Good news for amd

[jhu]

Depends on the phone

Another way of looking at the problem is defining, exactly, what "off" means. Conceptually, your mobile phone is "off" when you aren't using it. A secondary, ulta low power "baseband" processor remains "on" to listen to the cell tower. When the baseband processor detects an incoming call, it turns the rest of the phone back "on". Especially with older "feature phones", turning the phone "completely off" would sometimes leave the baseband processor still "on", thus allowing you to be tracked. For example, sometimes the phone had a timing circuit that will occasionally turn on the baseband to grab SMS messages every 10 minutes -- even though it was "off" enough that it couldn't receive incoming calls.

Even if the baseband is off, many phones still have an alarm clock that remains "on". As the Nokia 1100 manual states "If the alarm time is reached while the phone is switched off, the phone switches itself on". This timer circuit emits extremely low EMF that may be detectable. Given an area in the countryside where insurgents are hiding, it might be enough to locate them.

The moral of this is that just because you define the phone as "off" doesn't mean that it's 100% completely "off" all the time.

And watch out for NSA malware:

Nokia's Chad Fentress had a similar statement, but his phrasing raised eyebrows at Privacy International: "Our devices are designed so that when they are switched off, the radio transceivers within the devices should be powered off." (Nokia's statement is also available on the website.)

Privacy International research officer Richard Tynan told Ars Technica that Nokia's wording, particularly the "should," is suspicious.

"Nokia's wording is very nuanced," Tynan said. "They don't say that transceivers 'are' switched off."

However, both Ericsson and Samsung suggested that it might be possible to place spyware on a phone that would keep some of its network functions active even after users pressed the power button to turn it off.

Hmmm... come to think of it, my phone's battery doesn't even last a full day...

 

[Idontcare]

Cell phone does not communicate with anything when it is off. How do I know?

100% battery when I turn it off.
100% battery when I turn it on.

I've had cell phones turned off for over a month and the level of charge they have after that month is inconsistent with anything running in the background during that time. Not to mention it would be so easy to prove the mass media would be forced to pick it up.

What tells you it is 100% when you turn it off, and 100% when you turn it back on?

The phone?

The very device that might be comprised such that it is programmed to tell you it is at the same battery level (arbitrary in its own right) when you last had it "powered on"?

The only way to know your phone isn't communicating when you think it isn't is to put it into a helmholtz cage. Otherwise you are just trusting something you cannot verify yourself to be true.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Any company should be wary of being bought out by a government-backed entity, especially a foreign government-backed entity. Xenophobia aside, it's not like every nation in the world is holding hands and singing kumbaya. Granted, it's not like AMD has been an "American company" recently either, what with all the GF/Mubadala connections. It would be a bit odd watching AMD get pulled in opposing directions by foreign interests not wholly compatible with one another.

What is interesting about the article SOFTengCOMPelec posted is that the arm of the Chinese gubment allegedly showing interest in AMD is the same one responsible for the Longsoon/Godson MIPS knock-off chips. With all the ARM competition entering the market, there less and less place for the government MIPS chips. Maybe they want some more serious tech in their lineup.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2421574
It's not Xenophobia, when Chinese companies have already been caught spying.

Sure totally.... like we've never caught Americans spying on Americans.

 

[podspi]

What tells you it is 100% when you turn it off, and 100% when you turn it back on?

The phone?

The very device that might be comprised such that it is programmed to tell you it is at the same battery level (arbitrary in its own right) when you last had it "powered on"?

The only way to know your phone isn't communicating when you think it isn't is to put it into a helmholtz cage. Otherwise you are just trusting something you cannot verify yourself to be true.

That assumes you aren't just a brain in a vat. Perhaps there is no phone? :sneaky:

Putting the Truth with a capital T aside, it is unlikely our cell phones and computers are spying on us in any systematic manner - at least not in the way people are thinking in this thread, and they certainly aren't actively hiding it. Seriously, that sounds like something from Dragos Ruiu's bad bios, which nobody has been able to get any proof of, 'because' it deletes all evidence of itself.

Lenovo's Superfish fiasco actually supports this. Look how quickly it was discovered (relative to say, how long we've had cell phones).

This is also why we should continue to support open systems. The more locked down a system is, the easier it is to hide something.