>I personally know someone who ordered a laptop and an XYZ agency bugged his laptop (man in the middle) before it was delivered.
How did they discover it and what was the actual bug? Are you aware of Purism Anti-Interdiction service?
Link if anyone is curious: https://puri.sm/posts/anti-interdiction-services/
>FBI and DEA already used modified AirTags that won't notify anyone with an iPhone around to track drug dealers precisely.
Don't Airtags now notify the nearby user if they are being tracked? I have heard of airtags getting modded to remove the speaker but Apple bypassed this with software updates that alert you out of band(as far as I know). Your assertion would require government to have special Airtags that iOS ignores no?
I am aware of large manufacturers that have agreements with the NSA to share source code, presumably so they can compile customized firmware.
I would not be surprised if Apple does this.
I worked on SW at apple. I would be VERY surprised, to a point where i'll offer you a $1k USD bet.
At least one (and I assume all) manufacturers of network hardware have backroom code sharing deals with the NSA, and likely only highest leadership and a single release engineer knows about it.
I personally know a trustworthy release engineer that described in detail they were the person that had to send all new source code for each release to an NSA owned FTP server.
Does that mean Apple is actually doing this too? Hard to say, but when there is no accountability it is best to operate under the assumption the worst is happening. Particularly given Tim Cook is very publicly sucking up to the president every chance he gets.
I met the people. None of them would stand for that. My bet offer remains
Im presuming you can't just directly ask the people you met if this mysterious modded Airtag exists?
Also on a side note: Did anything happen in 2025 regarding the saga from Defcon last year or did everyone just move on after 24? I apologize if this is still a sore issue.
I hear you, and if I was given such an order, even if it came with a gag order, I would never comply and would go straight to the press, consequences be damned.
Problem is everyone knows the people like me that would react this way, and those people go on vacation eventually or can be replaced. Pay attention when that happens.
If Trump asked Tim Cook for a favor, I bet it gets taken care of one way or the other.
I would not take your bet on any specific company at any specific time, but in the scale of the top ten tech companies over a decade, it is absolutely happening regularly with some of them and there is political will for it to be all of them.
> FBI and DEA already used modified AirTags that won't notify anyone with an iPhone around to track drug dealers precisely.
Oh I missed that in the wall of text. Hmm I wonder if this firmware can be captured somehow and compared against the public AirTag firmware.
The protocol is known, creating a tag that rotates IDs every hour should be trivial.
If apple really wants to (and put their money where their mouth is when it comes to those stupid "Pro Privacy" ads they run), they can start by filing a CFAA lawsuit against said agencies.
The same Apple whose CEO actively kisses the ass of the president buying tickets to be close to him and making him fancy gifts? The same Apple that voluntarily gave the CCP control of all the HSMs controlling the supply chains of all apple hardware in China?
Any claims of privacy or consumer advocacy at Apple are completely just marketing to gullible consumers.
If Apple actually cared about accountability, which is a prerequisite for privacy, they would open source everything so security researchers could reproduce all binaries and easily inspect their sources.
Not if they value their life, or those of their family.