> In France, the Senate just approved a controversial provision to a justice bill that would allow law enforcement to secretly activate cameras and microphones on a suspect’s devices. This type of surveillance would be activated without notifying the owner of the device. The same provision would also allow agencies easier access to geolocation data to track suspected criminals ... Critics are urging French parliamentarians to dismiss the controversial provisions. And it’s not too late – the update to the bill must still be approved in the National Assembly, the more powerful lower house of the Parliament.
Any startup employees working directly on technology trade secrets or otherwise non-public intellectual property should enable iOS Lockdown Mode.
Thanks to years of invasive online targeting, bulk data breaches and mobile phone network structural insecurity, it has never been cheaper to screen for higher-than-average-value targets with digital assets that can be exfiltrated. Since targeting costs have fallen, it is profitable to target employees below the C-suite, e.g. those in strategic or development roles who routinely need to access sensitive information and digital assets.
This applies to enterprise, mobile and WFH environments, e.g. leveraging mobile phone foothold to reach other devices like a home router.
For people who are targeted or in risk of being targeted by three letter agencies, it’s a different story.
It’s so easy for any three letter agency to install a mole or buy someone in those open-source projects like GrapheneOS, for example to publish compromised binaries. The best option is always to not use anything connected to the cell (GSM, 4G, 5G etc.) network and carry all comms encrypted over internet, with pre-exchanged secret keys and preferably over a network like I2P and over public Wi-Fis. You can use I2P outproxies to connect to visible (normal) internet. I do NOT recommend Tor, there were reports of Tor being compromised and it’s too suspiciously popular to be trustable IMHO. Pay attention to CCTV cameras as well, don’t sit in a mall to connect its public Wi-Fi. All these things obviously introduce a lot of friction to your communications, but if you are such a high-value person you should have set up your network of people accordingly beforehand as well, to relay messages and such. QubesOS is a good OS for such people. If you have the means, custom device solutions to communicate over radio with encryption is by far the best option you can have, especially for receiving critical comms on time. This only leaves the risk of triangulation when you transmit, but you must be a really high value target for this to happen. And you can always still use internet as I described to transmit.
Don’t ask how I know all this.