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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

#141

Post by auiya »

pacala wrote: post #50
calibas wrote: post #12

Stingray use requires a warrant and every case should be dismissed where one was used without a warrant. I'm sure that's the main reason they want to hide the use of stingrays, they know they're doing something wrong. Police having the ability to spy on everyone with little to no oversight is nightmarish authoritarianism, it's completely against the spirit of American democracy, not to mention in violation of The Con…

OTOH, Google and Facebook, with annual incomes larger than the GDP of a medium European country, can log everyone’s every breath, on the internet and, more recently, in real life, with impunity. I just can’t wrap my head how the municipal police doing it is “nightmarish authoritarianism”, but big adtech, de facto way more powerful, gets a cursory pass.

The argument is that you use those products and give them that information voluntarily, however under-handed the tactics are to get you to volunteer that info. Law enforcement surveillance isn't voluntary.

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

#142

Post by Fenrisulfr »

bluGill wrote: post #133
mLuby wrote: post #74

If we had a crowd-sourced database of cell towers (picture & coordinates) wouldn't it then be straightforward to know (and report) when your phone wasn't connecting to a legitimate tower? I for one want to make sure the criminals aren't intercepting my signal with home-made stingrays; the police have other lawful ways to get what they need.

No, because the cell carriers have "tower in a box" kits that they make available to various people. These are real towers, but they move often. If you go to a large event (something like burning man, though I don't know if they do for that specific event) there is a good chance the carrier has scattered a few of these around the venue because the fixed location towers (often miles away) would be overwhelmed and nobo…

Agreed - there are companies that specialize in ad-hoc towers to provide service. Example: Mobilitie in Chicago. Very important piece of mobile data infrastructure, but a rogue tower is still a real security risk.

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

#143

Post by arminiusreturns »

syshum wrote: post #134
arminiusreturns wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third party doctrine loophole is huge and not likely to be impacted very much by this, unfortunately. Here's a relevant talk from the National Constitution Center, if you want to hear some of the nuance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW32k7x7zE0

Third party doctrine has little to with this case, I agree it is a problem, but that is not what I was talking about in my post The Thrid Pary doctrine allows the Government to end run the 4th amendment if you discloused info to a 3rd party. In this instance, the government is claiming they do not have to talk about the technology at all, even to the point of proving it actually does what they claim. In criminal Trai…

True, but I was talking about the actual issue primarily being that Stingrays are mostly micro targeted, often with warrants due to costs, etc, while the vast majority of cell providers have warrantless, sometimes even subpoena-less web portals for LEAs to conduct spying operations on the public, or how the vast majority of the cell tower companies (separate from the major providers) themselves have the most useful information and do the same types of things.

While stingrays are an issue, the vast majority of spying on cell phone users (read: vast majority of US pop) comes from those other mechanisms which do employ the third party doctrine loopholes. I should have been more specific, but you are right about Stingray.

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

#144

Post by cartoonworld »

nitrogen wrote: post #108
cartoonworld wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are they not registered with the FCC?

A sibling comment noted the FCC rules for antenna structures. FCC regulates some of this, and the cell towers should all be on that list. That said, I don't know how to easily access the FCC information aside from a service like antennasearch or some other thing. There are also paid services for this sort of thing. IF you are searching for towers, also make use of a fiber search, as all these towers need fiber to run, unless they use backhauls or something which seems less likely. The towers are usually owned by something like COMTECH III, LLC and then the entities leasing the tower space operate everything else.

In addition to the FCC, FAA, there should be a massive public paper trail for tower construction. The locality, state, and feds are involved in this.

So, in a roundabout way, I think your thoughts were: "If FCC regulated and lists this, why the tower search crap?" The reason is that if you get the FCC, state, and local to OK your tower and use it for long range deer hunting, the FAA maps will still show your 220ft deer stand, but there are likely no cellular transceivers on the tower. On a cell tower there could easily be 2 today, and then 4 next month.

So the location and use of the towers doesn't always coincide with the cellular network equipment hanging off it, which is what would need to be monitored.

Also I'd wager that the open sensor method of opencellid, MLS, WiGLE will give you better data. If you are doing your own research, it would be greatly helpful to compare to the official lists, but you'll need to verify it anyhow.

If anybody is doing this work I would be interested in knowing more about this landscape.

Interesting stuff.

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

#145

Post by tomlu »

PeterisP wrote: post #103
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…

The key factor is the compatibility with international roaming - customers, manufacturers and operators really want the phone to "just work" when you step out of a plane in a random place where the only cell tower in range is run by an operator that was established after your phone was made. There can't be a global list of 'trusted operators' for political reasons (long story), and in order to make calls, your phone…

> The key factor is the compatibility with international roaming

You could have an encryption setting in the phone, and the handshake with the network could have a bit telling you the setting isn't supported.

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

#146

Post by greyhair »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #30
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…

5G is by nature shorter range, which at least makes the surveillance harder to do and more targeted when it happens. But I can't say much for the protocol, having not done much with it.

mmWave 5G is shorter range.

5G runs also on sub-6. The spec defines the modulation and the network, it doesn't hard-spec the frequency.

So the coverage on low band 5G will be the same as 4G

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

#148

Post by greyhair »

I have a femtocell in my home, because my small neighborhood sits in a dead zone. Not a repeater, a full femtocell.

To the casual security conscious user, that is probably going to look like a 'stingray', since you will be walking down the street with a gradually dropping RSSI, when all at once, boom, you walk into a five bar signal and life is good.

It covers about a 300 ft radius with the most blessedly beautiful signal you can imagine. Maxes out at 100Mb/S, since that is all the backhaul it gets from the ISP where it is connected. (Not that I am complaining about 100/100 in the house.)

But it isn't a Stingray. It is a fully secure registered femtocell base station.

Given that it hasn't moved in five years, it may well be on someone's map of established cell towers.

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

#149

Post by biofrack »

PeterisP wrote: post #103
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…

The key factor is the compatibility with international roaming - customers, manufacturers and operators really want the phone to "just work" when you step out of a plane in a random place where the only cell tower in range is run by an operator that was established after your phone was made. There can't be a global list of 'trusted operators' for political reasons (long story), and in order to make calls, your phone…

>can't do end to end ....

so then you use a vpn and voip instead of using the phone system directly...

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

#150

Post by thatcat »

auiya wrote: post #141
pacala wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, Google and Facebook, with annual incomes larger than the GDP of a medium European country, can log everyone’s every breath, on the internet and, more recently, in real life, with impunity. I just can’t wrap my head how the municipal police doing it is “nightmarish authoritarianism”, but big adtech, de facto way more powerful, gets a cursory pass.

The argument is that you use those products and give them that information voluntarily, however under-handed the tactics are to get you to volunteer that info. Law enforcement surveillance isn't voluntary.

If police use the lack of information from those avenues as a justification for a warrant to conduct surveillance then that argument is moot.
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