So..... Airtags. Made by Apple. THE company that I love to hate and hate to love, and my daily reminder that (a) there IS a GOD and (2) GOD has a heckuva good sense of humor that is activated by such things as the word "NEVER!" I have apples. Lots of 'em. I'm also a gentleman of a certain age with lots and lots and LOTS of hobbies and interests who spends many hours a month chasing squirrels and looking for lost items. A beloved family member once witnessed me looking for car keys for an over an hour during a "five minute visit" to drop something off. Atypically...this was not my fault, but rather was caused by a 2 year old child putting the keys in her little toy 'mommy's purse'....just like Mommy always does. This folksy anecdote was (part) of the reason for my getting three Airtags for Christmas several years ago and they're sitting quietly within about 10 feet of me RIGHT NOW.........doing their thing. I cannot estimate how many times that they've saved me time and hassle, but they're easily one of the better Christmas presents that I've ever received, although not quite as good as having a child named in my honor I must admit! Airtags are pretty neat stuff. HOWEVER (comma!) Like ALL good things....there ARE people who can (and HAVE) used these little quarter (25-cent)-sized beauties for ugly purposes. Growing concern over rise in Apple AirTag stalking New York Attorney General Issues AirTag Consumer Alert Over Stalking Concerns - MacRumors AirTag use by stalkers unchecked by Ohio laws: 3News Investigates | wkyc.com OK.....so I'm not much of a Fourth Amendment alarmist, nor am I one of "those" people who put black tape over their computer cameras (and keep their cell pones in their bedroom ) BUT!!!! For once.....fake news is kinda right. Airtags have been used by stalkers and Apple's counter-measures have been met with their own counter-measures in the never-ending Darwinian thing we call......."life." For instance.....Airtags are now being sold on the dark web and D/L......sans speaker. AND there 'may or may not' be a method of detecting and reporting speaker-less tags..... I do not say this to facilitate the 'apples' of the world (see what I did there? ) but rather as a warning to people BOTH good AND evil......who MAY in the end BE...too smart by half. .....and to offer this little article...... .....for your consideration.
What's the big deal about destroying/removing the speaker? All Apple needs to do is change their process for discovery and activation of the airtag: Use the phone to put out a radio signal to order nearby airtags to chirp and then flag out/deactivate the ones found by radio but can't be heard by the phone's several excellent onboard microphones. I do agree that there will be several more iterations of the cat & mouse deal.
Asked and answered....by the newsies There was actually a tech reporter in NYC who assembled a collection of trackers (some illegal for private use) and 'bugged' a spouse with them - later sending a (what's the collective pronoun for newsies? A SCUM, Scruple, perhaps ?) of camera-armed colleagues out to find the stalkee. The reporter DID tell her spouse about the trackers, and he was unable to FIND all of them..... The word around the campfire is that the Apple product provided the most accurate real-time data, albeit in a densely populated alabaster wasteland. I'm thinking that in flyover country it might be a little tougher. ACTUAL data, like ACTUAL science may vary..... This could also be used, if discovered, as a DOS attack for ATs...but I like where you're going with this. One of the things that the AT tells the world is battery level....but it's not the ONLY thing. One imagines that a mission critical component (speaker) might be detectable and reported in the normal telemetry. Interestingly enough (at least to me!) IOT has been tinkering with stuff like this for years....over 35 now. Telecom used (and "may or may not" STILL use) x.25 for equipment status monitoring, and evil hydrocarbon producers used MQTT for pipeline monitoring back in the days when satellite communications charged, literally, by the byte. MQTT is still being used today by the IOT community.....and the 'Internet of Things' is quickly doing to 'privacy' what a Gaston Glock did to the handgun industry in the mid 80s. Fun Fact: Gaston (who started out manufacturing curtain rod rings of all things....) suspected that Charles Everett, one of his closest financial advisers, had been embezzling funds. Glock confronted Everett who did what any embezzler would (NOT!) do in this situation.... HIRE a French mercenary to murder Glock with..... .....a rubber mallet in a car park, in an attempt to make it look like an accident. Spoiler Alert: It didn't work. Glock was able to......um.... 'fight back' and both Everett and the would-be assassin were sent to prison.
Maybe the tag is good enough to detect open/short circuit or an impedance change on a damaged or physically muted (glued) transducer as part of its self-test monitoring routine. Maybe the phone will provide the acoustic detection side of the multi-mode 2 factor tag enrollment scheme I described. Maybe a courtroom brawl the first time a hearing-impaired individual survives harm as a result of inappropriate tracking.
I have some solutions to avoid having to worry about stalkers....Glock, Smith and Wesson, Sig Sauer! (To name just a few) Say hello to my little friend! On a serious note, I do agree with you...WAY too much spying on us is going on these days!
Not everyone can use or carry your solution everywhere they need it, so other solutions are still necessary.
That too, but is still not a complete solution. And not just for tens of millions who cannot possess in the first place.
