I did the exact opposite of this in 2011 and it was the easily the most memorable 3 months of my life. Takes some planning (mostly making sure visa dates line up) but it is an incredible experience.
IMSI tracking is a consequence of how baseband devices communicate over-the-air, just as WiFi MAC address tracking is a consequence of how 802.11 devices communicate over-the-air.
And it's definitely a vulnerability, because it's used to track end users and reduce their privacy.
So it IS a baseband vulnerability. And IMSI randomization mitigates it to some degree, just as WiFi and Bluetooth MAC randomization mitigate tracking via those identifiers.
I’m arguing that just because a baseband processor is involved that doesn’t mean IMSI tracking is a vulnerability of the baseband processor itself. IMSI provisioning and randomization cannot be done without cooperation with the network operator and has nothing to do with the baseband processor itself.
Well that’s a really, really easy thing to say. Curious if you’ve actually thought through how you’d go about that. If there weren’t any non-peaceful protests to participate in would you start one? How? Is it possible that it’s not that simple?
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