California Police Used Stingrays in Planes to Spy on Phones

Post by jrcii » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

schoen wrote: post #20

guelo wrote: post #19

My biggest disillusionment when I learned about Stingrays was with the FCC. I had always thought of the FCC as good stewards of the broadcast spectrum and I didn't think they would ever approve shenanigans like the commercial development of radios that impersonate commercial broadcasters.

I'm still curious why they haven't decided that the fact that cell site simulators are possible is a super-grave bug! It's one thing to say "we think it might be legal to use a cell site simulator in some specific circumstances", but another thing to say "our cell phone infrastructure allows anyone to successfully pretend to be a tower and spy on people, and we're not going to try to fix that".

Post by pstuart » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

Post by humbleMouse » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #36

ChuckMcM wrote: post #25

This kind of stuff always annoys me. One of the interesting things would be a 'home designed' cell system based on using unlicensed spectrum in the TV white spaces. Then you could build a system where a phone only answered a tower which sent out an ident frame which was cryptographically signed by a trusted key. And the response would be encrypted with that trusted key as well so only the cell tower could decrypt it.…

You're better off assuming the network is hostile and then encrypting at a higher layer, ZRTP, OTR and so on.

Post by shiven » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 3:48 PM UTC

Joof wrote: post #39

cmurf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of this problem was standing. There was no acknowledgment, in fact denial, that these things existed and were being used. It therefore was incumbent on the claimant to prove they existed. But now it's understood they exist, so that finally might work its way through the court system to see whether or not this is a legal search/seizure.

It's still up to the claimant to prove it was used on them personally and in some damaging manner. This has been a problem for people (Wikipedia) suing the NSA. Despite statistical analysis showing it's probably true, there isn't any 'beyond a doubt' evidence.

Post by alistairSH » Thu, Jan 28, 2016, 3:55 PM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #59

jjwiseman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From looking at the FAA registry[1] and googling, it looks like the Anaheim police department operates 3 aircraft: N226PD, an AS350 helicopter; N326PD, another AS350 helicopter; N508BH, a Cessna 208B. N508BH, the Cessna, is probably the one they're using for surveillance (See the 2012 OC Register article, "$2.2 million Cessna will help fight crime"[2]). FlightAware shows that N508BH flies to northern california a lot…

That's phenomenal. As a point of contrast, the New Zealand police own 1 helicopter, and contract out flying light aircraft to commercial operators. Upon saying that, they often call upon the air force for logistical support (in particular for helicopter operations, usually for drug operations, such as airlifting cannabis for destruction, not for raids).