A kit list of sorts for EDC/ Recce/GHB/Work

[CharlesHarris]

The FBI ability to listen in on cell phones which were remotely activated to record conversations (even with the phones turned off), probably had some bearing on Snowden's request that journalists power down their phones and place them in the fridge. The NSA may be using mass over the air updates to infect phones of targets overseas and presumably, any "non-targets" applying the same faux update.

A couple of details in support of that theory... First, two telcos that provide service to millions of cell phone users are known to be overly cooperative with US and UK intelligence agencies. In the US Verizon and AT&T would accommodate the NSA (and FBI) if it wished to use their update systems to push these trojans. Add to this the fact that Microsoft and others have allowed intelligence agencies early access to security flaws, allowing them to exploit these for a certain length of time before informing the public and patching the holes. Add these two together and you've got the means and the opportunity to serve snooping malware to millions of unsuspecting cell phone users.

Sparing usage, properly targeted isn't really an issue. But if updates containing spyware have been pushed to the thousands of non-targeted individuals just to ensure the targets are included, it becomes more problematic, and the track record of the two agencies who have used this technology is far from pristine.

So unless you don't care who is tracking you, after it hits the fan, remove the battery from your phone, put it in a Faraday cage and cache it away from your hide, and if you do power it up, do so only when operationally necessary, away from your hide or cache site, then power down and remove the battery before returning to the hide.