That's in my proposal for a secure or private phone that I drop on people trying to build one. Hopefully it will get in a successful product at some point. Need one for mic, front camera, rear camera, and radios. Might compromise to have a physical switch for mic and radios with something inside phone (eg a jumper) to turn off others. I want to be sure I can cut actual power to mic and wireless, though.
Would this meet some of your criteria? If there is something missing you can discuss with the people involved (on IRC usually): http://neo900.org/contact
It meets some of my criteria. They're doing good work. Gotta ditch that TI processor when possible. Need some hardware and software modifications. However, actual switches for power and audio coming through Linux part are positives. Removes some low-hanging fruit.
I'd also buy such a phone. The switches to toggle each radio and sensor could be behind the removable back panel. I wish it were possible to easily disable in software mobile service without also disabling wifi and bluetooth as well.
At least on my Huawei P6 i can set it to flight mode and then turn back on wifi and bluetooth. Actually i have used the thing more like a PDA than a phone, as i have a well functioning HSPA capable featurephone that i pair up if ever i need data on the go.
You mean it's a soft-switch that tells you it does that. You have no idea if the radio is actually running at any time or not. That plus their reliability issues are why I don't like soft-switches.
True, though with airplane mode they might be skirting the law as it now touches the whole interfering with FAA requirements are. Also it would seem it would be easy to verify for anyone who opens the case what the radio does.
That's not how subversion works. The subverted system will in fact turn off wireless in airplane mode. It's turned back on by a trigger. Stays on long enough to do the job. The commenters imply they would be using it outside an airplane. So, FAA wouldn't even notice.
If your are equip like me with a EMF meter, then its easy to confirm what your phone is doing when in airplane mode, with normally is nothing. A mobile phone is after all just a computer with a radio modem. It can't do shit without sending out RF.
I would recommend something like the 'Cornet ED78S RF Meter' to every technician with the tiniest amount of AU in circulation.
The reason I got it was because I have become electro-sensitive, and that's almost a death sentence in the modern city.
Those pictures of Stallman sitting on a mountain top and not a mobile phone mast in sight looked very appealing...
My phone LG-L80 99£ is GSM only, all else is off, apps downloaded on wired PC and installed via ADB interface.
Currently used as book reader for C++11 fourth edition and as Wikipadia offline reader(Kiwix) 12GB on SD card - music/mp4 player and the battery last for a week or more.
I feel I'm in control of my phone, don't know if that is justified or not?
What frequencies can an EMF meter pick up? One of my own designs of the past was to hide something in a cable to amplify a signal along 10GHz optionally with a beam hitting it. None of the WiFi security monitors looked for 10GHz. Neither did most cheap, spectrum kits.
The dedicated chips in phones with the radios could have extra functionality for other spectrum activated by a trigger, possibly received wireless signal. So, it's a concern to me.
I can't imagine that pulsed digital transmission on 10Ghz
would not create noise in the lower harmonics bands at all.
The meter also have a sound mode where you eg. can hear the ~8-10Khz modulation of the mobile ~700/900/1900/2100Mhz signal.
You can clearly hear the difference between different transmission types as DECT phones, Wifi, GSM/LTE, and EM noise in general(PC's/HDMI cables/USB3 HD docks)
My central room heater has a small CR battry powered computer (that I had forgot all about) that calculate the bill and transmit the results every 2 minutes on 2.4Ghz
it makes a tiny ~0.5 sec pulse on the display/audio, and I thought for an hour that I had a hidden transmitter in my apartment, since turning the mains fuse off had no effect.
I had to clear the room of all tech to track down the source, felt a bit stupid when I finally found it.
So going down this road has some up's and down's vs staying totally oblivious of ones electromagnetic environment.
That doesn't stop it communicating with the mobile network. At least in the UK, you can still call emergency numbers (999, Childline, Samaritans(?)) without a SIM.
>That doesn't stop it communicating with the mobile network. At least in the UK, you can still call emergency numbers (999, Childline, Samaritans(?)) without a SIM.
You haven't been able to do this since 2009. It was changed due to the high volume of hoax calls.
> i have a well functioning HSPA capable featurephone
Make and model, please? I've been searching for something like that for a while now. Everything I've found is either carrier-specific, doesn't allow tethering, or is 2G only.
Sell a micless phone. Actually, it's a tablet, and if you want it to go into surveillance / phone mode, you plug in your own goddamend mic. Most headsets have one.
Alternatively: a phone whose "off" mode is a battery eject.
Brilliant. Never even occurred to me. People often use headsets, wired or wireless, for the mic. Can just not enable audio unless one is plugged in. That's so easy to verify. Thanks for stating the obvious to my overly-complex mind. :)
If your threat model concerns with hardware/firmware exploits, then you can't trust the physical switches unless they cut all the wires - and unless you can validate that this is what they do. Theoretically speaking, a malicious (or threatened/persuaded/forced) manufacturer may implement a non-standard way to power the supposedly disconnected component using still-connected wiring, to be used for a special occasions.
This is why I got a shutter on m laptop camera. It's mechanicl, and I can see it's on or off. It should be a legal obligation to provide those, for camera and mic.
Well, I just.. disconnected the mic in my laptop, the day it arrived (there is no webcam). As phones are concerned, I use my trusty SE ELM featurephone, so I'm not very worried about Googles, Facebooks, Samsunsungs...
Note: You can see difference between few in real security on HW side. Mainstream, faux security immediately says IOMMU, stateless, whatever. High-assurance, real security is concerned with segmentation, pointer protection, making memory untrusted, TCB effects, optionally timing of ISA operations, and so on. Apps + their CPUs get hit all over. Securing one takes more than a mere IOMMU or something. ;)
