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by x1798DE 4362 days ago
From what I remember, Firewire used to have direct hardware access to the RAM. Does the iOS lightning charger have something similar?

I may be paranoid, but I could imagine the TSA offering little charging stations so you can get enough juice to turn the phone on, and from there it's a short leap to imagine that the other side of that "charger" is going to be something that sucks down as much information as they can from the phone.
4 comments
DrJokepu 4362 days ago
While I don't doubt for a moment that the US Government has the technology to do this, I do doubt that the TSA, which is basically the government agency equivalent of the shortbus is allowed to have access to it.
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x1798DE 4362 days ago
It's not particularly difficult technology to pull off. The actual TSA agents are clearly dumb as rocks, but if you give them a machine that just sucks up data and sends it off to some central repository, they'll have no problem plugging it in.

From my understanding, they already can make sort of "notes" on your file - including books you have in your luggage, that sort of thing. It's not that crazy to imagine that they'd distribute some simple juice-jacking equipment if people are very frequently wanting to plug in.

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evan_ 4362 days ago
They'd only be doing this for a tiny percentage of phones that travel through checkpoints, though- and it's not clear to me what they would be looking for.

If there was a real motivation to secretly snoop on every phone that passed through a TSA checkpoint they'd come up with a better excuse that would allow them to plug in every phone- or they would more likely just be upfront about it. They haven't really tried to be sneaky about any other invasive screenings, to my knowledge.

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selectodude 4362 days ago
Thunderbolt does, Lightning does not. Also, it pops up a notification asking if you trust the source or if you merely want to allow charging.
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x1798DE 4362 days ago
Ah, I am not in the Apple ecosystem, so I think I was mixing up the different types of connectors. Good to know that they make this sort of thing a priority, though.
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cheald 4362 days ago
http://int3.cc/products/usbcondoms
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benburton 4362 days ago
A great idea, but do you think pulling out one of these is going to put the mind of the TSA agent who wants to examine your phone at ease?
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