Dumb phone with kill switches?

[zetabeta]

"They oppose people" - there are tons of people that vote for republicans. E.g. most of Kansas and a huge chunk of rural Washington state, just off the top of my head. Unless you don't consider them people any longer?
"and democracy" - republicans are not one unified front, and far from everyone in the party likes Trump, even less so what he did during the last elections. There is a substantial list of people that denounced Trump's baseless claims of fraud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican...aud_claims
"100% of a time" - :facepalm:

In general though, you are the one who made substantial claims, asking me for proof that your claims are not true is a logical fallacy. The burden of proof is on the one who's making the claims, i.e. you. So it's you're the one who's got to provide the proof that conservative movement (or at least just the republican party) have become "totally illegitimate", you're the one who's got to provide the proof that they "oppose people and democracy", and you're the one who's got to provide the proof that they do that "100% of a [sic] time". Until you do - your claims are baseless, they are no more than your personal (and rather uninformed) opinion, just like Trump's claims of voting fraud that lacked any supporting evidence.

And these are very inflammatory claims at that. These types of claims do not serve to find a common ground between the people, these types of claims serve only to start religious and civil wars. Not a lot of people are able to discuss politics without making such unsubstantiated claims, which, BTW, is the reason why discussing politics on these forums is considered against the rules. Besides the fact that politics really has little to nothing to do with the Pine64's products and making those products work for Pine64's customers' projects.

So unless you have a substantial (beyond any reasonable doubts) proof to your claims - let's stop the discussion right here, and speak of politics no more. And if you do - perhaps we should find a different forum for this type of discussion anyway. But either way - until you're ready to provide supporting evidence for your claims, just refrain from making any, especially if they risk alienating people you don't even know you might one day have to deal with.

you sound like person to debate with, maybe some other venue. one message though, maybe those republicans should take party back.

[moonwalkers]

one message though, maybe those republicans should take party back.

If only things were that simple. Maybe when conservatives don't feel like their individual rights and liberties and possibly the existence of the country as a whole are under a threat from the "progressive" wing of Democratic party that would finally happen. But for that to actually happen both sides need to stop shouting over each other and start looking for things that are common and unite them. Like the passion for the open source software and open hardware produced by the likes of Pine64 ;-) that provide you with the privacy switches so that the government has harder time spying on you regardless whether it's controlled by the republicans or democrats :-D

P.S.: I wanted to send you a private message, but it looks like you have them disabled. It's not appropriate to write the whole thing here, so I'm only going to mention the book I wanted to recommend - The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.

[submariner]

I'm unsure if people are aware enough. But even if you use so called "Dumb Phone" you are putting a backdoor of your own Telecom Service Provider, which is a computer with a software on its own that is Smart Card which in phones case is SIM card.

Civilian grade radios (including mobile services) are a joke for military intelligence. Because of that thing those ancient or even recent so called "Dumb Phones" (with Smart Cards in them) are usually much less secure than some of the so called Smart Phones.

Issue is that it depends how much control you've got on your Mobile Modem in a cellphone and how much backward compatibility it has, because a lot of even modern made phones, can be targeted and made to fall back to some ancient clear text protocols of SMS and Calls, making it very very very easy to listen to your calls.

As for passive surveillance of background recordings via mic thats something else and probably kill switches is the only way to be sure, but be very aware, radio technology was first taken advantage of by Navies not by civilians and since then theres just heavy rules for only specific frequencies allowed to be encrypted for comms, which is in wifi case too short range, and all that GSM->2G->2.5G->3G.... whatever is highly supervised and then you get Amateur Radio which is quite long rage as of self hosted service, but must only be used in clear text.

But just be ware, lasers pointed at windows measuring vibrations, passive listening devices such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_..._device%29
are there for at least 50 years now, so this concentration of a single pike of a palisade of your counter-intelligence is something too narrowing a whole point of resisting surveillance.


Many many phones sold in specific countries comes with preinstalled nonsenses, that detects whether you're thetering mobile internet only based on whats on the sim card (I cannot go in higher detail here, but I hacked some sim cards in very low tech manner to bypass that, thing is that newer sim cards comes with more advanced and malicious software on it.

So as long as you put that backdoor there on your own, just try not to focus on any other possible backdoors on the KaiOS or whatever....

[KC9UDX]

A very long time ago I built a laser listening device. During testing I realised it was almost impossible to find a legal way to test it. I decided that it was totally useless to me so I traded it for a really nice Russian night vision scope which was subsequently stolen.

[Arwen]

<Moderator hat on>
Uh, let's stay off politics or wiretapping subjects, except how it pertains to the subject of a "Dumb phone with kill switches", or other Pine64 product(s). (Or suggested products...)
</Moderator hat off>
Some subjects today have a high degree of opinions by people, (either for or against). Some people have made up their mind and won't listen to the other side. So, lets not get in arguments. (Polite debates are different.)

[biketool]

Thanks for your reply. I don't know if you have seen it but this corona hoax is perpetrated by bad governments. And they try to spy and harrass anyone who exposes their crimes against humanity. I thought Edward Snowden said they used to take battery out even on dumb phones when he worked for CIA/NSA. If Linux and Pinephone technical components are safe (and third party) then why to have those kill switches on it either? It sounds like more safe option even without the switches in comparison to some old basic phones with fixed firmware and OS like some Nokias or Siemens from 15 years ago or so. Nokia's  ex-lawyer( kind of whistleblower) said they were contacted by NSA back in the old days about the NSA's policy to records all phone calls. But to record and listen phone calls is different than listening a phone that is not having a call atm. I wonder how they may hack the system if it's not having a call? Whether on Linux or some of those old dumb fixed OS's.

To be internally consistent with your own narrative you should also be concerned that your dissident opinion might lead to oppression of yourself, your family, or your affinity group if expressed openly.  We are happy discussing a technical challenge like helping someone figure out how to improve privacy and avoid oppression or surveillance especially as it relates to the hardware and software this project is working on.  Since this is not a forum discussing medical, biotech, or investigating secret state conspiracies it is not wise to expose this forum or yourself to state or corporate surveillance and oppression by discussing your biotech and medical opinions online, we are not working on that topic and it draws trouble.  If you have access to the secrets you claim then try to discuss with people exclusively in real life while in an open noisy area where your words cannot be archived and used against you or others.  Please improve your infosec habits when on the open internet and stay on topic here.
Back on topic, you would probably get the effect of getting a phone switchably offline from mobile service; is to have a short switch from the antenna line to ground with a 50 or 75 ohm resistor(nto terribly important but try to mach the impedance of the transmitter if you can access the schematics or service documents) to absorb any outgoing transmissions and not damage the radio's finals when it transmits; this will not protect you though if there is software to store your details and transmit them when service is available, for example when you toggle the resistive load off. 
When you do not control the software in the CPU and when you do not control the software in the cellular modem and it's processor there is no reason not to suspect that some agency interested in monitoring you would not insert or activate latent code to turn on the microphone, GPS, camera, and other sensors and transmit your information on your phone, smart television, computer, or security system.  The switches and add-on interface, both refinements of an idea from another project, are meant to be something anyone with a little technical skill can verify with even a simple voltmeter that the vcc on the modem is disconnected as well as to the wifi, bluetooth, and cameras.
We can hardware toggle the power to the cellular service module, we control and can audit the OS and code running on the CPU, and we can control the code running on the cellular modem with the exception of the firmware for the modem and wifi chips.

[moonwalkers]

If you want to start about improving InfoSec habits then why don't we start first with building a threat model? I.e., what are the threats you're trying to protect against? Is it just bulk metadata collection, or is it targeted surveillance? Is it ethically questionable but still lawful surveillance by a state actor, commercial entity data collection, criminal activity, unlawful abuse of power? Are you trying to protect yourself from the annoyance of targeted ads or from current political power targeting you as a member of an opposition?

But most importantly, you have to figure out a practical trade-off between security and privacy vs your use case, otherwise you may end up with a highly secure system that's totally unusable because in the name of security it is unpowered, embedded in a slab of concrete, fully enclosed in a Faraday cage, and burrowed sixty feet under ground.

Without having that threat mitigation vs usability analysis the rest of the discussion on privacy and security can quickly devolve into conspiracy theories and tin foil hat fashion circle jerk, which is the road it seems to have already started going down.

Hardware kill switches are a great feature. But unless they are easily accessible on the outside of the phone (similarly to what Purism did with Librem 5) they are essentially useless outside of development context. Nobody sane enough is going to be opening up the back cover of their phone to flip the modem switch every time they want to start and finish a phone call. At least nobody with a modicum of social life. Same applies to all the other kill switches. Oh, and if you go radio-silent not only your cell phone provider can no longer track you, but the people suddenly no longer have a way to contact you. Unless you carry one of those one-way pagers, if anyone still remembers them.

Oh, and even then your security model relies on assumption that your OS is impenetrable. Guess what happens if some rogue app gains access to the sensors without killswitches, like accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity, ambient light, compass? Once your phone does gain access to Internet, that app can send back the history of the data captured using those sensors, and the analysis of that data can pinpoint your exact location history (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2...ple_5.html) and even what you were doing - after all, the activity trackers can tell you how many steps you walked and what kind of activity you did using nothing other than accelerometer.

[biketool]

<snip>
Hardware kill switches are a great feature. But unless they are easily accessible on the outside of the phone (similarly to what Purism did with Librem 5) they are essentially useless outside of development context. Nobody sane enough is going to be opening up the back cover of their phone to flip the modem switch every time they want to start and finish a phone call. At least nobody with a modicum of social life. Same applies to all the other kill switches. Oh, and if you go radio-silent not only your cell phone provider can no longer track you, but the people suddenly no longer have a way to contact you. Unless you carry one of those one-way pagers, if anyone still remembers them.
<snip>

To be fair, when we were working on the Neo900 prototype(first with kill switches) the plan was design with 1-kill switches 2-hacker port then step 3-POCSAG pager receiver module for the hacking port.
The idea was for people to have the option to go radio silent but not be offline as they had a pocket computer phone receiving alphanumeric pages.
Since it was down the road and the project lead got sick the project died at the prototype PCB stage, we never even really touched the practicalities of what we could accomplish with incoming pages, especially if you had a fully online machine able to forward encrypted messages or compressed news alerts.
If we can get the pogo-port POCSAG paging module into prototype(I need to find a reference ultra-low power UHF receiver IC that is also available) then a case back with paranoia switch extensions to actuate the dip switches through the case with a slider outside would be easy enough.

[TRS-80]

Happy to see the divisive political discussion get reeled in already by participants before moderator needed to say something.

Also happy to see discussion turn to threat models and wider perspective, which is correct viewpoint, IMO.

Once wider perspective is on the table, in the end this is what is important:

in the future lte-voice is practically mandatory.

This is conclusion I came to as well. Which means that, after all of above is considered, you may also come to same conclusion that PinePhone (or Librem 5) are some of very few only viable options at this time (and going forward).