Talk-Polywell.org

1941, Berlin:

My Fuehrer!

What you are asking for is not possible, not until the technological and sociological advances are in place to convince every citizen to carry on their body a compact, electronic, audio and visual recording device, with a self-contained power source and a two-way, high-frequency radio link.

These advances are not available yet!

PlaceRaider: The Military Smartphone Malware Designed to Steal Your Life

PlaceRaider: Virtual Theft in Physical Spaces with Smartphones

This paper introduces a novel 'visual malware' called PlaceRaider, which allows remote attackers to engage in remote reconnaissance and what we call 'virtual theft.' Through completely opportunistic use of the phone's camera and other sensors, PlaceRaider constructs rich, three dimensional models of indoor environments. Remote burglars can thus 'download' the physical space, study the environment carefully, and steal virtual objects from the environment (such as financial documents, information on computer monitors, and personally identifiable information).

On the same note, I previous mention Friends with a pawn shop. They noticed a customer acting strangely on his phone. Put a heads up to the police department about this man. That night he tried to break into the building. (for whatever reason ?High?) He failed to notice that the police were parked on the other side of the building. Tried to say he was never was in the store and was just walking by when he got busted. On his phone was a video of the inside of the store. That did not work out so well for him.
FYI if you do not lock your phone there is no expectation of privacy according to the court

How do you really know it's locked?

DeltaV wrote:How do you really know it's locked?

excellent question my man.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 25450.html

Low tech counter hack - The phone cannot film/take pictures while it's blind.

Betruger wrote:Low tech counter hack - The phone cannot film/take pictures while it's blind.

That's covered by the "sociological" part of the "advances". I doubt more than 0.1% of users put tape over the lens. Of course, phone and case manufacturers could offer sliding shutters, but those would label such users as "paranoid" and make them social outcasts.

I don't expect that paradigm will hold much water once these hacks become common enough.

How will you know when these hacks become common?

Professional blogger. Closed thread. Do not attempt.

Same way trojans etc are known to be common enough that every non geek and their grandma has antivirus software installed on their computer. In any case the hack is completely vulnerable to such a simple counter: a finger on the camera aperture.

Then why isn't your finger over your camera now?

Cause there ain't one

DeltaV wrote:

Betruger wrote:Low tech counter hack - The phone cannot film/take pictures while it's blind.

That's covered by the "sociological" part of the "advances". I doubt more than 0.1% of users put tape over the lens. Of course, phone and case manufacturers could offer sliding shutters, but those would label such users as "paranoid" and make them social outcasts.

.... or sociopaths for not using social media.

Today I saw an ad for a widescreen TV with Skype, so it's reasonable to assume webcam equipped, shades of 1984 once the government hackers start spying on your reactions to the mainstream media's propaganda broadcasts.

I'm still not convinced. See the relative uproar over that teacher who'd covertly used a pupil's laptop webcam -- although I might be confusing some details, that was the gist of it.

There are fashions and fads and other more or less ephemeral social conventions, and then there's irreducible facts, like the fact that anything IT can be hacked even if the vessel gizmo is a totally awesome piece of hardware in any and every other respect. I personally dread the day when all of what I did trust to Hotmail/Gmail/etc's keeping will be used against me somehow - IMHO it is basically just a matter of time.