English Chess Forum

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34444233

Offers a wonderful excuse for players caught with phones switched on...

not that anyone will believe it.

Perhaps some of those who I heard exclaim "I'm sure I turned it off before I put it in my bag/coat" spoke the truth and were innocent victims of GCHQ smurfing!?

That was a landmark interview by Edward Snowden, a very confident speaker who was telling the truth about GCHQ and smurfing. The problem can be solved by not taking a mobile phone to a chess event. Painful I know, but it is possible.

Gordon Cadden wrote: The problem can be solved by not taking a mobile phone to a chess event.

The bigger problem can't.

John McKenna wrote:Perhaps some of those who I heard exclaim "I'm sure I turned it off before I put it in my bag/coat" spoke the truth and were innocent victims of GCHQ smurfing!?

The trouble with "smurfing" is that it cannot be credibly blamed on the NSA ? I sincerely hope the creator of the term has been redacted in the damaging Snowden leaks.

During the Cold War, shortly following Prime Minister Thatcher offering £1000 pounds per person to ban Trades Union membership at GCHQ there was a joke at the Devon v Gloucester chess match that some insiders were against it because it gave the Soviets intelligence about how much to offer!

Gordon Cadden wrote:The problem can be solved by not taking a mobile phone to a chess event. Painful I know, but it is possible.

..Or by removing the phone's battery once you've turned it off. I think that might thwart even a determined smurf.

AustinElliott wrote: ..Or by removing the phone's battery once you've turned it off. I think that might thwart even a determined smurf.

I was wondering about that myself. If you believed that mobile phone manufacturers were in on the conspiracy, it's not so difficult to imagine that there's a secondary source of power, so that the phone retains a certain amount of life, even with a removed battery. It's not going to have the power to do anything intensive such as switch the microphone on or take pictures even if it can still receive invisible messages. Actually there's a certain amount of power needed to connect to the phone masts, so even that might be problematic.

Ah well, that's 'easy' The drive for ever thinner/lighter things means they've mostly been moving away from removable batteries anyway......

It would definitely be very hard to hide something like a non trivial battery inside a mobile - there's so little space for starters and places do pull them apart to have a look inside. Not many people ever turn them off entirely of course.

Roger de Coverly wrote:

AustinElliott wrote: ..Or by removing the phone's battery once you've turned it off. I think that might thwart even a determined smurf.

I was wondering about that myself. If you believed that mobile phone manufacturers were in on the conspiracy, it's not so difficult to imagine that there's a secondary source of power, so that the phone retains a certain amount of life, even with a removed battery. It's not going to have the power to do anything intensive such as switch the microphone on or take pictures even if it can still receive invisible messages. Actually there's a certain amount of power needed to connect to the phone masts, so even that might be problematic.

There is a secondary power source to run the internal clock but it cannot retain power for long. Functions like activating a microphone would drain it almost immediately.

Not only chess, it seems...

I was talking to a triathlete at the weekend, who commented that mobile phones are banned in competition. Well, I guess using one in the swimming phase will result in a non-functioning phone. It seems there are safety reasons. A lot of cycling and running phases take place on public roads, and it is felt you cannot hear the traffic or marshals' instructions if you are e.g. listening to music via your phone.

Then I found this

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/more-sp ... spartanntp

So, leave your phone at home if you are competing at chess, triathlons (and related events), and judo...

Most of this is paranoid drivel. Android is open source and anyone can inspect the source code, compile it and reinstall on their phone if they believe their phone is compromised. They are free to find any security flaws, write their own code to remove them and install their modified code, too. There are regular, large prizes offered to discover flaws in Android, and researchers the world round regularly claim these prizes, and flaws are thereby eliminated. Nothing is perfect, but the key issue is that the tech industry is determined to avoid all legal traps requiring back doors. A back door for a state security agency is just another flaw which cybercriminals can exploit to enrich themselves. Same loony drivel as garbage about Huawei and the Chinese state. The software is open source. Huawei even offered to open its hardware to full inspection.