Anti-Tracking Smartphone Pouch

[SeraphimLabs]

Those walmart disposable phones work rather well.

Mind you, if they want to know who is holding it all they have to do is pull the records of it and then get IDs from the people you talk to. Its not hard to fill in the gaps in a social network, even for an antisocial person.

If you ask me though, the iphone with its permanently fixed battery is a fire hazard. Lithium packs can and do explode after all, and should be required to have a method to quickly eject them in order to spare the device's contents.

[Innuendo]

If you ask me though, the iphone with its permanently fixed battery is a fire hazard. Lithium packs can and do explode after all, and should be required to have a method to quickly eject them in order to spare the device's contents.

-SeraphimLabs (December 10, 2013, 04:22 PM)

Don't get me started. I've been of the opinion for years that Apple is trying to move their entire product line to appliance-like device architectures. They'd love to move to a no-user-serviceable parts manufacturing system and if your shiny Apple product breaks (or bursts into flame) there's no repair option or if you want to add more RAM or storage space there's no upgrade path. You would have to buy a new iThing.

[J-Mac]

My Droid Razr has a non-removable battery too. I just keep it under my hat  (Which, of course, is made from tin foil...     )

Jim

[bit]

I thought I read somewhere that if you wrap your cell phone in aluminum foil, it will keep trying to check for incoming calls and run its own battery down in a short time.
Or is that not so?

-bit (December 09, 2013, 02:14 PM)

Cell phones are designed to reach out and find cell phone towers so they can maintain connections with the mobile network. If they can't make contact they'll keep trying to reach out over and over again until the battery dies. This is why if you are in a remote area with spotty cell phone service your battery will drain more quickly. In this aluminum foil scenario what you would want to do is turn on Airplane Mode before you wrapped your phone.

-Innuendo (December 10, 2013, 09:56 AM)

I've never owned a cell phone so I just don't know these things.
I've read often enough about LEOs having the right to search your laptop or cell phone at will or at random...
1. How are they supposed to know you even have a cell phone if it's in your pocket and you're pulled over?
I mean, do they say, "Do you have a cell phone we can search?" and you obligingly say, "Oh yes, and I don't want you to know that, but I certainly do and it's right here in my coat pocket."
2. Is it possible to set up the cell phone so it never saves phone numbers, incoming or outgoing call recoreds, or text messages, IOW so it contains no useful information, so you can just keep the numbers written down?
Then you could change the same decimal point of number in all phone numbers by one digit up or down, a general 'rule' to keep anyone from getting accurate information out of you, for your real paper note pad of written numbers.

[40hz]

1. How are they supposed to know you even have a cell phone if it's in your pocket and you're pulled over?

-bit (January 28, 2014, 02:12 AM)

"They" don't - although with near universal ownership these days, it's a fairly  safe assumption that most people are carrying one.

I mean, do they say, "Do you have a cell phone we can search?" and you obligingly say, "Oh yes, and I don't want you to know that, but I certainly do and it's right here in my coat pocket."

They can and do say that - and here's where it gets complicated because:

a) You do (at least for now) have the constitutional right (in the US) to refuse to talk to the police.

b) However, if you do talk to the police, you cannot legally make a false or potentially misleading statement (i.e. lie) to them. That's a criminal offence. So if you say anything at all to the police, it needs to be truthful - and is best done only with an attorney present.

A common police ploy is to trip you up by getting you to say something insignificant but obviously untrue and use that as an excuse to detain or arrest you. Without your attorney present, a court will only have your version and the police version of what you said to them. In in absence of an attorney, the police version of what was said will prevail in court.

c) Refusing to speak to the police is always your safest bet as well as your constitutional right. HOWEVER in some jurisdictions, police have begun to assert (and some judges agree) that legally refusing to talk to the police establishes grounds for suspicion (i.e. probable cause) - and in a few extreme cases, can be considered tantamount to an admission of guilt!

That's a very scary development. Fortunately, it's been largely confined to places where the police are already out of control and the courts seem reluctant to rein them in. Time will tell if it becomes more commonplace in the former 'Land of the Free.'

------------------------

Spend about 45 minutes watching this video by Regent Law professor James Duane. It may be the best time investment anybody could make in light of what's going on in the good old USA these days.

 

[bit]

Yes, that is a very informative video which I have seen previously and find very excellent, thank you very much.
"The US Constitution does not 'grant' citizen rights, so much as it 'limits' government powers"; am I right?
Which would mean to me -unless I'm missing the point somehow- that a so-called 'Constitution-free zone' would mean that the officer has no police powers, not that the citizen has no rights.
Not that it really is a 'Consttitution-free zone', just that they claim it is by spouting a lot of legalistic-sounding nonsense.
But go figure.

I did wonder if they actually ask if you have a cell phone, or how precisely do they find out you have a cell phone.
So they ask, 'Do you have a cell phone', you can say you refuse to answer.

At that point, they don't know if you have a cell phone, and since we're discussing a random stop, I suppose their only way to get their hands on it is to turn a 'stop & question' into a 'stop & frisk'.

That's where I got to wondering, why keep all that data on a device that can be surrendered so easily.
Is there a way to program the cell phone so it never saves incoming or outgoing numbers, contacts, messages, or texts, and so on.

Then one simply keeps a few numbers in one's head, or written down on paper.
From my POV, it does not seem so inconvenient, as I do not yet even own a cell phone; but I suppose for the person who is an habitual one-button caller and memorizes or writes down nothing, my idea may seem too unworkable.

I wonder if they use hard-wired connectors to connect to and copy a cell phone or is it done wirelessly?
Maybe you could make up or buy a 'jumper cable' adapter about two inches long, that has an oddball size at one end, and is permanently glued into the cell phone, so that without a matching jumper cable adapter to readapt it to common civilian or police plug sizes you cannot copy the phone's contents.
And of course your matching adapter is at home or misplaced under the car seat rug.

Seriously, with all the innovations in different plugs, I should imagine there must be quite a number of oddball or misfit plug sizes out there -worldwide- that with a protracted search one might come up with something truly difficult to match up.
Presuming a wireless connection is not possible, which I'm not certain.

Or I suppose someone may say to just encrypt the data in the cell phone somehow.
Or you could just epoxy the cell phone socket so nobody can ever plug into it at all.
Or if you have a steel case for your phone with a combination padlock on it, in a shoulder bag; can they order you to unlock the case?
IOW, if you must legally surrender your cell phone to be copied, why make it easy for them; why not interpose physical barriers which you are not legally obliged to help them overcome?

But I do seem to remember seeing a movie in which the cell phone number was copied wirelessly somehow.

[bit]

If the cell phone is in my pocket, and the LEOs know it's in my pocket, seems to me they have to overcome the legal barriers to searching me in order to get at the cell phone in the first place.
IOW, how can they say 'Hand over your cell phone' if they have no legitimate excuse to search me?
There's another 'know your rights' or 'how to deal with police encounters' video, which says that when they 'ask' if they can search your bag, you say 'No, am I under arrest or can I go now?'.
You do not wimp out and say 'Yes' and cave in for no reason.

So if the cell phone is known to be in your bag, or your pocket, why can't you just say 'No' if they want to get their hands on the cell phone and download its data?

It's almost to me, like, they say, "Can I search your bag?"
"No, thank you." Or maybe, "I respectfully decline." Or just a flat "No."
"Then give me your cell phone."
"Sorry, it's in my bag (or pocket)."

IOW, gaining access to the cell phone involves gaining access to my bag, which I have a right to deny access to.
In fact, even if they say, "Do you have a cell phone in your bag?" I can decline to answer and refuse to allow permission to search the bag or myself.

I'm just enormously curious because I've never owned a cell phone and currently have no intention of getting one, and I hear all these stories.

[J-Mac]

I'm just enormously curious because I've never owned a cell phone and currently have no intention of getting one, and I hear all these stories.

-bit (January 28, 2014, 11:54 PM)

Well you sure are spending a lot of words for something that you don’t own and have no intention of owning! Why all the concern?

Just curious.

Jim

[bit]

I'm just enormously curious because I've never owned a cell phone and currently have no intention of getting one, and I hear all these stories.

-bit (January 28, 2014, 11:54 PM)

Well you sure are spending a lot of words for something that you don’t own and have no intention of owning! Why all the concern?

Just curious.

Jim

-J-Mac (January 29, 2014, 12:06 AM)

Actually, I have thought about getting a cell phone.
I suppose the only time a LEO might search a cell phone is at a mass transit security checkpoint like an airport terminal.
So just being pulled over on the road, or approached in a mall, doesn't seem to represent any such possibility.
If it's in my bag, and I refuse to allow a bag search, they'd have to make it an order.
I would want to know in advance what rights I can insist on.
Like they say, if you don't know your rights, you don't have any.
Thus my curiousity here with all the questions.

Or like I say, there may be ways to interpose passive physical or software obstructions to them gaining your data that are not illegal, and could be remarkably difficult for them to overcome.

When you delete any info from a cell phone, is it still there, or is it really gone and irretrievable?
Perhaps I could just make a habit of hitting 'delete' after every call.

BTW, I said I was thinking of getting a cell phone, not planning to.
I suppose I could just ask a friend or relative. Thank you.