India Mobile Handset Backdoor Memo Probably a Fake 151
daveschroeder writes "In the wake of previous coverage alleging that Apple, Nokia, RIM, and others have provided Indian government with backdoors into their mobile handsets — which itself spawned a US investigation and questions about handset security — it turns out the memo which ignited the controversy is probably a fake designed to draw attention to the "Lords of Dharmaraja." According to Reuters, "Military and cyber-security experts in India say the hackers may have created the purported military intelligence memo simply to draw attention to their work, or to taint relations between close allies India and the United States." Apple has already denied providing access to the Indian government."
Or maybe not... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Or maybe not... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can never prove a conspiracy false, because any evidence against it is dismissed as disinformation planted by the conspiracy.
Re:Or maybe not... (Score:5, Funny)
No, that's just what they *want* you to think.
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Or is it....? *wink*.
Oh wait, that wouldn't work. Doh.
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Doesn't matter. As long as you keep speaking in conspiratorial tones, the fact that what you're saying does not logically follow is not a problem. Conspiracy is all about mood and fantasy.
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Exactly. Blackberry's caving in to the Indian government last year (and Pakistani) to open access to their spy agencies was HUGE news and not debated at conspiracy whatsoever in mainstream press.
Now a year later lumping Nokia and Apple in to the group all of a sudden it is FUD denials and conspiracy..... Child please..... I can read independent news, have a memory longer than 15 minutes, and can combine facts to make logical assumptions.
News: stop insulting my intelligence
Slashdot readers: stop jumping to c
Bazinga... (Score:2)
n/t
I'll just be right here... (Score:2, Insightful)
patiently waiting for everyone who was Apple-bashing to recant their statements.
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:4, Interesting)
Won't happen. Bashers really believe that Apple just sits around, inventing absolutely nothing, selling overpriced shiny baubles. In their view, all technology is the same, and Apple just makes products whose ideas are all entirely obvious, despite the fact that no one did things that way before. They hate Apple for being popular and widely credited for industry trends.
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to give Apple credit for the Apple II. That was awesome. Hurray for Wozniak.
Is there any other Apple product of which you can say "no one did things that way before"?
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:4, Informative)
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That's what happens when an iPad and an iPhone decides to make babies.
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You will have to find something else to attack Android with, that argument has been disproven.
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:4, Informative)
N800 [wikipedia.org], bitchez!
(Seriously, why does everyone think Android is/was the only competitor to Apple?)
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N800 [wikipedia.org], bitchez!
(Seriously, why does everyone think Android is/was the only competitor to Apple?)
They're probably looking at U.S. smartphone market share [comscore.com]; Symbian is way down at the bottom and Maemo/Meego/whatever isn't listed. In world smartphone market share [gartner.com], Symbian is slightly ahead of iOS but is well behind err, umm, Android.
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N800 [wikipedia.org], bitchez!
(Seriously, why does everyone think Android is/was the only competitor to Apple?)
Funny thing - that's not a phone. It only works on WiFi or Bluetooth-tethering.
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Since apparently VoIP doesn't count as phone capability to you, I guess I shouldn't mention the WiMax version either.
Well then would you accept the Treo 180g [pdadb.net] or Visorphone? [pencomputing.com]
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The N810 is a goddamned joke.
I used to work at Clearwire and I got to play around with one when we got one in for testing and for documenting our support processes. We pushed it pretty hard but the thing just didn't sell.
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You attacked the original iPhone for not having 3G
I did? I don't remember doing this and it doesn't seem like a point I'd criticize, but maybe you're memory's better than mine. Feel free to point out where I said this.
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Android phones originally looked like this [imgur.com].
Ah, it wouldn't be Slashdot without sly misdirection and deceptive practices.
There are TWO Android prototypes, one the image you've liked to, the other a (still ugly) candybar touchscreen device. Anyone who's used the emulator in the SDK will be familiar with the touchscreen version http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/android-emulator.jpg [zdnet.com].
And since I've seen postings where this has been pointed out to you before, I can only conclude you're deliberately lying to mislead anyone who reads your posts. Most likely to p
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Android phones originally looked like this [imgur.com].
Ah, it wouldn't be Slashdot without sly misdirection and deceptive practices.
There are TWO Android prototypes, one the image you've liked to, the other a (still ugly) candybar touchscreen device. Anyone who's used the emulator in the SDK will be familiar with the touchscreen version http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/android-emulator.jpg [zdnet.com].
Wow, there actually was an Android touchscreen emulator less than a year after the iPhone was announced? And that the actual prototypes that were shown later all lacked the touchscreen is actually a fluke?
What was that again about sly misdirection and deceptive practices again?
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to point out that that was released *after* the iPhone, but you go kid! On your truth crusade!
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See here:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2616908&cid=38672518 [slashdot.org]
And if you're not going to pull the "but it doesn't have a cell modem in it so it doesn't count!" argument, then accept the final nail in the coffin. [mobilesrelease.com]
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so why did Android phones not look like that till after the iPhone, if it was so obvious and ubiquitous?
There's no escaping that Android shifted gears to match the iPhone after all that difficult "risk" was gone (since the iPhone took that risk - as was widely being laughed out of the room and predicted to be a giant flop by everyone until it actually started selling [much like the iPad actually]).
It's not necessarily a bad thing - switching to something the consumer wants is exactly how businesses and products thrive. It's just highly disingenuous to try to downplay Apple's role in moving the smartphone market into the mainstream with a different way of doing things. Note that this doesn't mean that they "invented the touch screen phone" or "were the first to make an mp3 player" as many Apple haters attempt to claim is the point of the argument, just that they spotted a niche and released a product that worked very well in that niche.
To those who hate on screen keyboards, I'm sure they're annoyed at that, but for everyone else, Apple changed the way people (as in, the public at large, not just the tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people using smartphones at the time) saw the smartphone.
Those behind Android quickly realised this and followed suit. Those at RIM did not see that, and look where they are now, after trying doggedly to stick to what was working before. Android's move to match what consumers wanted has paid off extremely well for the platform. Those who like Android seem loathe to acknowledge that Apple played a big role in that.
Your sig is especially hilarious, since without Apple, Android would still be on Blackberry-like devices and wouldn't be able to include things like Webkit. We'd all be stuck with DRM-locked music from online stores and people would laugh at you if you suggested a 10" touchscreen tablet as something the consumer would want to buy.
They're not perfect by any means, but they're far from the Machiavellian evil empire that people on slashdot who don;t seem to have anything other than a hate of Apple to define themselves seem to think they are.
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Your sig is especially hilarious, since without Apple, Android would still be on Blackberry-like devices and wouldn't be able to include things like Webkit. We'd all be stuck with DRM-locked music from online stores and people would laugh at you if you suggested a 10" touchscreen tablet as something the consumer would want to buy.
My sig has nothing to do with Android whatsoever. Apple hater != Android fanboy.
I have no problem with Blackberry-like devices personally, it's a better form factor than the touchscreen-only phone IMO (although the landscape slider gives the best of all worlds, at the cost of a bit of thickness). Without WebKit other phones would just use Mozilla-based browsers, so that's no big loss. Apple may have helped push DRM-free music, but that's basically irrelevant to everybody but US residents, who still can't bu
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You clearly don;t understand the term Machiavellian, but we'll ignore that.
You also said:
Apple may have helped push DRM-free music, but that's basically irrelevant to everybody but US residents, who still can't buy DRM-free music anyways.
But I'm not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that only US residents can buy DRM free music?
Openwashing is the term of someone just looking to hate. I'm not even going to address those points because they've been done to death hundreds of times. Apple's choice of standards and formats is well documented, and opposition to them is mainly ideological (for example, H.264 is an open standard, but this is apparently not
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Well I don't think my logic is any good against this level of sycophantic apologism (you obviously don't see the inherent danger and evil of curated computing, and think that iOS is "open" because the file formats it uses are roughly as open as MS'). Also you present a false dichotomy of either curated computing or command line mastery, but like I said, not much point arguing if Apple can do no - or "little" wrong to you. They are objectively and fairly obviously the most evil company in computing today and
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You've moved the goalposts again - you said that "DRM free music was irrelevant outside the US" because they [those outside the US] "could not buy DRM-free music anyway", and now you're admitting that they can, but that it requires iTunes. That's not the same argument (and essentially is admitting that your first statement is false, as I pointed out).
You also seem to forget that the music industry had to be dragged kicking and screaming into selling music online in the first place (by Apple no less, beyond
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I didn't present a false dichotomy, I was using a device known as hyperbole - moving to the opposite end of the spectrum from curated computing. Again, you suggest the "inherent dangers and evil" of curated computing but fail to actually point any out. And again, why does it affect you? There is still wide choice in computing environments, and those will continue to exist.
If I want an open mobile device (as in, lets me compile and run anything I want on it) today there is NOTING I can buy off the shelf, the device would have to be hacked. You bet your ass it affects me. Curated computing has taken over mobile devices entirely and is creeping it's way into desktop computing. You really don't see a problem with removing all freedom of software choice from the user and having a centralized authority dictate what computers can do? You don't see the problem with a monolithic midd
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So, where were those "open mobile devices" before the iPhone?
You are blaming the lack of open devices on the popularity of a single vendor's entry into the market.
If there's a market for open devices, vendors will sell them.
There's a lot of Chicken Little sky-is-falling talk about curated computing environments "creeping onto" the desktop while assuming they'll replace what is there currently and there's simply no evidence for that - for example, the presence of the App Store on OS X is a complement to what
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You call my attitude "chicken little" but I call yours "frog in hot water."
Before the iPhone there were PalmOS and Windows Mobile smartphones. Not open source but you could freely compile and run whatever you wanted on them.
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Right, and after the iPhone there were Android smartphones.
You can compile and run anything you want on them, assuming you pick up one with an unlocked bootloader (vendor may vary).
Palm's and Win Mobile's exit from the market was not driven exclusively by the iPhone, although it was certainly related. Either way, the vast number of Android handsets out there fill that "open, run anything, do anything" market for those who don't feel the iOS experience works for them. The presence of the iPhone has actually
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Rooting an android is not a market-provided option. It's no different than jailbreaking an iOS phone or hacking a PS3, conceptually it's no different than putting a custom-built GNU/Linux distro on an Android phone but it doesn't seem to radical because it's based on the default OS. The options have been reduced, make no mistake.
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Now you're just digging. You can get Android handsets that come unlocked to start with. No need to root them.
How has this turned around with the supposed "Apple fanboy" who thinks "Apple is near perfect" pointing out the benefits and options available in Android handsets, because you're trying to downplay the strengths in a continued, losing argument designed to make Apple look bad?
Android offers a huge wealth of open handsets and options, far in excess of what was available before the iPhone (the supposed
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A single OS that allows app sideloading by default on some models doesn't sound "better than ever" to me. Doing anything that the default OS doesn't allow, like tethering, still requires a jailbreak so sideloading on default Android installs isn't very open anyways.
Before the iPhone came out the only curated OS was Symbian, found on dumb phones and used as such. There were two open OSes that allowed you to install whatever you wanted by default, PalmOS and Windows Mobile. Now there is 1 OS that in some inst
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Ok, I'll tell all the Android users that they were better off pre-iPhone.
I can see you're determined to make every conclusion "Apple is bad", to the point of claiming that Android today as a whole is worse than PalmOS and Windows Mobile back before the iPhone was announced. How you can even say that with a straight face is beyond me.
You heard it here first, folks, PalmOS and Windows Mobile circa 2007 are better than Android circa 2011/2012.
You're going to have a hard time arguing that open computing, especi
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The OSes themselves weren't better (at least comparing to rooted Android) but it was a better situation for consumers, they had much more choice.
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If I want an open mobile device (as in, lets me compile and run anything I want on it) today there is NOTING I can buy off the shelf, the device would have to be hacked.
Not true at all -- if you have an iOS device, pay Apple the $99 per year, download the development kit, get yourself the necessary signing certificates from Apple, and compile and run anything you want. You can even get the necessary certificate files to install it onto the devices of up to 100 friends.
Does this require Apple to put your app in their store? No. Their store, their rules. And they don't have to permit other peoples stores either. But you can still compile and install whatever you want --
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No, they really didn't. Just because they had a choice of two weakly supported systems does not mean they were better off than they are now they have access to all Android has to offer, with much stronger developer support, wider manufacturer support, more third party apps and a larger consumer developer community.
You backed yourself into a corner trying to assert that Apple made things worse, but it really didn't. I'm sorry reality doesn't have an anti-Apple bias, but the current position Android is in rea
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Not true at all -- if you have an iOS device, pay Apple the $99 per year, download the development kit, get yourself the necessary signing certificates from Apple, and compile and run anything you want. You can even get the necessary certificate files to install it onto the devices of up to 100 friends.
As I read this I thought you were going to write a satirical post supporting my points. I think this paragraph says it all.
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This is just revisionist history. The number of open OSes has gone down, the number of curated OSes has gone up, the number of out-of-the-box open devices has gone down, the out-of-the-box curated devices now utterly dominate the market, the only stats that look better today are *maybe* adoption of open OSes (how many users root and sideload vs. peak number of WinMo and PalmOS users?) and number of apps (a meaningless stat that shouldn't be admired - it glorifies quantity with zero regard to quality).
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Yep, stick to that blind Apple hate, it clear you can't be convinced of reality.
I'll let you continue thinking that people had it better under PalmOS and Windows Mobile. *eyeroll*
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As I read this I thought you were going to write a satirical post supporting my points. I think this paragraph says it all.
It refutes your claim pretty directly I'd say.
Now if you want to complain that you have to pay $99/year for the privilege of installing your own apps, and that you need a series of certificates and keys to sign the apps, more power to you. You'd be right -- Apple forces you to pony up and install a pile of keys and such to install apps onto iOS devices. Complain about it all you'd like.
But to complain that you can't compile and install stuff onto the devices you own is 100% incorrect. Compile and install
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Where were you during the *original* mp3.com, before it was bulldozed and reinvented by the MAFIAA? CDBaby has mp3 sales too. And if you're not willing to ask questions, there are a dozen in Russia which let you pay by SMS. There literally is no shortage of such sites.
All of this goes back more than 10 years, way before iTunes was popular.
Get Orf Moi Lorn!!!!!
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:4, Informative)
There really is a sort of sublime irony in a poster blatantly ripping off a blog post which defends the idea that certain companies are ripping off Apple.
http://macjournals.com/blog/2012/01/10/dan-lyons-showing-self-awareness-what-self-awareness/ [macjournals.com]
Unless, of course, bonch really is Matt Deatherage of MacJournals, in which case, congratulations on quoting yourself.
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You'll be waiting a long time. Most of them won't even read this story, and will continue to believe that lie for the rest of their lives. They'll even casually bring it up in conversation, causing other people to believe it. "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on."
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:4, Informative)
Probably because we already know Apple spies on iOS users?
If you remember, CarrierIQ is baked into iOS. It can't be uninstalled by users, because it's part of the OS. Even with jailbreaking it involves removing kernel modules.
Not to mention that if you actually bothered to read your iCloud TOS, you'll discover that Apple reserves the right to continuously monitor and record your current location. They even get access to your email through iCloud.
Basically, everything that the memo says Apple allowed India to do Apple claims the right to do in their TOS!
So even if the memo is fake, the ability for Apple to spy on iOS users most certainly is NOT.
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So, turn off those features.
Switch off location services, don't use iCloud (a claim that can be put to any cloud service, not just Apple's).
It also doesn't say "continuously monitor" - you're just trying to use weasel words to make it sound worse. What it talks about is occasionally collecting anonymous location data to improve it's location-aware apps.
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Ah, an anonymous coward spreading lies and misinformation. No wonder you posted anonymously.
CarrierIQ is *not* "baked" into iOS. Although Apple *used* to use CarrierIQ they stopped doing so *before* the news hit.
What information is collected is visible to the user and configurable by the user. In iOS 5 (again, *before* the CarrierIQ news hit) it is presented when first setting up the phone. To make it clear what is (or isn't, when disabled) enabled.
If you had an iPhone and didn't want to store email in iClo
Re:I'll just be right here... (Score:4, Interesting)
You may be waiting a while as these sorts of things tend to take on a life of their own regardless of the facts presented. The meat of the linked article basically says the docs are questionable but well done. They also throw in a possible link to Anonymous which is a curious twist:
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It is also unclear how Symantec's source code ended up with the Lords of Dharmaraja, whose public face goes by the name Yamatough on a Twitter feed.
Yamatough, whose profile picture shows a Tibetan painting of Dharmaraja, the Hindu god of death and justice, follows many members of the "Anonymous" hacking collective, and Symantec attributes the hack to that group.
I never knew you could follow someone Anonymous.
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Don't hold your breath, this was not our hoax.
Yeah, you just A) fell for it, and B) still ignored that the document said all major device makers had installed the backdoor and focused on Apple.
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A) Yes, considering Symantec and RIM are already known for it, it was plausible, B) All major device makers explicitly named in the document were RIM, Nokia and Apple. With RIM's history of cooperating with governments and Nokia being mostly irrelevant in US, which part of this do you think was news for /.'s largely US auditory? And anyways, comments was mostly about corporation and government bashing, not Apple bashing. Confirmation bias much?
No, the All major device makers explicitly named in the document were "ALL major device makers" including Android phone makers.
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explicit adj. (comparative more explicit, superlative most explicit) Very specific, clear, or detailed.
Quiz time! Q: Which parts of "major device makers, RIM, Nokia, Apple etc." are explicit by this definition and which are implicit? Q2: Can't you keep your martyrdom complex down after seeing there was no group Apple bashing in the discussion thread?
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Why, because Apple said that they didn't do it? Come on, any secret service would attach a clause to the contract that keeps the content of the contract confidential. And that is not even paranoid, that is just a fact of live - think about the way the NSA works, the "secret" illegal wire-tapping, super-injunctions... misinforming the masses is fair game.
Android phones are made in the USA, out of hemp, (Score:5, Funny)
with union labor.
Re:recant. i recant it all (Score:4, Insightful)
Find me a computer of any brand that doesn't use Foxconn parts. Take your time :)
Re:recant. i recant it all (Score:4, Interesting)
My N950 (developer edition) wasn't either, but that was from a small run, and might be considered a prototype.
A handy hint for finding counter-examples is looking for companies who still maintain their own manufacturing facilities. A lot of the new kids on the block have never had such facilities, they're clearly more likely to be customers of foxconn and their ilk.
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You have an N950!? Ugggh JEALOUSY OVERLOAD x_x
Yeah my home server has a Foxconn mobo and my work PC (which I didn't buy) has some Foxconn bits in it, but that's it. Gaming PC, laptop and phone are all made in South Korea and Taiwan.
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Pretty sure my Nokia N900 and N9 (consumer version) weren't. My N950 (developer edition) wasn't either
You say this based on...? Nokia is a Foxconn customer [zdnet.co.uk]
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and also apple never gave backdoor access to the government to its systems. even though under CALEA it is required to for all US products.
I guess that depends on what "backdoor" access means. CALEA is not exactly some Deep Dark Secret - it is, after all, U.S. Public Law 103-414. At least in theory, mechanisms required by CALEA are supposed to be used only with a court order or other lawful authorization, although I wouldn't treat that as an indication that it can't be, or isn't ever, used illegally. I suspect many other countries impose similar requirements, and, again, there's no guarantee that those countries' spooks never ever use those
Meanwhile in the US... (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
The Slashdot community already convicted Apple of this and have moved on.
And yes, I realize it's about Nokia as well as RIM, too - but in the original story discussion very few people paid any attention to those players.
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Of course you don't have any evidence. It's funny how conspiracy-theorists are just as faith-based as any religion.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Informative)
Sec. 103. Assistance Capability Requirements. (a) CAPABILITY REQUIREMENTS.â" Except as provided in subsections (b), (c), and (d) of this section and sections 108(a) and 109(b) and (d), a telecommunications carrier shall ensure that its equipment, facilities, or services that provide a customer or subscriber with the ability to originate, terminate, or direct communications are capable ofâ" (1) expeditiously isolating and enabling the government, pursuant to a court order or other lawful authorization, to intercept, to the exclusion of any other communications, all wire and electronic communications carried by the carrier within a service area to or from equipment, facilities, or services of a subscriber of such carrier concurrently with their transmission to or from the subscriber's equipment, facility, or service, or at such later time as may be acceptable to the government; (2) expeditiously isolating and enabling the government, pursuant to a court order or other lawful authorization, to access call-identifying information that is reasonably available to the carrierâ" A before, during, or immediately after the transmission of a wire or electronic communication (or at such later time as may be acceptable to the government); and B in a manner that allows it to be associated with the communication to which it pertains, except that, with regard to information acquired solely pursuant to the authority for pen registers and trap and trace devices (as defined in section 3127 of title 18, United States Code), such call-identifying information shall not include any information that may disclose the physical location of the subscriber (except to the extent that the location may be determined from the telephone number); (3) delivering intercepted communications and call-identifying information to the government, pursuant to a court order or other lawful authorization, in a format such that they may be transmitted by means of equipment, facilities, or services procured by the government to a location other than the premises of the carrier; and
Combine that with the PATRIOT act which basically allows the government to screw with US citizens at its leisure, means that the government can basically tap your phone for any reason that it sees fit.
And the (as you would put it since you obviously don't have a clue what is going on in the world) conspiracy theory website The New York Times reported in 2010 about a bill that the US government was considering that takes CALEA further by mandating that all encryption be able to be decrypted by the government (in CALEA encryption was left up to the government to decrypt on its own) https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html [nytimes.com]
Also, according to Slashdot, quoting US laws are "lame".
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Of course you don't have any evidence. It's funny how conspiracy-theorists are just as faith-based as any religion.
Right, because corporate espionage among multi billion dollar corporations, government corruption, greed, and the existence of the CIA, the Mossad, the KGB, and terrorist groups are all just figments of our over-active imaginations. I suggest that most mishaps are not a result of wide-ranging conspiracies (government-perpetrated or otherwise), but such conspiracies do pop up on occasion. And you have to consider that the most successful conspiracies are the few that are never uncovered as such. So don't tak
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Please explain how "the existence of the CIA" means that the United States is at war with its citizens (since that is what you are responding to, after all). Show your work.
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Maybe there is more and maybe not; probably more. We don't know either way so it's nothing more than useless speculation.
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Then the US gov had to use its state secrets privilege.
In Dec 2011 the case came back http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/dragnet-surveillance-case/ [wired.com]
All we know is every packet from Asia and within the US that fed a west coast telco office where split and collected.
The coll
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And, as I said on the Wired piece:
Traffic metadata (things like email "envelope" information, source and destination IPs, etc.) has long been fair game without a warrant as the digital analogue of a "pen register" under Smith v. Maryland 442 US 735 (1979), and is part of the provision that supports lawful NSA data collection under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 and other law, in conjunction with telecommunication operators like AT&T. The content of traffic of US Persons is NOT fair game, without a prop
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Imagine if it was common to transfer Gbps of stuff most of the time. And your aunts were forwarding emailed _videos_ of their cats/grandchildren/whatever and nobody noticed or complained how large the videos were - since transfer rates were high.
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10 posts in, and there are already guys like you completely missing the point and going right back to baselessly accusing Apple of things. Slashdot never changes.
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Apple (along with many other handset manufacturers) are accused of building back doors in for the Indian government.
Apple denies these claims.
Meanwhile, under the provisions of various US laws and policies your iPhone on a US network can still be wiretapped and information accessed.
So I'm supposed to say good job to Apple for standing up against the Indian government (which is really no concern of mine) while bowing to the slightest pressure of the US police state? S
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Meanwhile, under the provisions of various US laws and policies your iPhone on a US network can still be wiretapped and information accessed.
https://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying [eff.org]
You said it yourself, the US NETWORK is what is tapped. Apple is not a phone network in the US or anywhere else.
The wiretaps are done at the phone company. AT&T even admitted such and it was covered on slashdot multiple times. You trolled that thread too so you are well aware of it.
The US government doesn't need a backdoor in any phones, the data is intercepted and logged at the phone company, and the government has retroactively indemnified them of any wrong doin
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"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story"
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And yes, I realize it's about Nokia as well as RIM, too - but in the original story discussion very few people paid any attention to those players.
I'm not sure about Nokia, but we already knew that RIM was working with the Indian government on intercepts.
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Of course, there would be ways of adding back doors to the phone subsystem which is a separate core running its own OS. But all communication to the modem goes via the AP, so you could easily modify our kernel and
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I don't think you understand how open source works. Not surprised...
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If you download and verify the source, and then compile it, the only way a backdoor can get into it is if your compiler is made to put a backdoor into the Maemo source as in the old UNIX login backdoor. Is it time to put our tinfoil hats on?
X-Files Episode (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe you should get yourself a tinfoil hat while doing so, won't hurt :) I know I do!
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Personally, its a whole lot more worrying for information to be sent to the US government than to the Indian/Chinese/Russian/Iranian/North Korean government.
Re:X-Files Episode (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, Apple might not give a backdoor to the Indian government, but chances are it (or your cell phone service provider) is giving a backdoor to the US government, pursuant to CALEA and other laws. And Skype is mandated to put in backdoors too...
It's cute that you think the US government needs handset manufacturers to include backdoors in order to wiretap. It's much easier to just control the networks. \tinfoil
They certainly aren't tracking you; because you (Score:3)
don't matter. Now you know the truth.
Good news. (Score:4, Insightful)
As the submitter of the original story, I'll be relieved if the leaked memo is a fake. It gives me an excuse to put off migrating from Mac OS X to Linux, which was going to be a good deal of work.
But the earlier case of RIM agreeing to provide in-country servers [cnet.com] to enable government surveillance in the UAE, India and Saudia Arabia shows the leverage that governments can wield over companies that operate within their territory. Vigilance is warranted.
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It gives me an excuse to put off migrating from Mac OS X to Linux, which was going to be a good deal of work.
Unless you've heavily modified the OS itself, difficulty in migrating OSes is a sign that you've either locked yourself in or are about to lock yourself in, and your choice of destination OS rules out the latter.
You should do it anyway, it'll save you money and time in the future and reduce funding to a tyrant megacorp. You know they're going to wall-in MacOS at some point, there's too much money to be made.
Apart from gaming, migrating from Windows to Linux was easy for me, even back in the days when I was
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I just don't have the skills/knowledge/patience to check the source code of my mobile phone's OS. So I'll be relying on a third party in any event.
Trust no one, right? Damn, now I need to dump my phone...
Wizard's First Rule (Score:2, Insightful)
People will believe something because they want it to be true, or because they're afraid it is true. This holds in spite of evidence to the contrary or the absence of any corroborating data.
Doubly unfortunate is that assertions like this ask the accusee to prove a negative, knowing full well that proving it would necessarily reveal source code and/or trade secrets and/or secret agreements with governments.
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This holds in spite of evidence to the contrary or the absence of any corroborating data.
A simple denial is far from evidence of the contrary.
Doubly unfortunate is that assertions like this ask the accusee to prove a negative, knowing full well that proving it would necessarily reveal source code and/or trade secrets and/or secret agreements with governments.
And why exactly revealing those is unfortunate?
CALEA (Score:4, Interesting)
What these companies have done is grant the same access the CALEA law gives the US Government to other countries. Other countries have taken this authority and used it for espionage. Thus these companies statements that "We didn't build a back door for India" then is correct. They built it for the U.S. Government.
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What these companies have done is grant the same access the CALEA law gives the US Government to other countries. Other countries have taken this authority and used it for espionage. Thus these companies statements that "We didn't build a back door for India" then is correct. They built it for the U.S. Government.
...which is probably not correct; the EU, for example, has a council resolution concerning requiring capabilities for "lawful interception of communications" [europa.eu] and I suspect the Member States have implemented laws for that. I.e., they built it for all countries that require lawful interception capabilities, which probably covers most countries in which they sell mobile phones.
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What these companies have done is grant the same access the CALEA law gives the US Government to other countries. Other countries have taken this authority and used it for espionage. Thus these companies statements that "We didn't build a back door for India" then is correct. They built it for the U.S. Government.
...which is probably not correct; the EU, for example, has a council resolution concerning requiring capabilities for "lawful interception of communications" [europa.eu] and I suspect the Member States have implemented laws for that. I.e., they built it for all countries that require lawful interception capabilities, which probably covers most countries in which they sell mobile phones.
What both of you are missing is that all of these laws are about wiretapping at the network level, not at the device level.
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> So the United States and Indian governments are claiming the memo is a fake
It may be a fake, and I think that is quite possible indeed. But does that make it wrong? I am much more sceptical there. Remember how Skype has given access to just about any government?
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http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Did-Symantec-source-code-hack-reveal-Indian-phone-surveillance-1406612.html [h-online.com]
Let us not forget that not only did we get source to Symantec revealed, Symantec confessed it had been stolen, but said it was an old version.
Ooooh, scary, they got the source code of anti-virus software - what evil things did the Indian military plan to do with AV software?
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If you know your history of India the result from the 1970-80's would be a lot.
The code of AV tools seems to be of interest to many http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Lantern_(software) [wikipedia.org] to hide key loggers with vendor cooperation.
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Re evil things http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Sikh_riots [wikipedia.org] If you know your history of India the result from the 1970-80's would be a lot. The code of AV tools seems to be of interest to many http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Lantern_(software) [wikipedia.org] to hide key loggers with vendor cooperation.
So did they kill Sikhs with Anti Virus Software or with key loggers? Did you even understand what I wrote?