Posted on 05/26/2020 11:14:55 PM PDT by bkopto
After releasing the golden master to developers earlier this week, Apple is releasing iOS 13.5 to the general public today. The update brings quite a few changes and new features prompted by COVID-19, including the Exposure Notification API, Face ID enhancements, and much more.
Apple and Google have been developing the Exposure Notification API with close guidance from public health officials. When a user enables the feature and has an app from a public health authority installed, the device will regularly send out a beacon via Bluetooth that includes a random Bluetooth identifier. From there, the Exposure Notification API will download a list of the keys for the beacons that have been verified as belonging to people confirmed as positive for COVID-19 and check against that list. If there is a match, the user may be notified and advised on next steps.
(Excerpt) Read more at 9to5mac.com ...
I have already blocked the update on my iphone 11. Location services is disabled. I have already done testing on wrapping the phone in tinfoil (bwaaaahaha) to block beacon function ( it works) and fail safe other than leave it at home is turn it off and put it in a solid metal container. I can function without a phone if I have to.
I realize it's the apps not specifically the iPhone, but do I really need those? If not, do I need this phone? Hell, I might just actually call to people now...not going to break my fingers texting on a burner. I might just go all the way back to cup and string. I guess it's more of a realization that I don't need to carry one of these around anymore,
Your link on Purism’s website, once you go through all 52 replies, it becomes obvious that the “chestnut batch” were beta test devices sent to testers, not devices for sale. These were sent to self-selected testers in Australia, and have obvious design and technical problems. I.e., they’re a long way from production models! Here’s an example of what’s being said by these non-paid, but purchasing beta testers:
“ I guess we can see by now… this is going to be a longer term project than initially thought. At least, finally, now the community can get to work and help get to the finish line. So many knowledgeable people working on these things and putting their time in to help troubleshoot like this, I think it’s very cool.”“ Thanks for that LINK kieran to (rfnsa site); fabulous!
I’ve never used Vi , I’ve read a little about it, & had a quick look at it. To me it seemed a bit of a steeper learning curve? I’m trying to learn Terminal Commands better; plus want to get to other projects. I read that gedit should be installed on the “Librem 5”; but I haven’t been able to get it to run from the Terminal yet.”
And :
“ ‘To me it seemed a bit of a steeper learning curve? It is.’
If you have a working GUI then gedit is the easiest option.
If you don’t have a working GUI (e.g. ssh in from another computer or GUI is actually broken) then you need a terminal-based editor such as nano or vi. nano is the easier to learn but, as you have seen, is a problem if there’s no Control key. (Some Control characters have meaning in vi too but I expect that you never need them i.e. that everything can be done without using Control characters if you have to.)”
You have a community of Linux Hobbyists, people in a less regulated environment in Australia trying desperately to get the things to work consistently or reliably and not succeeding, and, from the tenor of the comments they’re posting, it’s obviously not user friendly at all.
They’re having to learn Linux to get it to work, install apps, and generally get anything beyond basic functions installed and operating. What does work, doesn’t work efficiently at all — “the CPU runs all out, and doesn’t clock down. . .”, the “battery runs way too hot. . .”, and other various complaints.
I noticed on the YouTube demo video you linked the other day, the demonstrator was touching icons for apps, and the phone Dutifully spoke the names of the apps, but they never ran. Why was that?‘
I’ll tell you why. It’s because those apps don’t exist! The cool self-naming icons are place holders for their fantasy apps that might exist someday, if and when some developer gets around to writing and publishing them for their custom OS and hardware, if they ever finalize and stabilize it!
This has been the failing of every other wanna be Android and iOS mobile operating system replacement that’s been proposed, and there have been several dozen such open source attempts before. They fail because no one can make any money creating and selling apps in the market! Why? Because there is no market!
I’m an economist, educated that way, some fifty years ago. I’ve run many businesses of various sizes. These guys have no market to attract developers. Microsoft couldn’t do it for their phones, even paying developers with their billions! Neither could Blackberry! No Apps, no buyers for their phones, no market for apps. Circle, meet vicious! Viscous, meet circle. And around we go, until the managers pull the plug!
Now you can dance around as much as you want, but there IS NO VISIBLE SALES OF VIABLE, USABLE PURISM LIBREM 5 PHONES ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD! Beta testing hobbyists do not count! It has to be an officially working, stable retail consumer usable device. Not a toy for Linux tinkerers!
What part of "it retains no face image and no data ever leaves the device" do you fail to grasp? It does not make an image, wildcard. There is no way that the data held can reconstruct an image from the hash. It’s not possible.
You’re not understanding the technology. You THINK it’s something it’s not. You’re making an assumption.
Android uses images. Apple simply doesn’t. It uses distance and angle calculations, done on the fly, then compares them to a stored set of data kept in an inaccessible memory area inside the encryption engine. If the data are within acceptable ranges according to an algorithm also kept inside the encryption engine, the device is unlocked. That area inside the encryption engine cannot be accessed even by the device’s on processor. They’re on an entirely different bus. That area is buried several circuit layers deep in the IC. It’s unreadable from outside the device. AND it’s a OneWay hash. Having it provides the one who accesses it zero benefit. The original information cannot be recalculated from a oneway hash. This was designed with security and privacy in mind, AND because it’s protecting a 256bit AES encryption key.
It’s like Apple’s TouchID "fingerprint" unlocking. People assume TouchID uses normal fingerprints and have tried to spoof Apple’s System by duplicating people’s fingerprints in various flesh analogs and failed. The reason they failed when such approaches work on Android fingerprint sensors is that Apple isn’t using fingerprint sensing at all!
Apple senses deeper under the skin, looking at the valleys and ridges of the fat pads UNDER the dermal layers that are not imprinted in any latent, transferred, or photographed fingerprints. Special sensors read those unique fat pad patterns under the skin. They change quickly if the finger is no longer living tissue, so the finger has to be a living person’s finger.
Again, grasp the technology and you see why assumptions fail, like your assumption that an image exists in FaceID for a government to use against the owner when it just does not. It just doesn’t work as you ignorantly assume It works, doubling down on your camera analogy, and then send me that asinine YouTube video attacking my character, because I’m telling you why you’re wrong, when it’s you who needs to watch it and grasp its application to YOUR personality and behavior!
Your ignorance is cureable. I’m not sure about your stubbornness in refusing to listen and argue with someone who happens to be a forty year expert in the field you are ignorant about.
You just buy a throw away phone with cash.
Oh and carry it in untrackable bag.
That’s is if you want a phone.
I’m starting to suspect that you work in the mall is an Apple ‘genius’.
Now that I did not know, pretty cool.
You STILL don’t get it, do you? Both the data collected and the software you so blithely claim can be “hacked” is in an unreachable and unreadable Secure Enclave built into the encryption engine processor of the device where neither can be accessed from outside the device! In addition, the data, which is stored inside that Secure Enclave in the device is a ONE WAY HASH, a mathematical result which even if you have access to those those data cannot be used to calculate the original input information. That’s why it’s called a “one way hash.” It can only be used for comparison purposes of a newly calculated SIMILAR one way hash.
Having possession of one way hash data will do nothing for anyone who gains possession of those data. No amount of massaging of that hacked data will reveal anything usable, no face, no image, they will get squat. It’s data that cannot be reverse engineered into anything at all. In addition, wildcard, these data, despite their unusable nature, are encrypted. Only the built-in Encryption engine processor inside the device can use it.
As for me working for Apple?
Nope. Never have. I will be 71 years old next week, and I am now sort of semi-retired. Except for several years when I worked as a field manager for the US Chamber of Commerce and then for the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), and before that several years as manager of a couple of gun shops, I’ve been an independent businessman almost all my life. I owned a cross-platform tech business supporting businesses that used both Windows and Apple platforms as well as other operating systems for almost 40 years. I also provided management consulting services for my clients, up to completely managing their businesses. I started learning system analysis and computer programming in the late 1960s on mainframes.
I do know what I am talking about.
My understanding is that, like other APIs - these are just “hooks” in the OS making it possible to build and implement software for tracking. It still requires the user INSTALL software to do the tracking.
Further - as you mentioned, you can simply turn it off.
Exactly. . . The API is the set of tools, the shared frameworks, which the APP can use to hook into the Bluetooth radio for scanning for similar operational anonymous tracking Apps, use the encryption engine, apply the anonymous handshaking and tag exchanging, and then access the cellular or WiFi radios to link to the cloud based system for tracking contacts anonymously. The rest has to be handled by downloaded App. The API can be disabled and even downloading the App won’t turn it on without the user going into settings and re-enabling the API.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.