[109300] in Cypherpunks
Cellular Phone Anonymity/Privacy (was Israli cellphone)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Burnes)
Wed Mar 17 15:38:20 1999
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 14:50:46 -0500
From: "Jim Burnes" <jburnes@iss.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <cypherpunks@openpgp.net>
Reply-To: "Jim Burnes" <jburnes@iss.net>
-----Original Message-----
X-Loop: openpgp.net
From: owner-cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
[mailto:owner-cypherpunks@cyberpass.net]On Behalf Of William H. Geiger
III
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 12:51 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Israel Cell Phones
W Geiger says:
>Once again the socialist don't get it (FYI Israel is a *very* socialist
>country). :(
>If you don't like the actions of Company X, the solution is not more
>government regulation, the solution is to stop using Company X's products.
>The pocketbook is far more powerfull than any government action. If the
>million or so cell phone users all went and turned in their phones and
>canceled their service things would change very fast.
True. I think it would behoove the users to sue the cell phone providers
for some sort of "invasion of privacy". Do the year-long cellular contracts
stipulate that "big-brother inside" is part of the contract. I think not.
What would happen if the phone company put bugs inside your house every
time they did an install. When you find out are you allowed to change
phone companies? No -- you sue the bastards.
If the cell companies were really interested in locating you in an emergency
they would disable the tracking unless you pressed 911. Maybe what we
need is cell phone pseudonyms. The service charges would be settled
cryptographically. Now *there* is an e-cash application. Store some
creds on your cellphone. You give them e-cash tokens every n-minutes
to keep the call going. Maybe you could just buy a chunk of air time
with e-cash tokens, like gassing up your car. The more air time you
buy, the cheaper it is -- and no way to link you directly with the phone.
Of course they can always track who you call. They can listen in on
the conversation. Thats what gpg-phone is for. As far as anonymity
with the person your dialing I'm not sure.
Maybe Lucky can comment. I know he had a Nokia Project going a while
ago. Certainly nothing seems to be no new ideas under the cryto sun.
jim
