I am using a phone without Google Services with no issues regarding YouTube, banking apps, etc. How?microG, an open source implementation of Google Services, and it works pretty damn well. Because it's open source, I know that Google cannot steal any data I am not knowingly giving them :)
Yeah, that is inevitable, that's indeed the price you pay for using public infrastructure. It is going to get a lot worse, Flock cameras being just the heralds of things to come. But this cannot be effectively fought at the personal level, this is just a matter of who has the political power. I am much more interested in what we, as individuals can do that the government can do nothing about. Basically we have kinda trustworthy public encryption algorithms, so preventing side channel attacks and trying to make hardware verifiably safe is IMO the principal battle to fight right now.
I get what you mean, but this website specifically works completely fine on my Firefox (with uBlock). Please check your browser settings for things like disabled JavaScript.
Yeah, the mysterious Intel ME probably does similar things, but nonetheless these subsystems don't have capabilities nearly as huge as the main OS, so they can't store a lot of data, or do a lot of computation, or do stealth networking - (rant warning) such as embedding data in packets, that would require stealing the cryptographic keys from the main RAM, or even from other physical modules, basically so much convolution, that would be defeated by a simple update to the networking stack with changed offsets etc., I mean you would have to do crazy things to embed a universal rootkit you can never update yet is never detected doing shady stuff. This sounds more in the area of CIA capabilities, not really hardware manufacturers, but I really doubt they would risk revealing something so serious just to collect some meaningless data. TL;DR CIA backdoor probably exists, data collection backdoors are not feasible.
Tbh, Google Pixels have an unlocked bootloader, which is pretty rare nowadays, and nothing stops you from installing an OS without Google services. And I highly doubt they are able to extract any meaningful data when you are using such OS, even if there are hardware backdoors installed. It's just extremely hard to do complicated* stuff, including data collection, while not being detected, and with just access to low level hardware; network packet analysis would give away any such attempts immediately. (*as in 'more complicated than a few hundred assembly instructions')
Please try to avoid using the term 'sideloading'. This refers to ADB sideloading and the thing Google is trying to attack is the freedom to install apps.
That is actually pretty interesting! Are you sure it is the LEDs that you can hear? I would probably lean towards the mains 50Hz buzz being heard by you due to internal transformers
Amazing, I have never thought of that! I have always carried my card behind the phone, which is a bit too thick for my liking, but this is such a great idea, thanks for sharing!
That would be amazing, but unfortunately we handed over our freedoms to the government that will still want taxes in the 'official' currency regardless of the will of the people. The government also really really wants to be able to print as much money as they want to in order to control the economy (for the better or for the worse, depends on who you ask). Also, an even more pressing problem is that we handed over the means of production to corporations, so we wouldn't be able to survive by just trading with other people... (some would be able to, but we wouldn't be able to produce enough food for everyone, moreover think healthcare, basically a lot of people would die in result). The only way for your idea to happen in reality is to dismantle the system, effectively reducing the trust in official currency to nil, and that has happened a lot of times in the history of the world, so we just need to damage the system first and the currency shift will happen naturally.
I don't think it matters much. My generation will have to come up with a retirement plan on its own and whether the government can cover 0, 10 or 20 percent of the basic cost of living makes almost no difference to me. I expect that I will basically have to cover everything on my own or maybe go to jail for free food.
Well, the thing is even if you trace it back to an account, what do you do then? Only a single pirate with a bit of opsec knowledge needs to have an account with e.g. a stolen credit card or whatever, and then they can just leak everything with no consequences...
I am using a phone without Google Services with no issues regarding YouTube, banking apps, etc. How?microG, an open source implementation of Google Services, and it works pretty damn well. Because it's open source, I know that Google cannot steal any data I am not knowingly giving them :)
Yeah, that is inevitable, that's indeed the price you pay for using public infrastructure. It is going to get a lot worse, Flock cameras being just the heralds of things to come. But this cannot be effectively fought at the personal level, this is just a matter of who has the political power. I am much more interested in what we, as individuals can do that the government can do nothing about. Basically we have kinda trustworthy public encryption algorithms, so preventing side channel attacks and trying to make hardware verifiably safe is IMO the principal battle to fight right now.
I get what you mean, but this website specifically works completely fine on my Firefox (with uBlock). Please check your browser settings for things like disabled JavaScript.
You are right, but I believe the final result has been improved by this mistake
Yeah, the mysterious Intel ME probably does similar things, but nonetheless these subsystems don't have capabilities nearly as huge as the main OS, so they can't store a lot of data, or do a lot of computation, or do stealth networking - (rant warning) such as embedding data in packets, that would require stealing the cryptographic keys from the main RAM, or even from other physical modules, basically so much convolution, that would be defeated by a simple update to the networking stack with changed offsets etc., I mean you would have to do crazy things to embed a universal rootkit you can never update yet is never detected doing shady stuff. This sounds more in the area of CIA capabilities, not really hardware manufacturers, but I really doubt they would risk revealing something so serious just to collect some meaningless data. TL;DR CIA backdoor probably exists, data collection backdoors are not feasible.
you dare in-
sult css
Tbh, Google Pixels have an unlocked bootloader, which is pretty rare nowadays, and nothing stops you from installing an OS without Google services. And I highly doubt they are able to extract any meaningful data when you are using such OS, even if there are hardware backdoors installed. It's just extremely hard to do complicated* stuff, including data collection, while not being detected, and with just access to low level hardware; network packet analysis would give away any such attempts immediately. (*as in 'more complicated than a few hundred assembly instructions')
I received it, can confirm it's real
Please try to avoid using the term 'sideloading'. This refers to ADB sideloading and the thing Google is trying to attack is the freedom to install apps.
That is actually pretty interesting! Are you sure it is the LEDs that you can hear? I would probably lean towards the mains 50Hz buzz being heard by you due to internal transformers
Unfortunately this is what you need to do on any rooted Android rn :(
Amazing, I have never thought of that! I have always carried my card behind the phone, which is a bit too thick for my liking, but this is such a great idea, thanks for sharing!
That would be amazing, but unfortunately we handed over our freedoms to the government that will still want taxes in the 'official' currency regardless of the will of the people. The government also really really wants to be able to print as much money as they want to in order to control the economy (for the better or for the worse, depends on who you ask). Also, an even more pressing problem is that we handed over the means of production to corporations, so we wouldn't be able to survive by just trading with other people... (some would be able to, but we wouldn't be able to produce enough food for everyone, moreover think healthcare, basically a lot of people would die in result). The only way for your idea to happen in reality is to dismantle the system, effectively reducing the trust in official currency to nil, and that has happened a lot of times in the history of the world, so we just need to damage the system first and the currency shift will happen naturally.
Just throw them into a black hole
I don't live in a third world country like the US :) Slavery is not legal where I live, no exceptions.
I don't think it matters much. My generation will have to come up with a retirement plan on its own and whether the government can cover 0, 10 or 20 percent of the basic cost of living makes almost no difference to me. I expect that I will basically have to cover everything on my own or maybe go to jail for free food.
The more people there are being productive, the better off the billionaires will be. You are going to be fucked regardless.
Well, the thing is even if you trace it back to an account, what do you do then? Only a single pirate with a bit of opsec knowledge needs to have an account with e.g. a stolen credit card or whatever, and then they can just leak everything with no consequences...