Your smartphone spying on you? Hidden Features of control and tracking of smartphones

You just happy to own a smartphone, or you have a Trojan in your pocket? No, because you're underestimating the control that the producers - and not the owner - have on your hardware

Rome - In times really do not suspect Cassandra, still a beginner, he wrote an article about the black box, ie information about the objects that provide one or more core features, isolating the user-owner of their complexity and internal structure.

The provisions of article in the objects that were obviously the type black box, they had resources and computing power in excess, could be inserted functionality "hidden" of various kinds, and certainly this possibility would have been exploited by manufacturers for purposes not beneficial to the user.

The dark and difficult prediction has not come true on time: just read up a minimum to find that the majority of consumer electronics products, starting with the cell and continuing with video players, games consoles and personal computers have hidden functions and automatically performing tasks unrelated to their main functions, which are often directed to enclose and control the user-owner-slave.

A couple of very well-known examples help to understand the problem.

Indeed, we can recall the kill functionality of the applications, as inserted by Apple in the iPhone operating system, which allows you to "kill" a dangerous application or simply unwelcome throughout the park of the iPhone, and that seems to be available on mobile phones equipped with the Android OS. And how can we think about the DRM capabilities for limiting the use of multimedia content included in practically all objects that can play digital content, from the personal computer, in fact, mobile phones, not surprisingly now called "smartphone"?

And we could continue with the auto-update of decoder and consoles, and with those of upload data about user activity on normal now many PC software.

Compounding this situation is compounded by the fact that malicious users, somehow aware of these hidden features, instead of being caught by a feeling of profound horror gives a damn high: so they have nothing to hide. It then becomes very difficult to write convincingly additional facts and arguments that can convince an audience willing to spend 500-600 euro to get in a pocket to be almost living that obey not the owner but to other owners.

On the other hand also my ancestor Cassandra, daughter of Priam, was unable to convince even the father who felt that the giggles out of that wooden horse could be an indication of a problem.

But in these days has circulated an interesting news, which demonstrates how the black box have become not only rich in features "hidden", but even structurally "disobedient" to their owners due to standard widely adopted by the industry, and in the first obviously from handset makers such as Motorola.

In fact, Motorola has acquired an obscure company that makes software for the "safety" of mobile phones by the name of the detector, which moreover keeps us (or held us) to explain in terms of extremely colorful and effective its corporate mission. The company is the 3LM, subtitle "the Three Law of Mobility" (the Three Laws Mobility). The reference is pretty obvious to the very well known "Three Laws of Robotics" enunciated by Isaac Asimov, which allowed him to build an entire genre of science fiction literature.

It is (I say this to remember the details and the very few who did not knew) of three laws that all positronic robots built must respect:

I - a robot can not harm a being unano, and may not allow for omission that a human being to an injury;

II - a robot must obey the orders of a human being unless they are in conflict with the first law;

III - A robot must protect its own existence, unless this conflicts with the first or second law.

A construct logical and philosophical extremely convincing and rational, simple in appearance but able to build fictional situations of incredible complexity. But also a set of rules so "right" that it seems almost natural and implicit, and also apply to humans of a particularly altruistic.

 

However, proof that the black box does not obey the orders of the owners but rather to those of manufacturers, 3LM has reformulated the three laws apply to the robot so that they are valid for the phones, but also for all the other items of consumer electronics with enough "intelligence" (ie almost everyone). The new formulation is the following concise but extremely revealing:

I - a mobile phone must protect the owner from external threats;

II - a mobile phone must protect its own existence, integrity and functionality;

III - a mobile phone must obey the orders of its owner.

The correspondence of the contents of the three laws of mobility with those of the three laws of robotics is obvious, but the inversion of the second with the third law is as revealing as admirably descriptive of the philosophy of the particular class of black box represented by Motorola mobile Android operating system, and also of smartphones in general.

 

The first cell "protects" itself (and its builders), and only then, and perhaps obey the orders of the owner, who thinks he's the boss but should instead look like Indiana Jones when the monkey actually obeys a motorcyclist Arab and Nazi . Of course, this kind of behavior (and others) can be justified by the need to protect GSM networks which, having been conceived twenty years ago, do not have any security features that can not be easily circumvented by the most stupid of mobile viruses.

That put a piece, depriving the owners of the phones of their rights, it seems justified.

But it is not: it is a piece, precisely, and not of a correct solution, reliable and durable as that to evolve cellular networks providing them with intrinsic safety functions. But anyhow, it would cost a heap of money and work, and as the mobile consumers are stupid careless, you save money and you do first with the piece, in spite of precisely the rights of consumers and the priority of human beings.

What can I say? Not even this proof enough? You do not hear the giggles that come out of your pocket?

 

25/02/2011

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Translated via software

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Source:

Italian version of ReteArchitetti.it

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