How to transform the Apple's application 'Find My' into a toolbox for whistleblowers
This addresses anonymity and surveillance challenges for whistleblowers, though it is speculative and incremental in repurposing existing technology.
The paper explores how Apple's Find My app could be repurposed as a whistleblowing tool using its Bluetooth-based anonymous public key broadcasting, while also warning that it could be exploited by authoritarian governments against whistleblowers.
The recent introduction of Find My app by Apple will open a large window of opportunities for whistleblowers. Based on a short range Bluetooth signals, an EC P-224 encryption, and an end-to-end encrypted manner using iCloud Keychain, Find My app is probably the first application broadcasting a large number of anonymous public key on this scale. Hence, this new Apple's application may introduce a revolution in secret communication, if we divert it from its primordial use and transform it into a powerful tool to put in the hands of whistleblowers. By using Find My app and an entity authentication protocol based on artificial intelligence, our goal is to make mass surveillance and kleptographic backdoors ineffective in the lifting of the whistleblower's anonymity. However, in some case, Find my app may also be a powerful tool in the hands of dictatorships governments in their fight against whistleblowers and political adversaries. Thus, the aim of this paper is to show with simple examples, how these two previous situation can happen.