Court says police don’t need warrants for phone location data

You would think that police would require a warrant to get your phone’s location info, right? Not according to the US’ Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It just ruled that asking a company for cellphone location data you’ve offered to a third-party doesn’t represent a search under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, and thus doesn’t need a warrant. According to the judges voting for the decision, volunteering your position info means you’ve given up a “reasonable expectation of privacy” — if you didn’t want to share where you were, you wouldn’t have handed that knowledge over to someone else, would you?

The ruling is in line with what some other courts have said, and ends a split between courts on the topic. However, it won’t be surprising if there’s an eventual Supreme Court challenge. As many would note, it’s virtually impossible to avoid supplying your location at some point. Making a call will offer some basic positional info to your carrier, and many common smartphone tasks (such as navigation or social check-ins) demand that data. Until there’s a ruling to the contrary, though, you can’t assume that the police will have to jump through hoops to find out where you’ve been.

Via: The Intercept

Source: Amlaw (PDF)

A closer look at that $14,000 Android phone

How much do you value your privacy, and how worried are you that your calls and text messages are under observation? If the answer to both question is “lots,” then perhaps you’d be interested in Israeli startup Sirin Labs’ first smartphone, the Solarin. The device is a titanium-clad Android smartphone that lets you quickly toggle between a regular Android device and a secure, locked-down communications tool. The headline detail here is that it costs $14,000 (plus tax), or £9,500 in the UK. At that price, it’s intended mainly for titans of industry and the jet set: people with secrets worth stealing. In many ways, it’s the first phone that’s been specifically designed to keep the personal data of the 1 percent safe from everyone else.

The system works like this: By default it’s a beefy, ultra-masculine Android smartphone with a skin that looks like it was designed by the prop department of a spy movie. But once you’ve flicked the tiny toggle on the back of the device, it’ll switch into a secure mode with a green and white, 8-bit skin. In this mode, all but the most essential sensors are disabled, and both calls and text messages are encrypted, only to be read by trusted devices carrying the Solarin Friend app. In this environment, your data is protected by 256-bit AES encryption, backed up by security firms Zimperium and Koolspan. There’s even a secure concierge service that monitors the state of your phone and warns you of incoming attacks.

An Android skin that looks like it was designed by the prop department of a spy movie

When not in this mode, it’s just your average Android smartphone, with a high-end Snapdragon 810 chip and a healthy 4GB of RAM. You’ll also get 120GB of internal storage (no memory card slot) and a 23.8-megapixel, Sony made camera and a quad-LED flash. Hold the 5.5-inch device in your hand and the first thing you’ll notice is how hefty it feels. The pictures convey some degree of chunkiness, but only in real life do you see how pleasingly solid it feels. Imagine a BlackBerry Storm binged on protein powder for a few months and you’ll get the idea. The unobtrusive styling, coated in black “technical leather” (read: leather made to look like carbon fiber), means that Solarin oozes the sort of ultra masculine charm that business types probably fetishize.

The 5.5-inch, QHD IPS LCD display boasts fantastic viewing angles and beautifully rich colors. Like the Snapdragon 810 chip, it isn’t brand new, but the compromise there was intentional. The year-old chipset was chosen to ensure that the company had a year to ensure it was secure. Likewise, the Solarin may not have a 4K display, but the comparatively lower resolution here is surely gentler on the 4,040mAh battery.

Of course, members of the jet set are so called because they’re often found touring the world. The company promises that the device will work with more LTE carriers across the world than any other device on the market. Regardless of the network you choose, you’ll insert your SIM into a single, hot-swappable microSIM card slot on the upper-right hand side. Connectivity-wise, the phone also packs gigabit WiFi and MIMO in order to handle multiple connections at once. Then again, BlackBerry made similar promises back in the day, and those never really amounted to much.

Now, it’s not hard to see who this device is aimed for, but you have to ask: Do they need this device anymore? An Android smartphone with high level encryption and security is highly desirable, but the highest levels of protection is only available within the secure mode. And in this secure mode, the only features you can make are calls and texts — and who does either of those anymore? Sure, there are a handful of people who still need to make calls, but is the NSA really targeting them?

When I spoke to co-founder Moshe Hogeg, he said that the NSA isn’t interested in business people, but the question is: are hackers? How likely is it that the precise details of a forthcoming transaction would be outlined on a voice call that criminals could then use to game the stock market? It’s plausible, sure, but enough to drag people away from the comfort of their Galaxy S7s and iPhone 6Ss? That’s harder to say. This phone will surely appeal to people who feel that they deserve a device this secure — this high-end — but then again, nobody wants using their phone to feel like a chore, right?

Aaron Souppouris contributed to this report.

Mophie brings wireless charging to its iPhone battery cases

Wireless phone charging has been around for years, but most consumers wouldn’t know it. The fight between different standards and a lack of support from phone makers has made the entire idea of charging your mobile wirelessly a huge mess. Mophie is hoping to bring some sanity to the concept with its new $100 Juice Pack Wireless cases for the iPhone 6 and 6S, which integrate cord-free charging along with an additional 50 percent of battery life.

Like Mophie’s earlier wireless cases for the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, the new iPhone cases are compatible with virtually every wireless charging standard on the market, including Qi and Powermat. They also sport integrated magnets, which keeps them attached to their included charging bases, as well as Mophie’s vent mount for cars and desk mount accessories. Naturally, those mounts also serve as wireless charging surfaces.

By adding in magnets, Mophie solves a problem endemic to all wireless charging solutions so far: they’re often less convenient than charging with a cord, since you can’t pick up your phone. Mophie’s mount accessories avoids that issue entirely.

More so than Samsung’s recent phones, which already have wireless charging integrated, the Juice Pack Wireless cases are a boon for iPhone users who have been aching for cord-free charging. iPhone owners already need special cases if they want to take advantage of wireless charging — Mophie’s cases simply gives them the benefit of a portable battery pack as well.

Mophie plans to make wireless charging a standard feature in all of its cases moving forward, which could make its products more compelling to people who aren’t just interested in extra battery life. And that might just give the cordless charging market the kick in the pants it needs.

The story of EE has been turned into a book

Nothing says summer like lying on a beach and getting stuck into a good book. But what to read? A 19th century classic, or perhaps Murakami’s latest surrealist tale? What about the fascinating story of how mobile provider EE came to be? Well, look no further than The 4G Mobile Revolution: Creation, Innovation and Transformation at EE, penned by former network CEO Olaf Swantee and now departed comms director Stu Jackson.

Out this August (according to Amazon), The 4G Mobile Revolution will arrive just in time for your summer getaway. The book will be a journey in itself, though, starting with the merger between T-Mobile and Orange that birthed Everything Everywhere; the subsequent rebranding to EE and launch of the UK’s first 4G network; right through to the recent £12.5 billion takeover of the company by BT and Swantee stepping down as CEO. Thrilling stuff.

Alright, so maybe it’s not the type of literature you fancy getting lost in on a sun lounger — it is, after all, aimed at suits and pitched as “essential reading for any executive grappling with change.” That said, if you’re bored of rich, fantastical scenes featuring characters that can’t stay alive for more than a few pages, then perhaps drab meeting rooms and fully clothed directors is the change of pace you’re looking for.

Via: Mobile News

Source: Kogan Page

Is there a market for a $14,000 super-secure Android phone?

2016 is a hard year to enter the mobile phone business: profits in the Android world are nonexistent and most of the industry’s established names are struggling. HTC, LG, Sony and others have far more red ink in their mobile division’s balance sheets than black, and Samsung could soon follow suit. Hell, even iPhone sales may have reached their apex. It’s why the auspicious launch of Sirin Labs’ premium £9,500 Solarin phone ($14,000 (plus tax), seems like such a risky move. But company co-founder Moshe Gogeg (also known as the guy behind the novelty messaging app Yo) thinks that he can succeed where so many others have failed.

Solarin has a credible shot at being the most expensive smartphone ever made, intended for billionaires, millionaires and business executives. Hogeg hopes that the phone’s blend of extraordinary, futuristic technology and the promise of unprecedented security will tempt them into buying one. But despite the high price, Hogeg doesn’t want the device sitting in the same luxury store glass cabinet as phones from Vertu, Porsche Design and Tag Heuer. He dismisses these luxury devices as “bling phones” made by jewelry companies that lack any intrinsic value.

Value seems to be Hogeg’s obsession, and he cites an anecdote while in a high-end technology store to illustrate his point. Pointing at one of the “bling phones,” he asked the staff “what’s in this phone that justifies the price?” “Oh sir,” he says in a obsequious voice, “these devices are a status symbol.” In his eyes, spending thousands of dollars on a phone that’s technically inferior to a Galaxy S5 that happens to be covered in diamonds is a “stupid value proposition.”

So, does this make the Solarin the first smartphone designed specifically for ascetic members of the one percent? Perhaps, since you’ll find no bling on this phone. In fact, it’s been crafted to be as inconspicuous as possible. In Hogeg’s mind, there are two types of rich people: demure, refined, sophisticated people who “respect value,” and “people who are too excited that they have money.” He’s not too thrilled at the latter group buying his device, since their love of conspicuous consumption makes them “bad ambassadors” for the product.

It’s a product that was born in frustration while Hogeg was wandering the halls of CES 2014, the world’s biggest technology trade show. As he tells it, he approached several stands to meet startups with exciting new takes on mobile hardware. He asked the ones that caught his attention if it’d be possible to buy the products on show, but they all responded in the negative. As desirable as the technology was, they weren’t ready to sell because it hadn’t been “commercialized.” That’s industry speak for this product is great, but we can’t mass-produce it at anything approaching a reasonable cost.

After all, raw materials, production lines and tooling all cost money, and innovation is sometimes only within the financial reach of an Apple or Samsung. It’s only these behemoths that can knock out millions of devices each year that have the muscle to take a gamble on something innovative. But Hogeg was undeterred, and asked each company how much it’d cost to produce 30,000 or so. Despite the eye-watering sums that were suggested, Hogeg didn’t blink, and so decided that he’d build a phone on the premise that money was no object.

Does this make the Solarin the world’s first artisanal smartphone, sourced with only the finest materials? Potentially, although Hogeg is quick to point that artisanal should not be thought of in the same breath as handmade. (As of this writing, he also has not clarified what exact materials the device is made of.) Hogeg doesn’t mention Vertu by name, but says that offering a hand-built device is a flimsy justification for increasing the price beyond its value. Instead, Solarin is made by machines, since “machines do a better job than human beings.” In fact, only two parts of the device require any human interaction at all, and the plan is that both will be gone by the second generation.

The handsets are being constructed in an old Sony Ericsson plant in Sweden, although the company’s R&D lab is based in Israel. But Sirin Labs is a firm incorporated and headquartered in Switzerland in order to take advantage of the country’s legendary privacy laws. The sales pitch is that the Solarin will protect your data so much better than a comparable device made by a company in the US. In fact, the combination of software, hardware and national laws makes him confident enough to declare that his phone is “the most secure device in the world.”

I press him on that claim, and he backs down, though only slightly. “Nothing is unbreakable,” he says. “If someone has the resources, the money and the time…” He pauses here. “I mean, people hacked the Pentagon, so who am I to say that we can’t be broken?” He feels that it’s less about whether it’s possible to open the phone, and more about how hard the company can make it. It’s his belief that few would be interested in attacking the Solarin given how difficult to break in it’s been made. Not to mention that there are far easier devices to go after in other, poorer people’s pockets.

I’m curious, however, how confident he can be about his phone’s security credentials when it’s not his own operating system. Android is, after all, someone else’s product, and will always be vulnerable to the errors, concessions and design decisions made by Google’s engineers. There’s also the fact that Solarin would be in trouble should Google bend to pressure by the US government to add a backdoor. Hogeg is confident that whatever problems Google creates, his team can fix, and that he’s “never going to put backdoors in this product, period.” Another thing he’s very sure of is that, when it comes to security, Android is on the way up compared to Apple, because it’s “very easy to hack an iPhone.”

The former Israeli soldier doesn’t name Cellebrite, but he seems to confirm the quasi-open secret that the Israeli security company does have a way to breach iOS. In fact, he says he’s seen the process with his “own eyes,” and that it’s as “easy as knowing your phone number.” He feels that the recent kerfuffle between Apple and the government over the San Bernardino iPhone wasn’t about technology, but money. “Of course they can hack the phone, but it costs them a lot of money!” adding that it’s more about saving “the taxpayer some money.”

Hogeg jokes that the high price and target market of the Solarin means that this device is hardly going to be of much interest to any government. “We’re not a phone for terrorists,” he roars, “we’re a phone for businesspeople, and the NSA doesn’t care about businesspeople.” I ask, then, why wouldn’t a cost-conscious industrialist simply opt for Silent Circle’s (much cheaper) Blackphone? “When you look at the various ways you can hack a phone,” he responds, “some of these phones are very good at certain types of attacks.” But according to Hogeg only Solarin, which was developed in partnership with Silent Circle’s (unnamed) competitors, is the true all-rounder.

I’m reminded of another company that marketed its devices predominantly to business types with the promise of privacy: BlackBerry. Initially it did so with sleek, inconspicuous hardware that promised rock-solid security, albeit with a limited ecosystem. Later it tried with a premium Android handset that also bragged to the world about the combination of hardware and software that would keep your data safe. So, I ask him: how can Sirin Labs, with a premium Android handset that boasts added security, avoid the same pitfalls as BlackBerry? Moche Hogeg pauses, exhales and smiles before saying, “That’s a very, very good question.” A moment later, after he collects himself, he says, “I don’t have an answer, but…” Another pause. “I studied that, and I think we have a way to avoid it.” Then, after another pause, “but we’ll know soon, eh?”

Aaron Souppouris contributed to this report.