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ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

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Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#91

Post by microcolonel »

tracker1 wrote: post #84
nerdponx wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering all the stuff that's open public information, it's a bit surprising that cell tower locations aren't .

It's kind of sensitive information with regards to communications infrastructure. Not too dissimilar from various details of sensitive sites not being disclosed to reduce the risk of a coordinated attack. Not saying it's effective, but I can understand the reasoning.

Regarding effectiveness, localizing an access point is trivial, so it's a matter of motivation.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#93

Post by toomuchtodo »

tracker1 wrote: post #84
nerdponx wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering all the stuff that's open public information, it's a bit surprising that cell tower locations aren't .

It's kind of sensitive information with regards to communications infrastructure. Not too dissimilar from various details of sensitive sites not being disclosed to reduce the risk of a coordinated attack. Not saying it's effective, but I can understand the reasoning.

Tower data is public record. Here’s a search aggregator: http://www.antennasearch.com

The issue is that the baseband should be handshaking cryptographically with your provider’s towers to prevent MITM attempts, and no downgrade should be possible. Between eSIM and 5G, honestly surprised it’s not a standard yet.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#94

Post by rolph »

after reading through the comments i found this on hackaday, its from 2018; seems germaine to the current topics in thread:

https://hackaday.com/tag/stingray/

the first paragraph is an intro speech of sorts then the real content begins. There is an interesting article linked in that part so i want to bring it to the fore.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/dhs-confirms-presence-...

it seems that a number of factions may have been using "stingray" devices and thier contemporary equivalents for some time.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#95

Post by notlukesky »

bootlooped wrote: post #39
abeppu wrote: post #24

Some informed person can probably tell us: are there any technical developments on the horizon which could plausibly make stingrays unviable? From a lay perspective, it seems like cell tech hasn't been designed to meet some criteria that ought to be achievable. - Are there future cell technology standards being planned which would make it harder for a 3rd party device to impersonate a cell tower? (e.g. the police wou…

I don't think American carriers care at all about preventing government spying.

The CEO of Qwest did and he was subsequently jailed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...

From a YCombinator comment: "The way that Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio so meaningfully resisted the government that he was convicted of insider trading for telling people his company would be successful when it actually relied on a government contract that was pulled in retaliation, which he couldn't use as a defense in court because of national security concerns? For which he served four years in prison, and Qwest no longer exists? That sort of meaningfully resist? The message to me from that case is clear—if the US government tells you to jump, you answer, how high."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20369120

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#96

Post by mindgam3 »

rahuldottech wrote: post #90
mindgam3 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if those apps works as well as advertised. https://www.zdnet.com/article/stingray-detector-apps-andorid... Edit: fully removing amp from link

Non-AMP link: https://www.zdnet.com/article/stingray-detector-apps-andorid...

Fixed, thanks.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#99

Post by vageli »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #75
chaps wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As part of some volunteer work I'm doing with Lucy Parsons Labs, I submitted a FOIA request to every single state's largest city, asking for search warrant records that would likely exist on complaints for search warrants, the warrants themselves, or from any audit. About 100 requests in total. After two months, only two cities have sent me their search warrant records. All other states have given me rejections sayin…

I wonder, are court records generated by the issuing of warrants? If so, I imagine you could have gone at it from the other direction and simply gotten a list of warrants and looked for terms that looked stingray-ish. So maybe warrants aren't actually recorded in court records?

> I wonder, are court records generated by the issuing of warrants? If so, I imagine you could have gone at it from the other direction and simply gotten a list of warrants and looked for terms that looked stingray-ish. So maybe warrants aren't actually recorded in court records?

That's probably the case as I believe warrants can be requested even when court is not on session. As someone who has sat in court a couple times I can say the only warrant I ever saw a judge issue was a bench warrant.

Re: ACLU sues Homeland Security over 'stingray' cell phone surveillance

#100

Post by cartoonworld »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #93
tracker1 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of sensitive information with regards to communications infrastructure. Not too dissimilar from various details of sensitive sites not being disclosed to reduce the risk of a coordinated attack. Not saying it's effective, but I can understand the reasoning.

Tower data is public record. Here’s a search aggregator: http://www.antennasearch.com The issue is that the baseband should be handshaking cryptographically with your provider’s towers to prevent MITM attempts, and no downgrade should be possible. Between eSIM and 5G, honestly surprised it’s not a standard yet.

Antennasearch is a good resource, and somehow the database update functions still work, but it appears unmaintained, somewhat janky, and the copyright notice reads 2004-2009. I resent the popup windows and the google maps integration is broken. Luckily, there are several community efforts to map the cell coverage.

Check out https://opencellid.org/ which is an open source WiGLE-esque cell location collection. You can contribute with the TowerCollector[1] android app (also on fdroid).

Mozilla also operates Mozilla Location Services[2] as an API for developers. People can contribute location anonymized data to Mozilla by a settings menu checkbox, or using their special app.

WiGLE[3] of course includes cell tower detection in their wireless geographic logging suite.

[0] https://opencellid.org/

[1] https://github.com/zamojski/TowerCollector/

[2] https://location.services.mozilla.com/

[3] https://www.wigle.net/

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