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Comment by _wldu | Hacker News Reader

It seems there is no safe cell phone. They all run closed source software, written in unsafe languages (C and C++) and can be abused by cyber criminals and governments to spy on and track people at will.

Why do we carry these things in our pockets?

And I'm not convinced Signal or any other privacy protecting app is really useful. If we assume all cell phones are owned (or can be at any time) then the criminals own all the private keys on the phones as well.

It's impossible to have private communications with a cell phone.

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> They all [are] written in unsafe languages (C and C++) and can be abused by cyber criminals and governments to spy on and track people at will.

All major OSes (regardless of formfactor) that a consumer uses are written in C.

All languages, including C, are "unsafe" if the standard is that software in said language can be written in an unsafe way. Writing an operating system, firmware, or embedded software is a fundamentally different category of activity from writing some CRUD app (other than unhelpfully sharing terms like "engineering", "language", and "software.") OSes are written in C because the task demands it; the reason that there isn't a Javascript-based kernel isn't an arbitrary one. Perhaps Rust will change the game at some point, however as it stands, it doesn't make any sense to draw a distinction between OSes written in so-called "unsafe" and "safe" languages.

Programming languages won’t stop triangulation. The assumption of privacy is not rooted in any fact. In Japan people can disappear if they want to because of the culture. Privacy is a culture. You can’t use tech as the panacea, because the US is not inherently culturally private. Privacy occurs because others aren’t tracking you, if you’re being traced by computers, motivated people with advanced tools, living in a world where you’re supposed to share and a paparazzi celebrity culture, you’re not going to get privacy no matter how “safe” you program your memory to be.

>It seems there is no safe cell phone. They all run closed source software, written in unsafe languages (C and C++) and can be abused by cyber criminals and governments to spy on and track people at will.

Why should we have any expectation of privacy when we use a cell phone at all? It is triangualating your location 24/7 even if its not a smartphone. When/why did we expect them to be private in any way? How can you expect privacy when your location data is being broadcast and you're carrying a tracking device?

>Why do we carry these things in our pockets?

Its worth it for the tradeoffs.

GrapheneOS runs all open source software (no closed source Google code), doesn't phone home to Google, doesn't allow for targeted updates based on IMEI, has strong app memory isolation, and isn't vulnerable to run of the mill NSO zero days. Buy a Mint Mobile SIM card with cash and boom, anonymous phone not tied to your name.

Yet you're connecting to T-mobile towers and having your location tracked 24/7. How is that in any way private?

My phone is in a faraday bag when it gets anywhere close to my home or place of work. Even if you were bulk collecting cell tower data and location data you couldn't identify my phone, it's lost in the noise.

Your disconnects will flag it in the metadata. You don’t think they can identify phones in bulk collection? What evidence is there of that?

>Your disconnects will flag it in the metadata.

This would make too many false positives, for which you'd have to do in person surveillance to verify.

>You don’t think they can identify phones in bulk collection? What evidence is there of that?

It doesn't matter if a cell tower can read your IMEI. It matters if that IMEI can be associated with your real name. Have you seen anyone's location data successfully correlated with a real identity when that location data doesn't include travel to residence or place of work? If you can solve this problem, you can sell it for more money than you could fathom.

You don’t think they can match location data with metadata and figure it out? Circumstantial evidence is easily used to figure it out.

>You don’t think they can match location data with metadata and figure it out?

Automatically, with dragnet surveillance? Not a chance, the search space is too huge. But if you think it's so easy, feel free to try building this and selling it, you would become the next billionaire.

Already made. It’s automatically matched to other databases like apartment records and other public information. Signature electronic radiation leak is easily traceable, probably logged unless you never connect it to any other devices. The delusion you have about being private while having a device that tracks your location has no logic or evidence of privacy. Expecting cell phones using cellular towers for privacy is the equivalent of joining a botnet and saying you’re private if you block the signal occasionally.

Please don't be snarky and assume the weakest possible interpretation of what someone says (I already talked about faraday bags near residences and workplaces). Repeatedly calling another's argument delusional without substantive discussion isn't helpful and it's not what people use HN for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You say snarky things like build a database, it'll make you a billionare, (which already exists) to track you that you were ignorant about then try to feint innocence and attack my conduct?

There is no snark in facts. You’re connecting to a triangulating system that traces your location and expect privacy if you use some open source android distribution which you assume has zero bugs that others can't exploit and trace you. That is delusional. The device has a signature electronic radiation that is easily identifiable whenever its on, which you ignored as a method of tracing.

There is zero factual evidence that you can be private when using cell phones at all. It is a delusion with no basis. You don’t make any substantive arguments that proves privacy aside from hopeful/delusional assumptions that aren’t sourced or prove any privacy. You think buying a sim card with cash is enough to protect your identity when stores have cameras and your fingerprint is on cash? Where is your evidence that you are private?

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