Posted On: Thursday - March 12th 2020 7:00PM MST
In Topics: Artificial Stupidity Orwellian Stupidity iEspionage
Yeah, even if you don't watch TV, as in the book 1984*, wear a ball cap and or band-aids on your face even when you haven't cut yourself shaving in the morning, and buy stuff at stores with cash, well, if you've got the piece of iCrap or the like, Big Brother is taking a ride in your left back pocket. OK, maybe you do things differently. I can't stand the thing in a front pocket when I have one**.
This iEspionage topic is probably more suited to a Constitutionalist, Libertarian, or even End Times site. Still, we'd like to discuss it during those occasions when Big Brother, i.e., the NSA, is taking a core dump after a bad Thai meal. Hopefully this is one of those times, but, just to be sure, I'm writing this on one of the newer IBM Selectrics, white out on hand, and a blue ribbon for hyperlinks.
Let me make a digression here to state that, yes, this'll read like a fairly paranoid post. I DON'T think anyone is out to get me, personally, but once everything I do is recorded and saved, were I to do something they may want to get me for in the future, they'll have not just evidence but some kind of blackmail material. That goes for anybody. Nobody but Saints have nothing at all to be ashamed of.
Here is some of the shit inside your iPhone:
Now, that's just compact electronic stuff of all sorts, but the picture is from the article I found for the post, out of Gizmodo on-line magazine , called All the Sensors in Your Smartphone, and How They Work. I've been thinking about these iPhones as the eyes and ears and medium-term memory of Big Brother since a friend brought it up way back in the day of the brick, perhaps when GPS was just being put in newer ones. It's gotten a lot worse since he talked to me about this 12-15 years ago.
The eyes, the cameras on both sides that COULD be recording full-time or on activation by piece of software that nobody's gonna tell you about are easy enough to close. There's electrical tape, your pocket, of course (but I've got another post about that), and I've got that bottle of white out right here. The ears are another story. There is a built in microphone of course, but I'm not sure if just one. I don't know if there is a 2nd for speaker mode that has different sensitivity or if that's all done with software somehow. You can block much of the sound in a really crude fashion. I've always thought that, if there's a plug-in for an external mic, one could plug something in there (just ground it, or is that the opposite?) to "jam" the input when you're not making calls.
The newer sensors are the ones that make possible the admittedly-cool "apps" that are out there. Lots of these couldn't have been made to put in these slim smart-phones before the advancement of MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems). The article does a fairly good job discussing the 3 big ones, the accelerometer, the gyro, and the compass (magnetometer is the article's term), along with, what is not a sensor, but a radio receiver, the GPS chip. Think of all one can do with these 4 items in the phone involving movement of an individual, excuse me, highly-monitored citizen. That's not just location but physical attitude and type of movement involved in. Sure, it'd be a little easier for the NSA to know what you're doing if the camera lens is available to record full-time video and sound, sending it in when able****
How do you jam these sensors/devices? Obviously GPS can, a compass can be fooled by magnets and steel. The accelerometer and gyro would take complicated mechanisms to jam them, but people are clever. The reason I don't bring up software as the solution is simply:
a) Do you trust the maker of the software not to have the phone ACT like it's missing the sensors, but, not really?
b) Is there really a way to get to the heart of the hardware, to where no other software has a way in around your off-switch?
Just food for thought tonight. If the Wu-Flu doesn't take us all out, these smartphones might do it.
The capabilities of these voluntary iEspionage devices is one thing, but let's not forget the very basics of how this works. It's very difficult to anonymously BUY a phone anymore. I mean TRULY anonymously, with cash, I suppose with a hat on and band-aids on the face for the cameras ... etc. That's just the start, only the initial basis for trying to be anonymous - what you do on any of the apps can destroy that anonymity right quick-like. We had an earlier post on that - Government Positive Control of your "phone".
* Even the link I just pasted in HAD a 500-character-long code at the end of the URL to send just the exact method I used to get to the book title page.*** I wiped it out for my link.
** Been on flip-phone status some of the time just based on smart-screen exasperation issues alone.
*** No, I'm not THAT far gone to think that they have special "ref" codes for just these kinds of books ... maybe for the tin-foil hat I ordered last week though ...
**** Of course, why would they do this? If you've done nothing wrong, you've got NOTHING to worry about. Nothing at all. They're on OUR side, right? Now if the Chinese Central Party hacks into the NSA .... ]
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[UPDATED 06/13/20:] I just realized that I'd had an earlier post that is very related, and should be an addition to this one. Link and text added as the last paragraphs before the footnotes.
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