Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

news.vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 104 posts

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#81

Post by imglorp »

scott77 wrote: post #8

Interestingly enough, during last trip to London, my phone (Nexus 5 running Cyanogenmod 12.1) was able to somehow detect something fishy and warned me several times "Network may be monitored by an unknown 3rd party". Among others, I've seen this warning two times out of two when passing by Cheapside/St Martin's corner - next to the St Paul's Cathedral. At the time I just dismissed this as some tinfoil hat developer a…

Stingrays operate at the gsm layer, not the IP layer. Evidently their MITM is pretty easy to observe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stingray

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#82

Post by underbluewaters »

themartorana wrote: post #80
underbluewaters wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it completely legal to warn users of suspicious network activity like this? If for example Apple built detection into iOS and gave all users a warning that could do a lot for raising awareness and maybe some support for change. "The network you are using is likely being surveilled. Your identity, online activity, and phone calls may be monitored by government or criminal equipment"

Can you stifle free speech when it's informed by public information and not knowledge of secret activities? That is, if all it's doing is flagging signals it's antenna receives, is it even possible for that to be illegal? Also, how do laws treat waves in public (radio, light) - do they get the same "privacy" treatment as people (that is, no expectation of if in public)? Edit: actually since joining/browsing an open W…

> Also, how do laws treat waves in public (radio, light) - do they get the same "privacy" treatment as people (that is, no expectation of if in public)?

I believe this area is legally fuzzy but courts have determined that police cannot drive around with say, a thermal imager and observe en-mass people in their homes. One could argue that it's just thermal radiation you are viewing from public space.

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#83

Post by switch007 »

vidarh wrote: post #52
arca_vorago wrote: post #43

I stayed in The City during the holidays and at one point walked close by the Police hq. After continuing on I enabled gps for a moment and even though I was half a mile a way my gps was showing me smack dab in the center of the police hq for about 15 minutes... I realized then what was happening and that I should have known better, but I had forgotten to ask a friend to take his faraday cage laptop bag and phone bag…

City is "special". While there are reasons to be concerned about surveillance elsewhere in the UK too, City has its own police force, and surveillance levels that makes even the rest of London seem like total anarchy. In the rest of London there are certainly other buildings that are covered by extensive government surveillance, but most of the surveillance in London - and the rest of the UK - is privately owned, and…

It's not clear if the OP meant the City of London police HQ (Wood Street), or the Met HQ (Scotland Yard, not in the City)

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#84

Post by stevejones »

madaxe_again wrote: post #38
chippy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it illegal to have one and run one in the UK if not licensed?

Well, as they're officially not used at all in the UK, there's been no need to create any legislation around them, so while this could be an offence under the communications act, you could argue (probably unsuccessfully) that you're actually providing a service to customers by taking their data to protect them from themselves, as they may be terrorists and not yet know it.

It's almost certainly an offence under RIPA.

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#85

Post by stevejones »

desdiv wrote: post #35
jritchie wrote: post #16

Do IMSI catchers have any way of verifying the intercepted IMSIs are legitimate? If not, would it be possible to build a device to flood them with fake/spoofed IMSIs?

>If not, would it be possible to build a device to flood them with fake/spoofed IMSIs? Technical ability wise, yes. Legally, no. The Mobile Telephones (Re-Programming) Act 2002 [0] makes spoofing IMSI, even that of your own, illegal in the UK. [0] https://www.staffordshire.police.uk/info_advice/crime_preven... Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

So we can safely say that IMSI catchers have been used as a matter of routine since 2002.

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#86

Post by acqq »

jritchie wrote: post #26
acqq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"IMSI catcher" is a device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher It doesn't have to "verify" what it collects.

Yes, but the value of the collected data is much reduced if you can't distinguish between legitimate IMSIs and spoofed IMSIs of devices that were never actually there.

No, because he who collects isn't interested in random mobile phones, and whoever tries to spoof "other" phones doesn't know the phones of interest of the collector. And the collector is interested not in knowing the presence but in the whole traffic, so the spoofing is even more obvious.

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#87

Post by gherkin0 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #55
raverbashing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The baseband still has access to your battery when your phone is off. Citation needed? Because the definition of off, for most phones, is exactly that.

This capability has been known for many years. From 2006: >"The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them," James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. "Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone's location to within just a few feet," he added. Source: http:…

> The fact that BlackBerry designed around this early on leads me to suspect (as an outside observer with an imagination) that mass metadata collection was known by folks in industry back in the 90s.

Wouldn't a simpler explanation be that it was just over-designed for 90s-era threats in a way that hardened it to some more recent threats?

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#88

Post by scott77 »

scottishfiction wrote: post #51
ter0 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be caused by the phone surveillance that's set up in One New Change? There are (small) notices at the entrances to One New Change that inform you of phone tracking equipment there.

If they're informing you of it, I'd assume it's more likely to be passive WiFi tracking. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8752580

WiFi was turned off completely on the phone, also message itself was a native UI dialog, not something on a webpage.

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#89

Post by takeda »

scott77 wrote: post #8

Interestingly enough, during last trip to London, my phone (Nexus 5 running Cyanogenmod 12.1) was able to somehow detect something fishy and warned me several times "Network may be monitored by an unknown 3rd party". Among others, I've seen this warning two times out of two when passing by Cheapside/St Martin's corner - next to the St Paul's Cathedral. At the time I just dismissed this as some tinfoil hat developer a…

Check certificates, some app added its own certificate.

I installed my own certificate on Android and it warns me about it each time after it boots. It's quite annoying, because there doesn't seem to be a way to disable it (without modifying /system) and I trust my own certificate much more than any other the phone comes with.

Re: Signs of Secret Phone Surveillance Across London

#90

Post by Perixoog »

Spooky23 wrote: post #55
raverbashing wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The baseband still has access to your battery when your phone is off. Citation needed? Because the definition of off, for most phones, is exactly that.

This capability has been known for many years. From 2006: >"The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them," James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. "Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone's location to within just a few feet," he added. Source: http:…

Maybe referring to a "short message type 0"

https://github.com/SecUpwN/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector/iss...

Post reply on HN