Hours after the United States government filed a lawsuit seeking to punish the publication of my new memoir, #PermanentRecord, the very book the government does not want you to read just became the #1 best-selling book in the world. It is available wherever fine books are sold.
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Yesterday, the government sued the publisher of #PermanentRecord for—not kidding—printing it without giving the CIA and NSA a change to erase details of their classified crimes from the manuscript. Today, it is the best-selling book in the world:
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In recent interviews, I've gotten questions over if or how I use a smartphone. They're so dangerous for someone like me, so it's quite difficult to give an in-depth answer. But I published a paper with a few years ago discussing some risks:
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Phone security has been something I've struggled with for a long time. I once spoke with 's about how it's possible to physically remove internal microphones and cameras from a phone, but even that only mitigates a portion of the threat.
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But as long as your phone is turned on, even with "location permissions" disabled, the radios in the phone that connect it to all the nice things you like are screaming into the air, reporting your presence to nearby cell towers, which then create records that are kept forever.
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Software is equally important. The iOS and Android operating systems that run on nearly every smartphone conceal uncountable numbers of programming flaws, known as security vulnerabilities, that mean common apps like iMessage or web browsers become dangerous: you can be hacked.
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If I were configuring a smartphone today, I'd use 's as the base operating system. I'd desolder the microphones and keep the radios (cellular, wifi, and bluetooth) turned off when I didn't need them. I would route traffic through the network.
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But then, its not a phone anymore. Why not simply using a flip phone? Or build one. bare bones. I am sure there is a market for that.
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Can you even get a basic flip phone with no gps or browse? I bet there is a huge market for that.
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Those only have insecure carrier-based calls (not encrypted calls) and usually don't have security updates to keep it from being mass-exploited via known radio vulnerabilities. It's an insecure-only communication device. A minimal, secure phone and dumb phone are very distinct.
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Better to have a phone that only has encrypted texts/calls and doesn't support carrier-based texts/calls at all. It's less attack surface than dealing with legacy carrier-based messaging.
Also, GPS is a receive-only radio and location can be obtained via nearby cell towers.
An old flip phone is still a decent location tracking device via cellular network when outside of airplane mode and also a listening device when it's exploited.
You can ONLY use it to make insecure calls / texts carriers and others can monitor. That's not really helping you.