Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Cell Phone and Other Surveillance

By John Ballard



Ian Welsh doesn't always carry a cell phone.

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with customer location data more than 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009, according to a company manager who disclosed the statistic at a non-public interception and wiretapping conference in October.




The manager also revealed the existence of a previously undisclosed web portal that Sprint provides law enforcement to conduct automated �pings� to track users. Through the website, authorized agents can type in a mobile phone number and obtain global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of the phone.  LINK






It makes my heart glad to know there is one other person besides me without a cell phone around them all the time. In my case it's just ordinary stubbornness, an extension of a two-dimensional temperament that also shuns party chatter, celebrity gossip and sports statistics.



But after coming across the "roving bug" concepts three years ago I added that to my list of reasons also to be paranoid cautious.





The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times [in 2005] said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."



Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. "They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time," he said. "You can do that without having physical access to the phone."



Because modern handsets are miniature computers, downloaded software could modify the usual interface that always displays when a call is in progress. The spyware could then place a call to the FBI and activate the microphone--all without the owner knowing it happened. (The FBI declined to comment on Friday.)






That is now old news, harvested from a link now three years old. Since then I'm sure technology has come a long way.



My son-in-law is a certified auto mechanic. Discussing the new On Star technology with him, we decided it would be unremarkable that any vehicle equipped with a microphone could also be vulnerable to the same type of surveillance. A couple of weeks ago On Star foiled a carjacking and had the stolen vehicle back in the hands of its owner within 16 minutes. And just yesterday a child left unattended in an On Star equipped van got Mom in trouble with authorities within 27 minutes. 





One of the key components of roadside bombs is a detonating feature using a cell phone.
The first word in IED is "improvised."
Bob Hope once said "The Russians don't really want to kill us. If they did they would have poisoned the glue in our postage stamps long ago." (That was before pressure sensitive stamps, kids.)
I wonder if anyone in the Defense industry has thought about tracking cell phones well enough to know when they might be in the hands of a potential bomber.
Just asking.



The first comment at Ian's source provides an interesting twist on the surveillance angle.



All of the ISPs and providers now have policies in place to quietly disgorge everything they know about you. For example, Yahoo has this confidential guide:

http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/yahoo-spy.pdf

Which, incidentally, Yahoo! doesn't like being publicized:

http://cryptome.org/yahoo-demand.pdf

Mosey on over to cryptome for other carriers and ISPs.

Welcome to the future! And we thought that Obama was going to rein in the government spies....


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1 comment:

  1. LexDecember 3, 2009 at 2:47 AM

    OnStar is scary, and like all the other stuff in this vein is marketed as making our lives safer and easier.
    I saw a clip some time ago where a performance company had modified a Cadillac and was testing it on a drag strip. They didn't remove OnStar and towards the end of the 1/4 mile (which only took about 11 seconds), OnStar called the car and asked if there was any problem. It seems that the G forces created by the massive acceleration were about the same as those produced by the car running into something.
    GM is like an evil Santa Claus.

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