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Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

citylab.com

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Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#31

Post by Tangurena2 »

troncheadle wrote: post #24

So what is the move if you are caught with your pants down, and a LEO is requesting access to your actual phone? Does a factory restore wipe all data, or is in necessary to wipe, fill up with bunk data, wipe again? I don't know about everyone else but my phone is has data including me talking about controversial opinions, intimate photos, and various other data that I would not want anyone else to have.

In the US, use passwords to protect your phone. Passwords have been held by courts to be testimony and thus protected by the 5th Amendment. Patterns, swipes, facial recognition and fingerprints have been held by courts to be the equivalent of "keys" and you can be required to turn them over upon being ordered by a lawful authority (such as a police officer demanding them). Passwords require a court order and if you have a competent attorney, they can argue that revealing the password would result in self-incrimination (and this can spend a lot of time in court before anything happens).

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#32

Post by iak8god »

revelation wrote: post #14
analogmemory wrote: post #2

I have no idea how this works. Can someone explain the site simulators? When the site simulators intercept the traffic, they can see all the data. If it's encrypted, can they still read it or decrypt it somehow?

Site simulators aren't very new technology. Police departments have had these devices for so long that they were even mentioned in The Wire (2002) with the exact brand name (StingRay). Handsets will always connect to the basestation with the strongest signal, there is no authentication involved. They then "exploit" (it's really by design) a feature of GSM where you can simply tell the handset not to use any encryptio…

> One popular use is to mount them on a drone, wait for it to detect a particular IMSI and then bomb the general area. That is the reality of the so called "precision strikes" in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Holy crap. Do you have a good source for that? I've somehow never heard this before.

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#33

Post by barake »

Retric wrote: post #28
jjawssd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we powerless to stop it? Should we bother?

There are options between stop it and do nothing. I would assume cellphone companies can easily give access to any conversation from their internal network so that's probably a more cost effective solution at all levels. The question becomes, why do police feel the need for other tools?

Cellphone companies is one more layer in their trust circle. It's easier to just bypass them and collect the data yourself. Warrants only really became a requirement in 2015. And police were misleading judges on Stingray usage to hide the tech.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/appeals-court-no...

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#34

Post by a3n »

So if the Washington D.C. police, or anyone who can afford it, are tracking protesters, or merely tracking, near the White House, they may inadvertently intercept calls from all those insecure, non-presidentially locked phones carried by top White House aides, and by the President?

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#35

Post by funnyfacts365 »

ams6110 wrote: post #22
revelation wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No production basestation ever used the "no encryption" mode. No handset should ever accept using it, just as no browser will accept to using the NULL cipher. So what is the justification 25 years on?

Perhaps many phones don't, hence the many complaints that "phones stopped working" when the surveillance vehicle was nearby.

They stop working maybe because the stingray is only collecting identifiers instead if conducting a true MITM attack and forwarding any calls por SMS's. In any case, I suspect they could only do a MITM to outgoing traffic, so any incoming traffic/data would not be delivered, like the phone is out of service/no network.

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#36

Post by zkms »

iak8god wrote: post #32
revelation wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Site simulators aren't very new technology. Police departments have had these devices for so long that they were even mentioned in The Wire (2002) with the exact brand name (StingRay). Handsets will always connect to the basestation with the strongest signal, there is no authentication involved. They then "exploit" (it's really by design) a feature of GSM where you can simply tell the handset not to use any encryptio…

> One popular use is to mount them on a drone, wait for it to detect a particular IMSI and then bomb the general area. That is the reality of the so called "precision strikes" in Afghanistan or Iraq. Holy crap. Do you have a good source for that? I've somehow never heard this before.

AFAICT the codename for the SIM-card-finding operation on drones is "GILGAMESH", here's a few things about it:

See https://theintercept.com/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/ and https://theintercept.com/surveillance-catalogue/gilgamesh/

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#37

Post by wapz »

wtbob wrote: post #29
simplyluke wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal by Open Whisper Systems is far and away the most popular right now.

Note that with cell phone spoofing , someone could impersonate you to OWS. All your contacts would get messages stating that your key ('secret numbers,' I think is the term they use) has changed, and all messages would then go to the imposter.

Do you have any info on how cell phone spoofing works? Is the IMEI number used by signal to verify you?

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#38

Post by upofadown »

Retric wrote: post #28
jjawssd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we powerless to stop it? Should we bother?

There are options between stop it and do nothing. I would assume cellphone companies can easily give access to any conversation from their internal network so that's probably a more cost effective solution at all levels. The question becomes, why do police feel the need for other tools?

Casual ad hoc surveillance can be very useful for law enforcement. It can save a tremendous amount of time and money keeping track of where people are and where they are planning to be. The fact that the information gained is not admissible in court is not important. From the article:

>“You guys picking up any information? Where they're going, possibly?"

Law enforcement has become somewhat dependent on this sort of access and would not be able to do their job as effectively without it. Hence the desperation shown by the use of things like Stingrays where the network is actively attacked in what is arguably a straight up illegal way.

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#39

Post by JustSomeNobody »

Retric wrote: post #28
jjawssd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we powerless to stop it? Should we bother?

There are options between stop it and do nothing. I would assume cellphone companies can easily give access to any conversation from their internal network so that's probably a more cost effective solution at all levels. The question becomes, why do police feel the need for other tools?

Power. Invoking public fear. Using that as an end-around the 1st Amendment.

Re: Cellphone Spy Tools Have Flooded Local Police Departments

#40

Post by freedrock87 »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #31
troncheadle wrote: post #24

So what is the move if you are caught with your pants down, and a LEO is requesting access to your actual phone? Does a factory restore wipe all data, or is in necessary to wipe, fill up with bunk data, wipe again? I don't know about everyone else but my phone is has data including me talking about controversial opinions, intimate photos, and various other data that I would not want anyone else to have.

In the US, use passwords to protect your phone. Passwords have been held by courts to be testimony and thus protected by the 5th Amendment. Patterns, swipes, facial recognition and fingerprints have been held by courts to be the equivalent of "keys" and you can be required to turn them over upon being ordered by a lawful authority (such as a police officer demanding them). Passwords require a court order and if you h…

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/justice-naps-man...
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