Schneier on Security

Rach El • February 21, 2019 9:31 PM

Thanks everyone

The general theme is people fearing this information could be used beyond its brief, against the innocent

multiple components to this situation

i wonder if it can be compounded by intentional use of sting-rays

and if it would fly outside of US of A

I suspect it would not hold up too well to a strong defence in court – where it counts

And the erroneous, speculative geo-nature of th is data

i lived in a suburb where a famous abuduction case had occurred years before I moved there. It was to achieve national attention. my neighbour said the police assessed every single text message sent in the whole area before and during the day of the event in hope of finding suspects. She knew this because her son had sent some text message about taking car somewhere (to the mechanic or something) and the police actually paid him a personal visit to have him explain what he meant.

• CallMeLateForSupper

‘LE locates and/or tracks a CELLPHONE and uses the data to prove geolocation or movement of the OWNER of that cellphone.’

i suspect you are making an astute observation here. I just cannot be sure of what it is. Would you mind extrapolating?

Rach El • February 23, 2019 3:20 PM

Appreciate the detailed comments about TETRA. As a professional wildfire fighter I witnesed this first hand. our emergency services authority was hammered by a peak fire incident that wiped out lots of civiliation, with coronial inquests and hearings piling up and blame spread thin. One proposal quickly integrated was to upgrade the entire radio comms network for all agencies, which also included the volunteer brigades who do wilderness search and rescue, firefighting amongst other things.
Many, many millions later, voila TETRA. Now, we’re not always the brightest tools in the shed but it must be said everyone had such a headache getting their heads around using them. The cost of a single handset was so, so high we were nervous about even using them – dropping them, getting them near a fire, near water – oh funny, that – fire…water..
I remember their size and weight, the EMF emissions so palpable we joked about toasting marshmallows. No one could adapt to having to wait a number of seconds for the trunk relay to kick in after depressing push to talk, so the beginning of Tx was always cut off. I remember all the hype around the features – this was before smart phones existed – yet we wondered why we’d ever need many of them.

I recall a training drill in my crew – prepare for burn over – where ones vehicle is about to be engulfed by a firefront.(1) There’s a routine for nominating a post-incident rendevous, nominating who will be on comms and who on first aid, grabbing the fireblankets, closing all air-ingress points and huddling up on floor of vehicle under a fire blanket. And preparing to die.(2)

Someone in my crew called in the code red ‘we are at this location, preparing for burn over’ on the training comms channel. However the new TETRA handset reverted to the default official public emergency channel.
30 minutes later emergency vehicle turned up, shortly followed thereafter by the brass wanting to know what the familyblog was going on and whose head was going to roll, for reporting a code red burnover incident?

6 months later the extremly expensive TETRA was rolled up and sent home and the pre-peak fire incident comms – stated to be ineffective by the hearings – was returned to its former status. If you can appreciate just how difficult it would be to reverse the findings of the Hearing, AND reverse something as fundamental as the comms network. Just what sort of experiences must have been had across multiple first responder agencies for them to actually backtrack on the TETRA – really tells you something. Well that was a fun waste of time.
I’m interested the London Met have persisted as long as they have.

(1) One should never be in this situation. Cardinal rule is ‘Work from the black’ means, ones vehicle should always be on burnt ground. Mind you one is often without a vehicle, having been delivered by helicopter in dense environments. Facing fire on foot with a backpack is – interesting

(2) The chance of survival is basically zero.The drill is akin to school kids climbing under their desks in the case of the atomic bomb. One doesn’t perish in the flames, though, as the imagination expects. Death is inhalation of ‘superheated air’ which apparently occurs in seconds and is relatively painless and merciful. The other extreme risk is all the PVC and related materials inside the vehicle. Highly, highly toxic environment when combined with fire.