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Once more for the cheap seats: DISABLE GPS ON YOUR CELL PHONE CAMERA

Grat3fulh3ad

The Voice of Reason
Veteran
Not really pertaining to GPS and pics but I remember reading something a few years back from a guy that claimed to work for a large cellular provider. He said the only way to truly disable GPS is to remove the battery. He went on to say that a cell phone can be tracked even when it's powered off and that the company he worked for only needs a court order to [legally] enable GPS tracking. Apparently this was not all that uncommon...

Not only can they activate the GPS at will...
but
any time your battery is in your cellphone, even if the cellphone is powered down, the cell company can activate the mic and camera.


There was a sting operation run on the mafia several years ago where surveillance was carried out through cellphones in such a manner.
 

Beanfish

Member
Not only can they activate the GPS at will...
but
any time your battery is in your cellphone, even if the cellphone is powered down, the cell company can activate the mic and camera.


There was a sting operation run on the mafia several years ago where surveillance was carried out through cellphones in such a manner.

Ah, a free country.... er, Ah, a nanny state.
 

Bengi

Member
Great post. Thanks for the heads up. Maybe this should be stickied somewhere, since most people own a cell phone nowadays.
 

the_man

Member
Just to point this out old phones do have a 911 gps on them and you can't disable it. It is usually deep in the phone settings you can ether select location or 911 only. 911 you can't turn off I have seen this on phones as old as 8 years.

Don't post anything to facebook or any of the other ones. It has become widely know that they set up profiles and add you as friend to monitor your community. there was just a big article about this on the legal aspect of LEO doing this. There doing it on a large scale since most people will add anybody that comes along.
 
Awesome thread! Hopefully this will save some people!

The only way to prevent a cell phone from being located is removing the battery. I know a guy who locates cell phones so the info is from a credible source.
 
I didn't know this, but just extracted a picture from my GPS enabled cell phone and don't see that info there. At any rate, good thing I don't use my cell phone cam for weed pictures.

What would they do if you had a picture of a grow printed out, drove to a cops house and photographed it on your cell phone? Or just drove there, got the latitude & longitude, and edited that into the exif data? Hell, wouldn't even need to drive there, just bring it up on google maps and copy the numbers.

It'd probably cause a bit of a problem for cop.
 

dev0n

Member
lol@the white house!

Hahahaha, liked that didja? :) I wonder if anyone else caught it ...

Dev0n: Is that linux?

It is, using exiftool. Executables for this tool are also available for Windows and Mac.

What would they do if you had a picture of a grow printed out, drove to a cops house and photographed it on your cell phone? Or just drove there, got the latitude & longitude, and edited that into the exif data? Hell, wouldn't even need to drive there, just bring it up on google maps and copy the numbers.

Heheheh - and one might hope that the FIRST time this is thrown out of court because you can't prove the authenticity of the sat data, no judge will issue a warrant solely on this basis, much less admit this data into evidence. That idea is a crackup ...
 

gronko

Member
hey there,

article about this e 911 capable phones

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/01/9502

You could use old mobile phones that were built before '97, but don't think they are even compatible nowadays? (analogue?)

Some would use GSM, which has been busted to death lately.

http://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-10/...-USA-2010-Nohl-Attacking.Phone.Privacy-wp.pdf

&

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/08/this-us1500-system-can-intercept-your-mobile-phone-calls/

You can find more information about Kraken @

http://lists.lists.reflextor.com/pipermail/a51/2010-July/000683.html (google kraken rainbow tables)

A good mobile phone to get would be this (google openmoko)

http://gizmodo.com/286443/openmoko-developer-preview-kit-unboxing-wow-thats-a-lot-of-stuff

You can build your own cell phone network using @

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBTS

There's a blog you can read about them deploying it at a Burning Man gig @

http://openbts.blogspot.com/search/label/field tests



Also possible to use HAM Radio ie

D-STAR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-STAR






:gday:





Just to point this out old phones do have a 911 gps on them and you can't disable it. It is usually deep in the phone settings you can ether select location or 911 only. 911 you can't turn off I have seen this on phones as old as 8 years.

Don't post anything to facebook or any of the other ones. It has become widely know that they set up profiles and add you as friend to monitor your community. there was just a big article about this on the legal aspect of LEO doing this. There doing it on a large scale since most people will add anybody that comes along.
 

Tripp35

Member
So what happens when you're proven right multiple times on a daily basis?
IMHO I'd called this cause to through some shit at a fan, no?
 

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