Тег: Surveillance

Phone in a Cage or How to Protect Yourself from Surveillance

Few will argue that the topic of intelligence services monitoring activists via mobile phones is very important. It’s 2025, but things remain the same: authorities of almost all states dislike freedom and are ready to make a serious effort to peek into your smartphone. Even if you’re a super-conspirator, you’ve got a disposable phone with a “poor man’s” SIM card and you’re sitting at home, carefully posting statuses in Telegram or using this device as a Wi-Fi hotspot – there remains the risk that one day a cop will knock on your door.

How is this possible, you ask? Simply: there’s the old triangulation method. If a phone is connected to a network, even without GPS and Wi-Fi, intelligence services can calculate the approximate location of the device based on the level of signal from nearby base stations. This isn’t instantaneous, but gradually one can narrow down the search area to a building entrance, or even a specific apartment. Remember how they tracked down Shamil Basayev in Chechnya? That’s roughly so, only now it works faster and cheaper.

But don’t panic! There’s a simple solution: a Faraday cage for a phone. Sounds futuristic, doesn’t it? In reality, it’s just a case or bag made of special fabric that blocks absolutely any radio signals and is sold on all marketplaces. A phone inside this thing seems to vanish from reality: no cellular networks, Wi-Fi, GPS, or Bluetooth see it anymore. Imagine “airplane mode,” only 100% reliable.

And here’s the key point: if you keep your phone in a Faraday cage for most of the time (when you’re not using it), calculating its location is almost impossible. After all, no government in the world will spend huge resources constantly triangulating some ordinary activist. That luxury intelligence services reserve for leaders of insurgent groups, and simple activists are definitely not on the VIP list of a stationary criminal.

Of course, after purchase, you must check the Faraday cage case! Quality doesn’t always match the description. To test it, you use exclusively your personal phone – so as not to create a chain of connections for intelligence services with your anonymous device. Place your personal phone in a bag and try to call it from another phone (e.g., a friend or family member’s phone, but not your own anonymous phone). If the call doesn’t go through, then the case is good!

Here’s another tip – it always pays to use a paid VPN with a high privacy rating, both on your phone and PC, even if the phone is used as a Wi-Fi hotspot. A VPN will hide your real IP address and make it more difficult for those who want to track your actions online. It’s also important to regularly check the privacy settings of your phone and apps. Don’t forget to turn off geolocation, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi if you don’t need them right now. This will help avoid accidental data leaks and make the device less noticeable for gathering information. Remember that modern phones even in “sleep” mode continue to periodically send requests and connect to towers and networks. It doesn’t hurt to also remember about physical security: You shouldn’t take a phone used for activism to real meetings, and if you do need to move it – it needs to be turned off beforehand and placed in a Faraday cage case. Remember that safety is not just a set of technical actions but a habit and a lifestyle.

Of course, no technology can make a person completely invisible. But with due caution, you can become so boring and uninteresting for surveillance agencies that they’ll prefer to spend their forces on something more exciting. Take care of yourself and stay free!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Violence is irrational – rational incentives against it do not work

Voluntarist, Bitarch

In the modern world, surveillance using various digital means, especially surveillance cameras, is actively practiced. Most major cities in developed countries are already covered by them from top to bottom. This is promoted to the public as a method of fighting crime, including violent crime. If there are cameras everywhere, few people will dare to steal property or attack others due to the inevitability of punishment. But it is not that simple. Surveillance cameras do help in preventing non-violent crimes. But in the case of violence, they are useless.

An analysis of 41 studies on this topic shows that everything depends on the type of crime. Cameras are best at preventing car thefts and property theft. Accordingly, the greatest effectiveness of cameras is achieved specifically in parking lots (a 51% reduction in crime), while in city centers, the impact of cameras proved to be insignificant. But most importantly, no evidence was found that cameras have any influence whatsoever on the number of violent crimes.

This fact only confirms that violence is not a rational and conscious act; the tendency to commit violent acts depends on the “nature” of the specific person. One cannot stop violence, which is irrational in its essence, by resorting to rational stimuli and deterrence mechanisms. Neither surveillance nor the punishment following a violent crime can reduce the level of violence.

The tendency to commit acts of violence, or more precisely, the inability of a specific person to restrain their aggressiveness, can generally be explained by a weak version of the Lorenz mechanism that inhibits intraspecific violence. Given that it is observed in a wide range of very diverse species, its presence in humans would be unsurprising. The only difference is that there was no evolutionary pressure on humans to develop a strong version of it, so some people possess precisely the weak version.

Understanding the irrational nature of violence, the fight against it must be based exclusively on an understanding of human biology and psychology. An obvious alternative to surveillance cameras is universal armament (a uniform balance of violence potential). Almost every aggressor has a self-preservation instinct, so knowing that a potential victim is highly likely to have a weapon, they will not attack. And if someone attacks anyway, the victim’s armament will not only allow them to deal with the violence specifically at the moment it is committed but will also exert that very evolutionary pressure to strengthen the innate inhibitor of violence, as in the case of some species that are heavily armed by nature and possess a strong version of it. Post-factum punishments, again, do not work. This includes even the adoption of the elimination of violent offenders after the fact, as this also requires people capable of violence outside the framework of self-defense (that is, initiating violence on their own part), which means this will not help reduce aggressiveness.

A more humane and effective option would be the development of gene therapy for violence, which would activate and strengthen that very Lorenz mechanism. In this case, pressure could be applied to violent offenders to stimulate them to take the corresponding drug. Alternatively, a dart could be fired at them during a direct attack, using this alongside non-lethal means of self-defense.

Contact Tracing: The First Step Toward Universal Real-Time Surveillance

In order to familiarize Russian-speaking libertarians with English-language libertarian discourse, we intend to occasionally post translations of articles from major libertarian websites. Today, we present for your attention an article about contact tracing apps, which have become a challenge to privacy due to the pandemic.

The pandemic provided governments with a pretext to justify the mass collection of geolocation data.

Many academics, entrepreneurs, and governments claim that new technologies are a critical part of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. They argue that by using the latest tracking methods to obtain information, people will be able to easily check whether they have come into contact with identified COVID-19 carriers.

Contact Tracing Apps

Two models for such apps are proposed. The first model involves the collection and processing of a person’s location information by governments. Such proposals were met with a barrage of criticism from privacy and consumer rights groups, as they involve unprecedented total surveillance. Given that many tech companies already provide such services to their governments—YouTube, for example, blocks any information contradicting WHO statements—these fears seem quite real.

The second model is the collection and processing of information about movements and contacts directly on users’ devices. This decentralized form of data collection has received broad academic support because, in theory, it would allow for contact tracing without giving companies and governments real-time access to data on citizens’ movements and habits.

But even this decentralized data collection scheme raises many questions. Even with the development of a legal framework for privacy protection—which currently simply does not exist—the level of public awareness regarding information protection makes these apps extremely dangerous.

In this article, we will examine how contact tracing apps are developed and why they pose a threat.

Centralization or Decentralization?

Let us first note that some contact tracing apps implemented by governments outside Europe and the US are a serious problem. The Israeli government recently passed a law giving its security services the right to access the personal data of all users, as well as allowing the centralized storage of the obtained information. South Korea and China have done the same.

The danger of involving governments in the collection of such data is noted by many personal data protection organizations in Europe and the US. Despite this, the governments of these countries believe that such apps are necessary, also because these governments themselves were unable to develop contact tracing apps on their own.

It is intended that contact tracing apps will be developed according to a decentralized model. In theory, the user’s phone will store data about contacts with COVID-19 owners itself and exchange data with other devices. Information will not be transmitted to centralized cloud storage, and even the companies developing the apps will not have access to users’ personal data or their location.

This model was proposed by companies such as Apple and Google, the PACT project from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], and many European groups. Most proposals include Bluetooth technology, which will notify the user if there is another user nearby who has been in contact with the virus.

(Missing) Legal Framework

At first glance, apps with a decentralized data collection model are flawless in protecting users from surveillance. They are built on a policy of individual responsibility, comparable to the policy of the Swedish government, which proved its effectiveness despite non-interference in the private lives of citizens.

However, two unresolved problems remain with decentralized contact tracing apps. First, there is currently no legal framework to protect users of these apps from surveillance. Second, even if such a framework were created, any data from smartphones could be stolen by hackers or security services.

To start, let’s consider the legal aspect of the issue. In our article on the legality of such apps, we already pointed out that the lawfulness of such a form of mass surveillance is questionable at best. With the increasing instances of internet censorship, there is a possibility that governments will use such apps to create databases of users and track them.

But the questions related to contact tracing apps—centralized or not—are much deeper. It is unclear even if these apps will fulfill their original function. For these apps to be effective, people would need to be required to install and use them. Otherwise, an infected user could simply delete the app, which undermines the effectiveness of the entire system. Giving governments the right to impose the use of a specific app on citizens would be an unprecedented and extremely dangerous step.

Privacy and Security

Even with the most thoughtfully designed legal framework for such apps, even if it truly protects the user’s personal data, these apps will still pose a threat. Companies are making great efforts to increase cybersecurity, especially now that many are working remotely, and are surprised to find that their employees know very little or nothing at all about cybersecurity. This means that any data obtained through contact tracing apps—even if stored on the user’s smartphone—is very vulnerable.

And this circumstance, of course, is taken into account by existing data privacy legislation. The European GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation]—widely accepted as the gold standard when it comes to data protection—unequivocally states that data privacy cannot be achieved without information security. This is intended to be achieved through a simple rule: companies cannot collect data they do not need. In other words, the best thing that can be done for the safety of user data is not to collect it at all.

In the context of contact tracing, this means that even if user data on contacts and location is stored on the user’s smartphone—rather than in a centralized accounting system—no one guarantees its safety. This data can be stolen, or national security and surveillance services may gain access to it. Research also proves that even when users try to secure their data, their attempts may only undermine their information security.

On the other hand, a counterargument naturally arises that many apps already collect geolocation data and one more app cannot become critical for privacy. However, the most important difference of such new apps is that they collect data about the user’s contacts. This data could be used by law enforcement agencies to obtain information about citizens’ movements in real time.

The Future

There is no need to pretend that these are new problems that we have never encountered. Activists , defending privacy, have been talking about the illegitimacy of mass surveillance for over ten years. The pandemic only gave governments a pretext to justify the mass collection of geolocation data. As we have already pointed out, there are currently no technologies capable of collecting this data without violating the fundamental human right to privacy. There are no legal acts that regulate the use of contact tracing apps. Even if there were, the insecurity of data on most smartphones makes this data extremely vulnerable to theft or legal requests from law enforcement agencies.

It is important that later, after the pandemic, we remember the lessons of the present. We must, of course, rebuild our economic policy, which made the world so vulnerable to COVID-19. But we must also use this opportunity to challenge the level of surveillance that has become possible in our new digital world.

It all comes down to the fact that we must make technology serve those who use it, rather than as a tool for building a “surveillance economy” that is so rapidly enslaving our society. And resistance to tracking apps is only the beginning of this struggle.

Original text: Sia Mohajer, Contact Tracing: Laying the Foundation for Real-Time Social Tracking, June 1, 2020, FEE Foundation for Economic Education