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>smart phones track us How do you imagine participating in a network such that it isn't tracking you? - Identifying which port/antenna it's receiving you on (

>smart phones track us How do you imagine participating in a network such that it isn't tracking you? - Identifying which port/antenna it's receiving you on (i.e. switching tables, tower pings) is tracking. - Tagging your traffic with your unique identifier (i.e. MAC and IP addresses) is tracking. - Figuring out where to send replies to your requests is impossible without extensive, persistent tracking. How do you have network without these things? It's true that carrying a smartphone entails being tracked more than not carrying electronics, but it's unclear how you could have a phone that doesn't track you while still functioning as a phone. Perhaps a pager? They passively receive encrypted satellite broadcasts. But then, they are receive-only devices. You can't transmit things without facilitating the tracking of where you are transmitting from.

icebraining 11y ago
You can't transmit things without facilitating the tracking of where you are transmitting from. True, but cellphones are constantly checking in to the network, even if they aren't transmitting any actual data. In theory, a cellphone could remain passive, waiting for a pager-like signal indicating there's an inbound connection waiting, and then iﬀ the user wants to accept it, indicate its current position to the network. I suppose a poor-man’s version could be achieved by carrying both a pager and a cellphone (turned off or in airplane mode), and having a gateway that would retransmit your SMSs and missed call notifications to the pager.
- NeutronBoy 11y ago
  > waiting for a pager-like signal indicating there's an inbound connection waiting, and then iﬀ the user wants to accept it, indicate its current position to the network. So you page the entire network globally to find the device?
  - throwaway7767 11y ago
    > So you page the entire network globally to find the device? Or locally, and have the device check in when it enters a new geographic area instead of all the time. The accuracy of passive tracking could be decreased considerably if the protocols were designed with that goal in mind. This is one of those cases where perfect is the enemy of good. Just because there will always be the possibility of tracking in wireless networks, does not mean that that we can not work on minimising that leak.
schoen 11y ago
One important element would be to rotate the hardware identifiers frequently, and, if the network is collecting payment from its users, totally decouple billing from any persistent identifier (for example, with blinded signatures). You also want to decouple user-oriented communication services from network connectivity, so your mobile operator shouldn't give you a phone number (or e-mail address), just generic IP connectivity to reach other services that give you those things. That's a start! The reason that we have persist identifiers with mobile phones historically is all about billing and call completion. If we did the billing and call completion at other layers that weren't tied to a mobile subscriber's identity, we could ditch the persistent identifiers and use much more temporary ones (much like you could still get on a wifi network with DHCP even if you changed your MAC address every 5 minutes, and you could also netcat anonymous voucher tokens to a network provider's server to prove your entitlement to receive connectivity).
- superuser2 11y ago
  Receiving calls is a critical (/the only) point of a cell phone for many people. How do you route the right call to the right hardware if you can't associate the hardware with a phone number?
  - schoen 11y ago
    If you want to do that, you need to register with someone who can give you a phone number, but ideally not your carrier. You could conceivably have a SIP-like model where you can send control connections over Tor and media connections over the regular Internet. (I think the Guardian Project has tried making actual VoIP calls over TCP over Tor, and I don't know how well it worked out for them. So I'm assuming you won't be able to route the media streams anonymously, maybe just the control channel.)

icebraining 11y ago

You can't transmit things without facilitating the tracking of where you are transmitting from. True, but cellphones are constantly checking in to the network, even if they aren't transmitting any actual data. In theory, a cellphone could remain passive, waiting for a pager-like signal indicating there's an inbound connection waiting, and then iﬀ the user wants to accept it, indicate its current position to the network. I suppose a poor-man’s version could be achieved by carrying both a pager and a cellphone (turned off or in airplane mode), and having a gateway that would retransmit your SMSs and missed call notifications to the pager.

NeutronBoy 11y ago
> waiting for a pager-like signal indicating there's an inbound connection waiting, and then iﬀ the user wants to accept it, indicate its current position to the network. So you page the entire network globally to find the device?
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  > So you page the entire network globally to find the device? Or locally, and have the device check in when it enters a new geographic area instead of all the time. The accuracy of passive tracking could be decreased considerably if the protocols were designed with that goal in mind. This is one of those cases where perfect is the enemy of good. Just because there will always be the possibility of tracking in wireless networks, does not mean that that we can not work on minimising that leak.

schoen 11y ago

One important element would be to rotate the hardware identifiers frequently, and, if the network is collecting payment from its users, totally decouple billing from any persistent identifier (for example, with blinded signatures). You also want to decouple user-oriented communication services from network connectivity, so your mobile operator shouldn't give you a phone number (or e-mail address), just generic IP connectivity to reach other services that give you those things. That's a start! The reason that we have persist identifiers with mobile phones historically is all about billing and call completion. If we did the billing and call completion at other layers that weren't tied to a mobile subscriber's identity, we could ditch the persistent identifiers and use much more temporary ones (much like you could still get on a wifi network with DHCP even if you changed your MAC address every 5 minutes, and you could also netcat anonymous voucher tokens to a network provider's server to prove your entitlement to receive connectivity).

superuser2 11y ago
Receiving calls is a critical (/the only) point of a cell phone for many people. How do you route the right call to the right hardware if you can't associate the hardware with a phone number?
- schoen 11y ago
  If you want to do that, you need to register with someone who can give you a phone number, but ideally not your carrier. You could conceivably have a SIP-like model where you can send control connections over Tor and media connections over the regular Internet. (I think the Guardian Project has tried making actual VoIP calls over TCP over Tor, and I don't know how well it worked out for them. So I'm assuming you won't be able to route the media streams anonymously, maybe just the control channel.)