Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

Re:Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London by sveiss on Friday January 15, 2016 @07:57AM (#10908985)

If your phone is lying to you about being switched off, then it's already compromised (and you're probably under some highly targeted surveillance already). If I had any evidence this had happened to me, I'd get rid of the phone instead of trusting it under any circumstances.

For the example of a protest march, if you're a participant or even a bystander walking home wanting to avoid being caught up in a surveillance dragnet, turning your phone off should be sufficient. You'd probably want to take stronger measures if you were involved in organising the protest, though.

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Re:Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London by vidarh on Friday January 15, 2016 @08:46AM (#10909233)

Any number of phones over the years have/had functionality separate from the main OS (and in some cases backed with a small secondary battery) to trigger the phone to wake up to play alarms etc.. Given that the baseband code is totally closed and has total control over the phone, if the physical capability is there all it takes is a suitable vulnerability.

I would not trust that any modern smartphone is fully off without yanking the battery.

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Re:Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London by pbhjpbhj on Friday January 15, 2016 @06:52PM (#10913241)

>without yanking the battery //

Are you sure they don't have a backup battery or similar that can continue broadcasting your location after you pull the battery. That would be an ideal countermeasure as pulling the battery would be a great indication you may be about to do something "naughty" and you'd likely do such things shortly after too ...

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Re:Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London by Nadya on Friday January 15, 2016 @06:55PM (#10913263)

>I would not trust that any modern smartphone is fully off without yanking the battery.

That is not enough. Use a faraday cage.

Modern phones have two batteries [0].

[0] http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone6.htm

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Re:Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London by noir_lord on Friday January 15, 2016 @05:34PM (#10912789)

> stronger measures if you were involved in organising the protest, though.

Burner phones bought in cash from one of the little independent shops we have all over (here in the UK anyway) with pre-paid sims - not a new idea I saw it cropping up in fiction 20 or more years ago but still effective, used for a day or two and then dumped.

Isn't it tragic that the way you have to protect yourself from the state when organising a legal protest is pretty much the same way you would do it if you where a drug dealer or a terrorist (at least a reasonably smart one).

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