Ever since I read the Dune series, Bene Gesserit was my favorite faction. To be able to draw upon the experience of your ancestors, have it within you and need no tech, what a treasure. And now, with these types of technology, I can't help but think how our knowledge could finally be encoded in our DNA. Think about being able to leave messages for your descendants encoded in your DNA. Or deeds, or a "species blockchain" that can record notable events.. Encoding brain-muscle memory for physical skills like martial arts or dancing.. what times to live in.

Maybe we'll have a specialized tumor/organ at some point in our bodies, holding just artificially inserted data and the mechanism to read that data and output it to one of our senses. Or even an Nth sense: "read DNA memory". Finally, a way for our species' knowledge to survive even if civilization collapses.

Scenario 1

You are one of the subversives. You wish to prevent your phone from leaking your location or the curently open document. You attach one of these detectors, turn airplane mode on. In about 20 minutes since you left home, as if on a timer, your detector beeps and you see RF activity. You scramble to turn it off, wondering if it leaked your location and / or open document.

Scenario 2

You are one of the subversives. You pull the battery out. You write with a pen on paper.

Scenario 3

You are one of the subversives. You place the phone in a makeshift Faraday cage. You write with a pen on paper.

I don't really understand the first scenario. Are we talking about sensitive enough info ? Then why risk using the phone ? What app (with no network access required) would be absolutely vital to a subversive meeting ?

Also, would it beep if it got excited by other RF, possibly emitted by those looking for subversives ?

I appreciate privacy but this device seems to give a false sense of security. If a person doesn't have the discipline to enforce a "battery out" or "leave phone home" policy, would they have the discipline to randomly test this device, to keep it charged, to inspect it for rogue electronics, etc ?

I should be paranoid about my phone, but not about this device ? Also, it seems a bit narrow in scope. Does it check for inaudible sounds from the phone's speaker ? Does it check for CPU load that modifies the phone's thermal print ? Does it check for blitz pulses ? Does it check for the phone quietly recording everyhing ? Does it check for.. uhh, I'll stop.

Data exfiltration (wooo...) isn't just a real time problem.

It's open source.

For the sake of the argument, don't such agencies need tools/methods to do their stuff ? So they infected computer networks.. where's the similar outrage with common spammers, that actually do have a global impact on internet traffic / quality of service ? We're in 2013.. the Internet isn't safe. Anything networked isn't safe. What does it matter that you can now put (another) face on the big bad Internet Bad Guy ? I mean, really, they can be "activated with the push of a button" - what are we talking about here, networks with internet access ? Were the owners expecting them to be private or something ? I too dislike an orwellian future, but some things just aren't worth fussing over. If the internet was a pristine place full of trust and good will, sure this would be shocking news. But it isn't.

665 comments What does that make me ?