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Comment by shmatt | Hacker News Reader

US nationals have never been protected. If you make an international phone call the government can track it[1]. If its internal they can't without a warrant

NSO built in a complete block of +1 phone numbers. But those US diplomats were not using +1. Which itself is a security issue that i'm sure is already being discussed at the state department

[1]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/07/dea-bulk-tele...

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Seems silly to call it a security issue when the bulk of the day to day activities for many state department employees is working closely with local nationals. Do you really want to make your average Ugandan caterer make an international call to the US in order to coordinate food delivery for an embassy event?

And the fact that you're not likely to answer a call from an international number because it'll probably look more like spam.

Also, for them to have a +1 number outside the USA means they have to be on a USA network and then roaming onto a local network. This presents dozens of problems, such as often not being able to get the best connection, not being able to get data connections, not being able to get any local support, and it costing a small fortune.

All the embassy employees I have ever known have gone full native with all of their technology etc.

Having a "caterer and friends" local dumbphone and an international phone for actual business doesn't seem unreasonable.

Presumably, linked to what the sibling said, any actual business probably ought to go over high-security data connections anyways if it's going to go over any mobile network at all. No telling who's tapping into telecom systems in third-world countries, and normal phone calls probably go in the clear no matter what the registered phone number or roaming agreement is for the device.

It's not unreasonable, but people get sloppy with cell phones.

Like the whole business around US military bases and Strava.

To be fair, I think many (most?) people use Strava without a cellphone. At least in cycling. The problem there was everything being public by default as it is a social network of sorts.

Does the US State Department trust the local Ugandan Best Buy employees not to run a swim swap for $50? or $10,000?

With an Ugandan sim comes the security of the Ugandan mobile network and its employees

Would that imply that it would function as well for Canadian phone numbers, since they share a country code?

Shhhh, don’t tell them about the n in nanpa.

But given the number of countries under nanpa, I bet they filter at the area code level. Can’t turn away that sweet Dominican Republic opportunity.

How does data work if you get NSO’d? There’s gotta be some Canadians facing massive mobile phone bills because of NSO shenanigans.

I think you mean NANP, nanpa is somewhat different...

Nanpa is the administrator of nanp

https://nationalnanpa.com/

But from what I can see, nanpa is also a Japanese word for something that sounds like random approaches on women in malls, etc. for dating. I forget the term in English.

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