My guess is the 'new owner' was involved in trafficking people for sex exploitation (the overnight journey to the shelter in France - somewhere vulnerable people could be easily tricked with a work offer and easily moved within the EU due to the lack of internal borders).
Meeting the 'Russian' woman and going along with her irrational story and the suggestion of drugs being supplied and her 'loving' him all sounds like an exploitative relationship. Consistent with a sex trafficker.
Swapping SIMs (to change phone identity - albeit poorly) and only using for a few weeks indicates someone used to taking steps to avoiding tracking/identification. Not someone new to criminal activity nor evading detection.
Being overnight at homeless shelters suggests he was more likely exploiting women at these shelters rather than him being homeless and sleeping there (I'm astonished the filmmaker started for feel sorry for him at the idea he was homeless - that's just naive; this was someone already demonstrated to be heavily involved in criminality).
Trying to confront him at the property and finding an aggressive person with a strong smell of drugs at least gave a reality check. This is a dangerous criminal and it was reckless to go near him.
It's easy for you to make these assumptions the way the story was told, but your points are all completely unfounded.
An older homeless man fits the profile just as easily.
> I'm astonished the filmmaker started for feel sorry for him.. that's just naive; this was someone already demonstrated to be heavily involved in criminality
I think you should spend more time in society of this astonishes you. We're an incredibly empathetic species, often going out of our way to connect with people and help them out. Especially when they are members of our communities.
Developing a connection with people you are viewing isn't even uncommon. Media and entertainment exploit this (and we love that they do) by getting us to connect with characters in TV shows and movies. Analyst and investigators are often encouraged and evaluated to ensure their emotions aren't effecting their performance, and victims of kidnapping often learn to love their captors. A young student feeling a connection with a man who appears to be on the outs is anything but astonishing, it's called being a human.
> Being overnight at homeless shelters suggests he was more likely exploiting women at these shelters rather than him being homeless and sleeping there
How does his staying overnight at a shelter suggest this at all? If anything suggests that, it's his other behavior (which seems quite like circumstantial evidence, to me).
Nah, I am pretty sure he was a Russian spy smuggling uranium in to build a smartbomb.
The russian woman was just one of his contacts, and they keep cover because they expect to be observed at all times. Constant contact with small amounts of uranium often makes people confused and irrational.
And it is very common for spies to smuggle in small amounts of uranium among refugees, and this gets picked up from homeless shelters.
They also often use the cover of drugs to hide the unique smell of uranium.
And this is why surveillance is scary: devoid of context, a bunch of data points can be used to craft a damning narrative from innocent and unrelated speech and behavior.
> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
IMHO the most interesting aspect of this is the FAQ, specifically Q4:
4. Why did you feel sorry for the thief?
I started to feel sorry for the thief because I interpreted all of the data I got in a way which made me feel sorry for him. What if I wanted to see him as a criminal? Or a terrorist? The data would allow me to do that because some of his behaviour can be found suspicious. In the end I was actually shocked when I saw the guy in real life. He didn't look as lonely, sad and old as I thought he looked in the footage I took. Instead he looked pretty fit, smelled like drugs and came very aggressive and suspicious towards me. I saw this man every day, two weeks long so I thought I knew him. The para-social band I had with him (a one-sided band trough a screen) fooled me.
I enjoyed that. I was in a free ranging discussion back around the time Snowden made his move and we talked about constructing a laptop with a cellphone embedded inside of it such that it would record things that went on around it. We figured we could remove the hard drive and replace it with the guts of a cell phone and an SSD equivalent storage. Then use the existing laptop's Wifi antenna as a (likely not great) cell phone antenna. The idea being that you could download analytics from it if it was seized at border crossings or searched.
No, I never had the courage to actually try something like that. This phone hack seems like a modest equivalent with the exception that the phone could be unhacked by a forced OS wipe.
That said, the effectiveness of this as a surveillance tool was pretty eye opening. It seems possible that the criminal in this story steals phones every couple of weeks and puts their sim card into it, use it for a while, and then resell it. Which is pretty good operational security when you think about it (caveat keeping the same sim card) Mapping the meta data and contacts for this person then lets you know who else is in their community.
So with law enforcement powers you could presumably "seed" the stolen phone market with pre-compromised phones and develop a pretty quick understanding of who the criminals were, their infrastructure for moving phones around, etc. Which would make it pretty straight forward to roll up these criminal networks. Of course when it became known that the police were seeding the stolen phone market with 'mark' phones it would probably cut down on the number of phones stolen. But if you have prepared for that and are now supplying a line of cheap "new" burner phones in the shops that you have compromised. Well it is scary how effective that might be.
Now you tie that analysis with the fact that the Paris attackers all had burner phones and you start to see how such actions by the authorities would be justified to law makers.
That was quite a difficult story to read. While there is an expectation of accountability for gifts/donations, it was still a little discouraging to find out that this expectation was not clarified beforehand. This was in no way empirical and the reporting feels anecdotal, even the repeatedly suggestive mentions of the liquor store purchases (can't the poor get drunk too...). But I find it difficult to accept that researchers are the only ones encumbered with ethical responsibilities.
However, it is worthwhile to know that he did disclose that he is a reporter, although the fact that he gave them free credit cards, but could not bring self to find further assistance leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
That said, OP reminds me of two interesting DEFCON talks [1] [2] [3] re similar issues. In the contexts delivered in the talks, it seems permissible to say that the crooks were fair game.
Seems creepy to me, given that he didn't disclose that he would look at what was purchased later. He did disclose that he wanted the card back after they used it, which I suppose is halfway there.
Edit: LCBO, in the article, is apparently the state-run liquor stores in Ontario.
I bought one and have been using it just fine. Just depends on who you buy it from (e.g. is the guy a student? a CEO? a homeless guy?). If you know their true identity then they'd have to be really stupid to have done something nasty to it and sold it to you... and if you know who they are, all you have to do is ask how they obtained it.
I was disappointed in the ending. The dutch student had managed to find some empathy for the thief. He seemed to be getting an understanding of how tough it is to live as an immigrant with so much less - in terms of belongings and prospects - than he himself has. But then a brief glimpse of someone that had an "aggressive attitude" and smelled of hash, completely reversed this. It turns out that his prejudice, based on superficial stereotypes, wins after all.
Interesting development of the narrative - how the author began to feel guilty once he noticed the thief had to buy extra call credits since the spyware was depleting his data faster than normal. I kind of felt bad watching as well. Here is a man who is driven to steal, sleeps in homeless shelters, gets ditched by friends when he's unable to pay for a bus. . . And he prays to God every hour on Fridays, so that all his prayers will be answered.
I'm low on time right now and if I were to comment on it I am afraid I would omit important details. But the gist of it is that the student carefully made sure that privacy was kept intact, and that he carefully avoids a witch hunt.
In some countries, it is illegal for the police to do entrapment as part of their job. In some places its legal, but the fact that the accused got entrapped means that intentions are harder to prove, which then impacted the verdict.
Surveillance laws in turn generally don't cover this situation. If we ask our self if the thief has an reasonable expectation of privacy when stealing a phone, I would say no. If we ask if the thief has an reasonable expectation of privacy from a stolen phone, again I would say no. This leaves specific video video and audio surveillance laws, and I would say its quite unclear, through I suspect that commercial aspects could likely have some influence over it.
It's also illegal to steal phones. The proximate cause of the surveillance was itself a criminal act, thus it would be rather hard to prosecute. If I have my phone set to record and someone steals my phone and thus they are recorded, the thief himself is the one that 'caused' himself to be surveilled.
The film seems to imply that there is a way to circumvent iCloud account protection on iOS. Is this really the case? I know there are services which promise that, but as long the phone is on the latest firmware I cannot imagine how anyone could reset the iCloud lock. So these services are either hoaxes or work only for certain phones (with old, vulnerable OS versions). Or maybe I'm missing something?
That was well done for what was available to him. I could see how you could feel bad eventually if you dangle a fancy phone in front of a junkie or homeless person and watch their every move for weeks but this could also be a great tactic for infiltrating real theft based organizations.
You don't have to root your phone to use Cerberus.
However if you want to keep Cerberus running even after a factory reset you have to do this (from Cerberus FAQ):
The easiest way to install Cerberus as a system app is with the "Convert to system app" feature of Link2SD: install the app, open it, long-press on Cerberus in the list of installed apps and select "Convert to system app".
I had Cerberus installed for several years. I converted it to be a system app after watching the video. Now I secretly hope to be able to record something similar if it gets stolen.
Can you illegally wiretap your own device? It would seem to me the criminal implicitly invited the student into his life by using the internet connected property of the Student without permission.
In all cases, the criminal, not the student, determined where the phone was and whether it was in use or not (without permission). The student simply used his property where it was located, which is clearly his right to do. The property still belongs to the student. He has reasonable discretion to use it as he wills.
In the battle of "rights" it seems the student would be within his rights under the circumstances. This is not to say the student is within his legal rights: legally recognized rights have a long history of not correlating to any reasonable definition of individual rights. So the law may very well be in the wrong on this matter.
I'm very much for rights of privacy and the like, and a person should not be subject to search or eavesdropping without due process and probable cause. But this case seems very straight forward in terms of a criminal losing a right of privacy due to inviting another into his life. Wages of theft you could call it.
However, the author doesn't want viewers to try similar projects, and also did the project to inform people of the massive privacy issues concerning smartphones. From his FAQ:
"5. Why won't you teach us how to install the app like you did?
Besides theft, I wanted to make a point and start a discussion about privacy on smartphones without actually making a film that even mentions the word privacy. This is why the project should not be reproduced. I think the film makes the point, doing it again would be for entertainment purposes which I didn't.
I hope people who see the film will realize the risk of getting hacked on smartphones, by hackers and governments. On computers, most people use virus scans, install updates and some people even put tape on their webcams while almost nobody even considers how vulnerable a smartphone is, and what the implications of getting hacked mean. I think the film already created a lot of awareness and started discussions about it."
Also, quoting from his YouTube page:
"Anthony is a director, researcher and concept developer. In June 2015 he graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy with his film Find my Phone. Anthony uses technology to tell stories in his work and has special interest in software and hardware development, hacking and privacy. He is currently working on developing a new documentary series and several other projects."
The above suggests this was just an art project. That doesn't mean it is exempt from law (personally, I believe he broke the law, and if you're interested wether this is true or not in NL I can highly recommend a lawyer, Arnoud Engelfriet, who might address the question on his blog), but it does show his intentions.
Why is it wiretapping? He's not trying to get the guy convicted. He's merely recording what someone else is doing with his phone. If you take my phone from the table and snap a few nude selfies with it, should I respect your privacy?
The concern is how it got stolen...
It is illegal to leave your car running while walking into a shop and coming back a minute later. Not sure about a good English translation, but you are urging someone to steal your car.
Depending on how his phone got stolen (it was a setup), he could be charged with something similar.
Really? You're concerned of the privacy rights of a thief?
The card/account owner clearly has a right to know the activity on their card. The usage information are facts. They can't be copyrighted by either the issuer or the account holder. I don't see where any privacy rights for the thief come into play, they definitely did not agree to be bound the the account terms and conditions.
What could be true is if the account holder violated the terms and conditions by knowingly allowing someone else to use the card. I'm actually not even sure what my license agreement allows, but it wouldn't surprise me if technically I can't give my card to a spouse or child to use, instead the issuer wants additional cards issued to make sure anyone using the card is bound to the account contract.
Spoilers: thief is a 40-something Egyptian, appears to live in a French migrant shelter in Mulhouse and work as some kind of a pimp in Amsterdam, very religious but also watches porn and smokes a lot of hash.
Director develops sympathy for him, even sends him free credits because the spyware is eating his bandwidth. Later goes to one of the thief's hangouts and realizes that in fact, the thief is a weird scary guy and not lovable at all.
Sequel hook: phone has been reactivated in Romania. Stay tuned for next episode. "Diversiteit is onze kracht."
[+] [-] pascalmemories|9 years ago|reply
Meeting the 'Russian' woman and going along with her irrational story and the suggestion of drugs being supplied and her 'loving' him all sounds like an exploitative relationship. Consistent with a sex trafficker.
Swapping SIMs (to change phone identity - albeit poorly) and only using for a few weeks indicates someone used to taking steps to avoiding tracking/identification. Not someone new to criminal activity nor evading detection.
Being overnight at homeless shelters suggests he was more likely exploiting women at these shelters rather than him being homeless and sleeping there (I'm astonished the filmmaker started for feel sorry for him at the idea he was homeless - that's just naive; this was someone already demonstrated to be heavily involved in criminality).
Trying to confront him at the property and finding an aggressive person with a strong smell of drugs at least gave a reality check. This is a dangerous criminal and it was reckless to go near him.
[+] [-] wheelerwj|9 years ago|reply
An older homeless man fits the profile just as easily.
> I'm astonished the filmmaker started for feel sorry for him.. that's just naive; this was someone already demonstrated to be heavily involved in criminality
I think you should spend more time in society of this astonishes you. We're an incredibly empathetic species, often going out of our way to connect with people and help them out. Especially when they are members of our communities.
Developing a connection with people you are viewing isn't even uncommon. Media and entertainment exploit this (and we love that they do) by getting us to connect with characters in TV shows and movies. Analyst and investigators are often encouraged and evaluated to ensure their emotions aren't effecting their performance, and victims of kidnapping often learn to love their captors. A young student feeling a connection with a man who appears to be on the outs is anything but astonishing, it's called being a human.
[+] [-] tomjakubowski|9 years ago|reply
How does his staying overnight at a shelter suggest this at all? If anything suggests that, it's his other behavior (which seems quite like circumstantial evidence, to me).
[+] [-] megablast|9 years ago|reply
The russian woman was just one of his contacts, and they keep cover because they expect to be observed at all times. Constant contact with small amounts of uranium often makes people confused and irrational.
And it is very common for spies to smuggle in small amounts of uranium among refugees, and this gets picked up from homeless shelters.
They also often use the cover of drugs to hide the unique smell of uranium.
[+] [-] darpa_escapee|9 years ago|reply
> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
[+] [-] aaron695|9 years ago|reply
I did like the Finland never existed meme for instance, but I don't think it's really a HN thing.
Sex trafficker steals phone to stay off the radar or just a general homeless person steals phone, what's more plausible?
A sex trafficker that can't afford bus fare let alone a car? I feel like you need a car to be a plausible sex trafficker.
Or was that code?
[+] [-] atmosx|9 years ago|reply
4. Why did you feel sorry for the thief?
I started to feel sorry for the thief because I interpreted all of the data I got in a way which made me feel sorry for him. What if I wanted to see him as a criminal? Or a terrorist? The data would allow me to do that because some of his behaviour can be found suspicious. In the end I was actually shocked when I saw the guy in real life. He didn't look as lonely, sad and old as I thought he looked in the footage I took. Instead he looked pretty fit, smelled like drugs and came very aggressive and suspicious towards me. I saw this man every day, two weeks long so I thought I knew him. The para-social band I had with him (a one-sided band trough a screen) fooled me.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|9 years ago|reply
No, I never had the courage to actually try something like that. This phone hack seems like a modest equivalent with the exception that the phone could be unhacked by a forced OS wipe.
That said, the effectiveness of this as a surveillance tool was pretty eye opening. It seems possible that the criminal in this story steals phones every couple of weeks and puts their sim card into it, use it for a while, and then resell it. Which is pretty good operational security when you think about it (caveat keeping the same sim card) Mapping the meta data and contacts for this person then lets you know who else is in their community.
So with law enforcement powers you could presumably "seed" the stolen phone market with pre-compromised phones and develop a pretty quick understanding of who the criminals were, their infrastructure for moving phones around, etc. Which would make it pretty straight forward to roll up these criminal networks. Of course when it became known that the police were seeding the stolen phone market with 'mark' phones it would probably cut down on the number of phones stolen. But if you have prepared for that and are now supplying a line of cheap "new" burner phones in the shops that you have compromised. Well it is scary how effective that might be.
Now you tie that analysis with the fact that the Paris attackers all had burner phones and you start to see how such actions by the authorities would be justified to law makers.
[+] [-] _audakel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aub3bhat|9 years ago|reply
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/08/28/how_panhandlers_...
[+] [-] iamjeff|9 years ago|reply
However, it is worthwhile to know that he did disclose that he is a reporter, although the fact that he gave them free credit cards, but could not bring self to find further assistance leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
That said, OP reminds me of two interesting DEFCON talks [1] [2] [3] re similar issues. In the contexts delivered in the talks, it seems permissible to say that the crooks were fair game.
1- DEF CON 18 - Zoz - Pwned By The Owner: What Happens When You Steal A Hacker's Computer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwpg-AwJ0Jc)
2- DEF CON 23: Confessions of a Professional Cyber Stalker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVJGY2bZ-Ko)
3- bonus resource on how to set up something similar to Zoz's Inspired by the defcon hacker who found his stolen laptop... how to update for present day routers? (https://www.reddit.com/r/Defcon/comments/2428pf/inspired_by_...)
[+] [-] tyingq|9 years ago|reply
Edit: LCBO, in the article, is apparently the state-run liquor stores in Ontario.
[+] [-] koolba|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wfunction|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperliner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kLeeIsDead|9 years ago|reply
FTFY.
[+] [-] adrusi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moomin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LolWolf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jostmey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kiliantics|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichailP|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1337biz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] transposed|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _audakel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexCoventry|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fnoord|9 years ago|reply
I'm low on time right now and if I were to comment on it I am afraid I would omit important details. But the gist of it is that the student carefully made sure that privacy was kept intact, and that he carefully avoids a witch hunt.
[+] [-] belorn|9 years ago|reply
In some countries, it is illegal for the police to do entrapment as part of their job. In some places its legal, but the fact that the accused got entrapped means that intentions are harder to prove, which then impacted the verdict.
Surveillance laws in turn generally don't cover this situation. If we ask our self if the thief has an reasonable expectation of privacy when stealing a phone, I would say no. If we ask if the thief has an reasonable expectation of privacy from a stolen phone, again I would say no. This leaves specific video video and audio surveillance laws, and I would say its quite unclear, through I suspect that commercial aspects could likely have some influence over it.
[+] [-] briandear|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] M4v3R|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahnu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdevs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1337biz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notdang|9 years ago|reply
The easiest way to install Cerberus as a system app is with the "Convert to system app" feature of Link2SD: install the app, open it, long-press on Cerberus in the list of installed apps and select "Convert to system app".
I had Cerberus installed for several years. I converted it to be a system app after watching the video. Now I secretly hope to be able to record something similar if it gets stolen.
[+] [-] mrlatinos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattmanser|9 years ago|reply
Does he address it in the video?
[+] [-] sbuttgereit|9 years ago|reply
In all cases, the criminal, not the student, determined where the phone was and whether it was in use or not (without permission). The student simply used his property where it was located, which is clearly his right to do. The property still belongs to the student. He has reasonable discretion to use it as he wills.
In the battle of "rights" it seems the student would be within his rights under the circumstances. This is not to say the student is within his legal rights: legally recognized rights have a long history of not correlating to any reasonable definition of individual rights. So the law may very well be in the wrong on this matter.
I'm very much for rights of privacy and the like, and a person should not be subject to search or eavesdropping without due process and probable cause. But this case seems very straight forward in terms of a criminal losing a right of privacy due to inviting another into his life. Wages of theft you could call it.
[+] [-] Fnoord|9 years ago|reply
However, the author doesn't want viewers to try similar projects, and also did the project to inform people of the massive privacy issues concerning smartphones. From his FAQ:
"5. Why won't you teach us how to install the app like you did? Besides theft, I wanted to make a point and start a discussion about privacy on smartphones without actually making a film that even mentions the word privacy. This is why the project should not be reproduced. I think the film makes the point, doing it again would be for entertainment purposes which I didn't. I hope people who see the film will realize the risk of getting hacked on smartphones, by hackers and governments. On computers, most people use virus scans, install updates and some people even put tape on their webcams while almost nobody even considers how vulnerable a smartphone is, and what the implications of getting hacked mean. I think the film already created a lot of awareness and started discussions about it."
Also, quoting from his YouTube page:
"Anthony is a director, researcher and concept developer. In June 2015 he graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy with his film Find my Phone. Anthony uses technology to tell stories in his work and has special interest in software and hardware development, hacking and privacy. He is currently working on developing a new documentary series and several other projects."
The above suggests this was just an art project. That doesn't mean it is exempt from law (personally, I believe he broke the law, and if you're interested wether this is true or not in NL I can highly recommend a lawyer, Arnoud Engelfriet, who might address the question on his blog), but it does show his intentions.
[+] [-] dep_b|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mpol|9 years ago|reply
The concern is how it got stolen... It is illegal to leave your car running while walking into a shop and coming back a minute later. Not sure about a good English translation, but you are urging someone to steal your car.
Depending on how his phone got stolen (it was a setup), he could be charged with something similar.
[+] [-] cmurf|9 years ago|reply
The card/account owner clearly has a right to know the activity on their card. The usage information are facts. They can't be copyrighted by either the issuer or the account holder. I don't see where any privacy rights for the thief come into play, they definitely did not agree to be bound the the account terms and conditions.
What could be true is if the account holder violated the terms and conditions by knowingly allowing someone else to use the card. I'm actually not even sure what my license agreement allows, but it wouldn't surprise me if technically I can't give my card to a spouse or child to use, instead the issuer wants additional cards issued to make sure anyone using the card is bound to the account contract.
[+] [-] kapitza|9 years ago|reply
Director develops sympathy for him, even sends him free credits because the spyware is eating his bandwidth. Later goes to one of the thief's hangouts and realizes that in fact, the thief is a weird scary guy and not lovable at all.
Sequel hook: phone has been reactivated in Romania. Stay tuned for next episode. "Diversiteit is onze kracht."
[+] [-] saycheese|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgvgffyv|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tasty_freeze|9 years ago|reply