TrevE

Some pretty alarming news coming from the Android hacking community today. If you haven’t yet heard of Carrier IQ, it’s essentially tracking software that has been found loaded into the source code of several devices being shipped by Samsung, HTC, and other Android vendors. The software is said to track and log user activities. Now, this has been known for sometime and wouldn’t normally be newsworthy at this point, but the company behind Carrier IQ is now actively threatening XDA-Developers member Trevor Eckhart, a.k.a TrevE, the same dev who first discovered the software.

As part of Eckhart’s research to expose the software, he posted training material that the company had already made available publicly online. Following his analysis and criticism of the software, Carrier IQ  removed the training material from their own website and issued a cease-and-desist letter to Eckhart demanding that he remove the documents and replace his report with a statement written by Carrier IQ renouncing his research. They also want him to issue that statement as a press release.

Eckhart didn’t back down, fortunately. On his behalf, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has issued a response to Carrier IQ’s cease-and-desist letter. Here’s an excerpt:

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