
Smartphones Are Used To Stalk, Control Domestic Abuse Victims - zo1
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/09/15/346149979/smartphones-are-used-to-stalk-control-domestic-abuse-victims
======
kijin
> _It 's About Power, Not Just Privacy_

Surveillance is never just about privacy. It has always been, still is, and
always will be about power. It doesn't matter whether it's Big Bro or your ex-
boyfriend who is surveilling you. They have exactly as much power over you as
they know about your life.

Equality of power is only possible when all parties know roughly the same
amount about one another.

~~~
vonklaus
I listened to this on air today. Man was it disheartening. These conpanies
make you check a box that says "I won't use this for domestic spying", I think
thats it. Above it is noted some mods are required, but a controlling person
can easily gain access to the phone. Physical security is a major flaw,
especially for someone you trust. You can turn on the microphone, listen in on
calls, block people from calling the phone, and even download an manage the
stolen ip on a handy dashboard. Pretty appalling.

~~~
girvo
Physical access to anything pretty much means game over, at least for consumer
electronics. Thats one of the prices we pay for convenience and useful
features. I wonder if it can be changed?

~~~
eru
Chromebooks are relatively hard to get control off. Physical access makes it
possible, of course, but you still need to do more than just install an app.

------
superuser2
I was sitting in a cafe in Ogilive Station in Chicago a few months ago, and
one of the guys at an adjacent table was telling a story. His girlfriend left,
took the kids, and didn't tell him where they had gone.

But, he says triumphantly, "the bitch forgot I work for AT&T."

He the describes, with pride, the look on her face as he showed up at her new
house.

Disgusting.

~~~
eru
Doesn't AT&T have any privacy safeguards?

(I just started working at Google, and getting at any user data, eg for
debugging of a complicated problem, is the single biggest pile of paperwork
they make you do. Even anonymized logs.)

~~~
paganel
Not the OP, and it's not about AT&T, but I once knew a HR person who worked
for a big and world-renowned telecom company in my (East-European) country. At
some point she started to suspect her then-boyfriend of cheating on her, and
to convince herself she "nicely asked" one of her IT colleagues at her job to
look through the SMS messages of her boyfriend stored in the company's systems
(because, presumably, she couldn't lay her hands on her boyfriend's phone
directly). Said IT guy did just that, i.e. informed my former acquaintance of
the SMS messages on her boyfriend's phone.

~~~
afarrell
I...I would have thought that this would be an obviously unethical request to
comply with.

~~~
brazzy
Ethics obviously don't apply when a friend asks nicely...

~~~
enraged_camel
In this case I took "nicely asked" to mean she offered him some sort of sexual
favor (since paganel put it in quotes).

------
throwaway_xl5
BetaBoston had a related story looking at technical assistance to victims of
domestic abuse. [http://betaboston.com/news/2014/05/07/as-domestic-abuse-
goes...](http://betaboston.com/news/2014/05/07/as-domestic-abuse-goes-digital-
shelters-turn-to-counter-surveillance-with-tor/) I think this link has been
posted on HN previously but I can't find it. Apologies for not crediting the
person who posted it.

~~~
dublinben
This is one of the most powerful examples I like to use when defending the
importance of online privacy and anonymity. Victims of domestic abuse have
just as much right to use the internet as anyone else, and their _lives could
be in danger_ if their privacy/security is compromised.

~~~
lukasb
I wish this comment was higher up.

------
protonfish
It's interesting that spying on a spouse is considered abuse but doing the
same thing to children is not. My ex-wife and her boyfriend would do this to
my teenage sons - track them with the GPS on their phones, block phone use for
most of the day, record and read all messages they sent and received on their
computer to a thumb drive. Maybe I'd get it if there was a problem - you
caught them with drugs or thought they were sneaking out - but these kids
stayed out of trouble and got good grades. I don't know where I'm going with
this... Oh yeah. My ex-wife is a nasty, brutish, turd of a person.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Maybe I 'd get it if there was a problem - you caught them with drugs or
> thought they were sneaking out - but these kids stayed out of trouble and
> got good grades. _

The paranoid in me wonders if they had a second set of "clean" phones that
they could use to arrange their mischief.

The not-yet-a-parent in me hopes that they did, especially since they seemed
to be doing fine otherwise.

~~~
greggarious
More likely they'll be passed out on their dorm floor within 15 minutes of
arriving at college. I met a lot of people in undergrad with overbearing
parents who partied way too hard - some of whom failed out.

------
unspecified
mSpy[0] is the software that is featured in this story. For iOS, jailbreaking
is required. For Android, some features (Instant messenger tracking and
Keylogging) require rooting the phone.

Also, Windows phones are not supported yet, so go for one of those if you
happen to have a psychotic partner.

[0]
[http://www.mspy.com/compatibility.html](http://www.mspy.com/compatibility.html)

~~~
VexXtreme
Yet another reason not to jailbreak.

~~~
britta
Assuming your device is jailbreakable, the problem is that your phone is
vulnerable to jailbreaking, whether you've decided to jailbreak it or not. In
the relevant scenario (the one described in the article, with "a few minutes
alone with the smartphone of the person being stalked" and the passcode), if
the victim hasn't already chosen to jailbreak the phone, the stalker can
easily jailbreak it and install the spyware.

~~~
scintill76
Jailbreak, patch the vulns that made it jailbreakable, then re-secure it. Most
people vulnerable to this could not do that, though.

~~~
scintill76
Downvotes?

------
throwaway9654
As it happens, I've had direct personal experience with the shelter
organization named in this article.

Several years ago I met a woman, through a friend. We ended up married not too
long after.

Just over a month into that, she was acting increasingly erratically, creating
fights, attacking me, and disappeared one day with no information as to where
she'd gone or why. Turns out she'd gone to a shelter, Next Door. She contacted
me (via phone and email from there.

It turns out there's a provision of immigration law, called an I-360 petition,
that's part of the Violence Against Women Act (though both the act and
petition apply to all genders) in which an abused spouse of a permanent
resident can claim citizenship status. The claims of the alleged victim are
taken prima facie (on their face) to be true. It's quite the law.

I visited Next Door, by appointment, having been the victim of abuse myself in
this case, both for information on where I could turn, and on what they knew
about the I-360 process and how I might protect my own interests (another long
story). I met with the director, Kathleen Krenek, and one of the senior
support staff, I'd have to check my notes, but she doesn't appear to be on the
organization's web page presently. They were markedly less than supportive. I
made absolutely clear that I wasn't seeking information on my ex.

AT&T employees weren't required to spill this information to my ex. Next Door
informed her themselves, as noted in court testimony.

The outcome of the family law case was annulment of marriage on the basis of
fraud.

My ex remains in the US, presumably by way of her fraudulent VAWA petition.
Apparently the ICE haven't bothered requesting or reading the annulment
decision, or the Court's finding of my ex as "less than credible".

It's been five years since the last court date and decision, but this still
burns pretty deep. I absolutely didn't consider myself MRA before this
(anything but), and find a hell of a lot in the movement that's pretty
objectionable, but there's an absolute truth that the system frequently
presumes a role and guilt on men, termed "the abuser" in the relevant VAWA
statute, despite the fact that there's no actual proof involved.

One thing I did learn is that the process is ugly, extremely expensive, soul-
sucking, and needlessly confrontational in far too many ways. Human
relationship are like that, and it's not until you've seen them go south, and
encountered the reasons and deceptions revealed, that you really get a full
understanding of this.

------
drvdevd
I find the concept of "digital detox" in this situation to be interesting. The
Hacker News reader in me wants to say, "But you're missing an opportunity to
watch the watcher." I understand most abuse shelters aren't going to be
equipped to help teach users how to, for example, monitor and modify the
network traffic of background apps on their phone. Or more simply: factory
reset the phone before entering the shelter, then turn off mobile networks and
GPS and only use the shelter's WiFi.

I think it could be an empowering thing for people - to see that they can
fight back against their abuser technically in certain circumstances.

~~~
GrinningFool
Shelter wifi isn't safe either, if you forget to disable coarse-grained
location services.

------
rickdale
This makes me think about every time I call tech support and end up bitching
them out. Usually the first thing any customer support does is get all of your
personal info like address and stuff. So in essence, by the time they have
pissed me off and I have told them they live a worthless existence where
toilet paper has more of a use than they do,and that they are friggin idiots,
they are sitting there google mapping my house and plotting revenge.
Thankfully, phone rage seems to subsist quickly. But I have said some stuff to
customer support and then thought twice about how much information that person
knows about me when in essence I know nothing about them.

~~~
earless1
I'm not an expert, but maybe you should stop being an asshole to people. Then
maybe you wouldn't have to worry about strangers plotting revenge.

~~~
rickdale
you're right, you are not an expert.

