[Noisebridge-discuss] SIMS card to CDMA

[Jake]

I agree completely, except that it's not that you can be tracked by anyone 
who has the "legal authority" to request this information, but anyone who 
has the practical ability to acquire it.  This includes anyone who is 
friends with anyone who has access to the computer terminal that dispenses 
this information, not to mention lucky hackers.

the fact is that the equipment dispensing phone record information, 
including the equipment that lets them LISTEN to your phone calls, does 
not require a warrant to be inserted into the slot before it is enabled.

and actually the equipment produces no paper trail or electronic record or 
signal of any kind that it is being used, and this is enshrined in the 
CALEA (communications and law enforcement act of 1996) so that even the 
operator of the phone company cannot detect whether someone's conversation 
is being recorded or not.  not to be pedantic, but it's spelled out in the 
specification.  The "legal authority" of a person doesn't really come into 
the picture.

most people don't realize that their phone is causing them to be tracked 
regardless of settings within the phone or whether it's a smart phone. 
Most people think that if they have a dumb phone they're not being 
tracked.  They don't realize that the towers actually have extra hardware 
just for the purpose of pinpointing every phone (for practical purposes 
too) and that this data is being logged for months or years for every 
single customer.

and the AT&T iphone thing is real too, that happened to me and i told them 
that I didn't want a data plan for my smartphone and they said too bad and 
i said i'm leaving and they said Buh Bye and i said Hello Tmobile.

here's a link to the german politician who made his records searchable 
with a playback map overlay thing, that really opened some peoples eyes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html

http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data-protection-malte-spitz

http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention

-jake

Ben wrote:

I don't know where you get the impression that having a SIM card GSM phone 
gives you any more or less privacy than having a CDMA identified phone.

Both phones identify themselves to the network with individual identity 
numbers (IMEI) and SIM cards also contain your identity.  Swapping the SIM 
to another phone will just alert them that you have switched devices.

This is how AT&T identifies and decides to do "hey, you just dropped an 
iPhone onto our network, we're going to automatically without any 
additional authorization enable an iPhone specific data plan onto your 
account"

Basically, if you carry a mobile phone, you have a location broadcasting 
device on you that can be tracked by the phone company and anyone who has 
the legal authority to request this information.


On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 11:35 PM, N <jpk at pobox.com> wrote:

>  I found out by accident today that my BOOST MOBILE phone account is
> dumping all of their SIMS card phone customers and forcing us to buy 
*new
> *CDMA phones which presumably do not allow the batteries to be removed* 
*and
> thus will be just a traceable as all the modern phones out there.
>
> Is there any way I can convert my SIMS card phone to a CDMA phone?  I do
> not want to throw away my old phone nor the shards of privacy I have.
>
> Nick