5 ms·

The claimed features (see pg 5 of https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_hemisphere_surveillance_letter_112023.pdf https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/me

by madars 3y ago

The claimed features (see pg 5 of https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_hemisphere_surveillance_letter_112023.pdf https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_hemisphere_...) operate at a cell service level, so as long as your phone is still connecting to base stations the answer would be "no." Take, for example, "Linking multiple devices/phone numbers to an identified target" -- even if you use Signal on two phones and never do regular text/call, if the two devices travel together (e.g. connect to the same carrier base stations) one can make a guess that they are related. This has much wider applicability than the drug investigation mandate: e.g. you could use such capability to identify who is meeting with which investigative journalist.

rollcat 3y ago
I think most privacy-conscious people have a pretty good idea about how to maintain proper private key hygiene (key should never leave the device, use FDE + a passphrase or a hardware token, etc). But we've been leaking metadata (such as mail headers) left and right ever since PGP was a hot new thing, something which should've been our primary concern no later than since Snowden/2013. It would be good to have a proper field guide written down, that's a little more in-depth than "leave your phone at home", weighing risks vs convenience, going into detail on what kinds of metadata you might be leaking, etc. Most of us have some rough idea but it isn't at all obvious the way we know "MD5 is broken".
moose44 3y ago
Interesting. Thank you for sharing. So faraday bags and removing sim cards all together is the best course of action?
- xethos 3y ago
  If you want generic advice, it's "Faraday bag or pull the battery". "Off" isn't "Everything is off and nothing will communicate via any radio" on every handset, and some will connect to towers without a SIM in case you need to make an emergency call.
upofadown 3y ago
AT&T would know where you are from connections to the towers. They wouldn't normally know who was on the other side of the jabber connection, particularly if one or more or the involved servers was not where AT&T could see any traffic.

by madars 3y ago

rollcat 3y ago

I think most privacy-conscious people have a pretty good idea about how to maintain proper private key hygiene (key should never leave the device, use FDE + a passphrase or a hardware token, etc). But we've been leaking metadata (such as mail headers) left and right ever since PGP was a hot new thing, something which should've been our primary concern no later than since Snowden/2013. It would be good to have a proper field guide written down, that's a little more in-depth than "leave your phone at home", weighing risks vs convenience, going into detail on what kinds of metadata you might be leaking, etc. Most of us have some rough idea but it isn't at all obvious the way we know "MD5 is broken".

moose44 3y ago

Interesting. Thank you for sharing. So faraday bags and removing sim cards all together is the best course of action?

xethos 3y ago
If you want generic advice, it's "Faraday bag or pull the battery". "Off" isn't "Everything is off and nothing will communicate via any radio" on every handset, and some will connect to towers without a SIM in case you need to make an emergency call.

upofadown 3y ago

AT&T would know where you are from connections to the towers. They wouldn't normally know who was on the other side of the jabber connection, particularly if one or more or the involved servers was not where AT&T could see any traffic.