Why the NSA Doesn’t Want You to Have a BlackBerry

[txradioguy]

In a world where every detail of your life is scooped up and sliced and diced until each one of us is living our own little Truman Show, privacy is the enemy. Apple and Google harvest your data and share it with the NSA. BlackBerry not only doesn’t harvest your data, it can’t. The technology prohibits it.

http://www.cantechletter.com/2013/07/why-the-nsa-doesnt-want-you-to-have-a-blackberry0723/

The reason why I post the pull quote above is because over the weekend I saw this on Drudge:

Anyone worried about being tracked by law enforcement officials really ought to think twice before buying an Android phone. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation can now “remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google’s Android software to record conversations” and that it can also “do the same to microphones in laptops without the user knowing.” The FBI is now able to perform these feats because it’s invested heavily in recruiting hackers to help it improve its surveillance capabilities, the Journal writes. The Journal’s report suggests that federal officials do need to get a warrant before employing such tactics, which means that the FBI isn’t just casting a wide dragnet as the National Security Agency has been doing with cell phone users’ metadata.

http://bgr.com/2013/08/02/fbi-android-microphone-hack

[DumbAss Tanker]

Of course, if they go to the FISA court, or another court that applies FISA standards, getting the warrant is a mere formality which would not require any evidence amounting to real probable cause at all, and a warrant doesn't necessarily have to be limited to one person, it can be for an entire area or based on any other identifiable criteria, including 'All phones that pinged X tower in Y timeframe.'

[txradioguy]

Of course, if they go to the FISA court, or another court that applies FISA standards, getting the warrant is a mere formality which would not require any evidence amounting to real probable cause at all, and a warrant doesn't necessarily have to be limited to one person, it can be for an entire area or based on any other identifiable criteria, including 'All phones that pinged X tower in Y timeframe.'

From what I've read and the way I understand it, they'd have to do taht via the carrier itself.  They couldn't force a Canadian company like BlackBerry to do this sort of thing.

To me...it's just another rason to stay away from Android and adds to the reasons I went with BB.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Yes and no.  Like railroads, communications are not generally an integrated single-corporation tree, they thread through each other's servers, towers, and switches, any one of which can be the subject of a warrant.  The fact that a foreign corporation is involved does not preclude the DOJ from getting hold of the data or info, it just means that once they have a US warrant, they also need to get a supplementary warrant in the corporation's country, which might be easy or hard.  Our DOJ can wildly overstate its basis for the warrant or outright lie about it just as easily to a foreign law enforcement partner as it does to the FISA court.  And finally, Commonwealth countries have rather different standards on privacy and warrants than we do, generally being lower, which is after all why we have the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.

[Dori]

Someone could make a lot of money if they invent something that could block the spies in the sky.

[CG6468]

...which is after all why we have the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.

As if they do any good. The bastard resident in the house painted white and his "attorney general" asswipe pay no attention to the constitution.

[thundley4]

Funny that Blackberry is exempt and that is what Obama refused to give up when he entered office.