this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
60 points (80.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43807 readers
730 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You should understand that what happened in Lebanon involved the government of Isreal physically modifying the pagers (and walkies) in question by adding explosives to them, turning them into remote-triggerable bombs.
(The term "supplychain attack" has been used a lot to describe this attack. Isreal intercepted the order of pagers between when the order was placed and when the pagers were delivered. And either physically altered the pagers ordered or replaced them with altered/tampered-with pagers.)
Please see current state of politics in US where sheriffs are taking names of those with opposing views. These people are playing a long game. Don’t fool yourself it couldn’t easily happen here in US or is not already set up to do so. I am not a conspiratorial type but just looking at the facts.
Not really saying otherwise. What I am saying is that for your electronic devices to have "explosives" in them would require that a supplychain attack of a similar sort.
It's almost definitely not the case that any electronics manufacturers are systematically putting explosives in every smartphone or whatever that they manufacture and supplychain attacks are much more likely to be a targeted thing rather than "all Samsung phones" or whatever. If they weren't targeted, it's pretty certain that the presence of explosives in devices would be noticed even just by regular end-users with a bit of a tinkering proclivity within weeks. So if your devices are more than a couple of months old have been in reasonably normal use for most of that time and you haven't been specifically targeted by any particular government or anyone who might have the ability to tamper with the supplychain, you're almost certainly safe specifically from explosive-laced consumer electronics devices.
Also, it seems unlikely that a state police agency (like the "sheriffs" you're talking about) could leverage enough power to compel an electronics company to allow such a thing without the FBI or DHS involved. I'd imagine state police folks would more likely resort to more low-tech approaches like the Tulsa race massacre air firebombing.
Again, I'm not saying it's impossible that your phone contains explosives. And as I said in another comment, it might be possible to remotely get a device to cause its battery to catch fire. Maybe.
Also, I am in the U.S., but what made you think that was the case?
More of a “what if”.