On Thu, Jul 02, 2015 at 07:59:37AM -0700, Denis Heidtmann wrote: > Can a smart phone be turned off (other than removing the battery)?
The power switch is not direct. Without a chip teardown and trace of the logic (which nobody cares enough to participate in) we have no idea what logic paths control power to the system. This is an opportunity for a hack - two tiny pixel-sized microwatt LEDs added to the phone, one connected physically to the phone power supply, the other to phone transmitter power. The smallest LEDs I know about are 0.5 x 1 mm and draw 30 mW - does anyone make LEDs 200 times smaller, with built-in ballast resistors? A powered-but-not-transmitting phone could still store voice data in the capacious memory, but this would be easy to spot. A small modification to the operating system to zero any "unused" memory before data service would help protect privacy. Thus justifying this posting as linux related. In the long term, though, we cannot maximize privacy without maximum transparency. That includes both software AND hardware. There are many out-of-work chip designers who would be glad to help design open hardware smart phones, and help teardown and validate what the chinese semiconductor fab actually makes. But that will involve equipment, CAD tools, and manufacturing cost, which is dreadfully expensive. Keith ---- Keith Lofstrom [email protected] _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
