said in a normal speaking voice "hey siri" and waited to see if it activated. Then I stepped farther back, and farther back, and I was shocked and honestly disturbed at the distance it could clearly pick up my voice saying "hey siri." It was nearly 2 room lengths away, speaking at a normal volume, and it was very easily picking me up.
- mmastrac 3y agoFWIW the assistant activation training is far more sensitive than everything else. It's designed to pick up the activation words in all sorts of situations, even if it can't understand what you say afterwards.
- thatguy0900 3y agoThat's because it's using the phones processors, no? In a hypothetical fbi is recording scenario they might have more sophisticated language processing
- tinus_hn 3y agoNo. If you implement these systems, the model outputs the sentence it guessed and the confidence the user said that sentence. The activation logic is tuned so it triggers on pretty low confidence so the more sophisticated system can try working on the actual command.
- godelski 3y agoNo, it is because the problem is much easier. Voice recognition doesn't just mean amplifying the sounds (there's only so much of that you can reasonably do), but rather discriminating a phrase from other phrases. You only have two classes: "hey siri" and everything else. This is much easier than differentiating a conversation, where words and phrases are not so easily distinguishable: "Sam went and got Tom" vs "Man went and got bomb". To put this in an easier context, let's say we have colored shapes of various sizes. We place them down and start walking away. It's probably easier to discern color than shape at a distance (is that a hexagon or octagon?). And sufficiently far away it is hard to distinguish colors that are near one another (is that brown, firebrick, or maroon?). You can probably see that the complexity of the task is critical and that discrimination is easier when you have fewer bins to place things in.
- getmeinrn 3y agoI just assume everything I do or say is recorded and stored forever on some redundant storage and can be easily searched if I'm ever notable enough to have influence. That shouldn't influence what you do or say though, because if a system like that is corrupt enough to destroy a person for their private conversations, it's not worth participating in or supporting in the first place.
- grecy 3y ago> can be easily searched if I'm ever notable enough to have influence Simply by voting, or working for a certain company, or or striking or joining a union, or seeking an abortion may very well be notable enough for them to label you a certain way so they can pin something on you - "Acting against state interests" or some such.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago> Simply by voting Please show me a instance where a judge approved a warrant to investigate the crime of voting.
- virtue3 3y agoThe whole problem with this shit is they don't always need a warrant. If you are a non-us citizen or you're deemed "a terrorist" they can do whatever. This complicates further with crap like the US spying on say Swedish residents and then forwarding information to Sweden. Technically; Sweden isn't spying on it's citizens, the US is. But it's the same result.
- Forbo 3y agoOr they can just buy the data they want from whatever surveillance capitalism megacorp and not even have to bother collaborating with international orgs, regardless of citizenship/national origin/whatever.
- knodi123 3y ago
- taeric 3y agoWith how accurate you can get remote microphones to work, much of the effort to avoid listening from government agents feels misguided. If you want to keep them from having remote capabilities, the trick isn't to try and control your surroundings, but to control them. Legislation and rules of operation are pretty much required. You can be worried about your phone companies and such. Though, I think there is also a social problem, not a technical one.
- waynenilsen 3y agoHard to believe that this is considered "novel" I thought everyone knew this was fair game. It is so obvious. PinePhone and Pureism/Librem have hardware enabled switching for this reason.
- klabb3 3y agoIt was probably more novel in 2006. (I was also confused at first when they started mentioning Nokia and Razr)
- Xeamek 3y ago"It's so obvious" What exactly is obvious?
- whatwhaaaaat 3y agoThat every successful tech company has to play ball and give up whatever asked. If they don’t then they won’t exist for long. That everything you say and do is stored, cataloged, and searchable. Hell I’m reasonably sure nifi wouldn’t exist otherwise. There is a notable example from 2011
- thatguy0900 3y agoI always thought lavabit was the best example.
- Xeamek 3y agoLike apple did, when they unlocked that infamous IPhone... Oh wait Sure, the data that they collect is mostly avaible to agencies like FBA. But the argument is about using microphone, and despite Android being fairly open platform, where you can controll every single aspect of the device all the way down to assembly, I have yet to seen the smoking gun that objectively proves that googlePlayServices, or whatever, listens to you 24/7 and transmits all that to the servers.
- Forbo 3y ago
- squarefoot 3y agoIt should be noted that this kind of spying is possible only if both the phone manufacturer and the carrier are willing (or forced) to cooperate. Otherwise, short of using social engineering to make someone install malware on their cellphone, it would be much harder to achieve. One more reason (do we really need more?) to push for Open Source in phones too, and the usual caveat emptor wrt carriers.