Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

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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