Incredulity
I posted my phone surveillance and opsec video a few days ago.
The performance has been ok, but not great.
Unfortunately, I tried a few different things at once - including making the video nearly an hour long, so I’m not sure what I’m learning from this particular exercise.
Based on the comment, though, there are a few takeways:
Despite having three AI images in an hour of video, some people are still super mad. The offending pictures? Me. My wife. A Starbucks drink. Seriously?
Some people are idiots. George Carlin had it right. The problem? People refuse to believe that their phone isn’t listening to them. I’ve been told about “experimental” proof that consists of them talking near their phone. What I haven’t been given is any primary literature, with sound and reproducible methods.
This is where the incredulity comes in… as well as the general descent into a feelings as facts society. You see, on something like my Smart TV video, I did actual research. However, I also knew that I could - if I really wanted to - get a rootable TV, install a self-signed root CA on the TV, and then watch all of the decrypted traffic from (and to) my TV (with the exception of streamers with pinned certs). Instead, I just used packet capture, and looked at the payload sizes. If I were getting paid, or if enough people had asked for it, I could - and would - have done it.
But that’s the thing - most people aren’t aware of how these things work, and assume that they’re black boxes the NOBODY could ever determine the inner workings of.
It’s ok not to know that - but maybe don’t argue with the people who clearly know more about it that you?
That’s relevant to the most recent video because I had many people in the comments tell me that their phones were compromised in ways that nobody could detect. And I agree that they can’t detect anything. My skillset would take me down the road of disassembling app binaries. Or maybe SDR monitoring.
But there’s a level of capability well beyond anything I know how to (practically) do. Interposers. JTAG. I know how they work, but I’ve never done anything like that - and I likely never will. I’m not incredulous about the fact that these advanced techniques exist - and that highly capable researchers and engineers use them every single day.
The video was important, but it was more expensive to make than the revenue that I’ll get from the video. Ouch.
Overall, it’s like the great, wise lady said…
You live, you learn
