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Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

theintercept.com

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Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#91

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

inetknght wrote: post #82
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fund schools. Hire tech capable teachers that care. Funding only works if it's toward this specific end.

> Hire tech capable teachers that care. I know teachers who make and have to pay out-of-pocket for supplies. Good luck attracting tech talent with that salary. So, again: fund schools.

You've misrepresented my premise by quoting it without the context.

Funding incapable teachers can't advance your goal. As long as the plan is "Fund schools." and nothing at all follows the period "." then students will have properly funded incapable teachers.

Source: Father to 5, who've attended 25 years of well funded and less funded schools. That's well over 100 teachers I've met with & learned about. Zero teachers understood technology on a level that would enable them to teach the nuances of technology safety. Many (if not most) would have been handicapped by the misunderstandings they held about tech.

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#92

Post by op03 »

jeffbee wrote: post #2

TL;DR it's a radio in your pocket that constantly announces its identity. I'm quite interested in the fact that people don't realize this. Is it a generational split between people who can remember when we did not all have radios in our pockets and those who can't, or ??? The fact that an always-on radio you carry everywhere can be used to track you seems like the #1 most obvious thing about the technology.

Do the math.

The odds of someone targeting you (just for kicks) aren't that high.

But don't tell Glenn Greenwald that cause then he has to go find something else to scare you with, to capture your attention in our current useless "state of fear" preserving info tsunami ecosystem.

But anyway lets do the math...

The US has 200 cops per million. Lets say 1% of that million are born douchebags and there is another 1% who have turned douchebagy for whatever reason.

So you have 200 cops to deal with 20000 bad guys per million. So in general they have enough going on keeping them occupied.

Now even if you assume they don't spend any time doing their job and all of them spend all their time fixating on you and no one else, the chances of them picking on you out of the million other options are still pretty low.

What makes it even lower is if you apply the 2% douchebag rule to the cops themselves, you get probably 2 bad apples in that 200.

But to indulge you lets apply it also to anyone who has access to the same privacy violating tech - bank managers, google engineers, telco engineers, the military, rich ppl etc. Keep adding whatever category you feel like and applying the 2% rule. You wont raise the odds too badly.

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#93

Post by mixmastamyk »

zamadatix wrote: post #89
refurb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but if you're arrested, what's stopping the cops from matching the phones MAC to public wifi connections?

Since Android 9 there is an option to use randomized MACs for the actual connection (not just probing).

Most folks won't be aware of an option unless it is default.

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#94

Post by baybal2 »

sandstrom wrote: post #48

Anyone know of any progress in 6G, that would improve privacy in this area? For example randomized (or truly encrypted) IMEI numbers? Also, I found this SIM card which seems to be doing IMEI randomization: https://omertadigital.com/blogs/news/encrypted-sim-cards-wha...

> Anyone know of any progress in 6G, that would improve privacy in this area?

One of members of numerous 6G working groups is Huawei. If you remember, they recently proposed to replace the whole IP protocol with one where every packet must be cryptosigned by ISP.

This SIM feels like a complete BS. IMSI is managed by the phone, not SIM.

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#95

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

helios_invictus wrote: post #72
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #34

Pro-tip: If you want fairly good OPSEC when going to a protest, get a burner Android phone, put it on airplane mode with WIFI only. Then purchase a couple of Comcast / Xfiniti logins off the web, and use those to connect to "xfiniti-wifi" hotspots. Most cities have them, the speeds are fairly decent too. We're truly living in the panopticon

You should not have to be good at opsec or economically advantaged to be able to demonstrate.

Completely agree, between DHS compiling information on journalists and unmarked vans picking up protesters, it's like the Arab Spring

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#96

Post by TallGuyShort »

mellow2020 wrote: post #83
jccc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it enough that a few people like this simply turn their backs and walk away to different work? I would think their vacancies would be quickly and easily filled. Is there really a shortage of people willing and able to do this kind of work for these companies and government agencies? I'm asking because I truly don't know. And if not, could we think of some other ways people in these positions could exert some influ…

You can't change rape by being a good rapist. All that serves IMO is to normalize being an accomplice and doing evil things with good intentions. > People have a series of rationalizations. People say for example that science and technology have their own logic, that they are in fact autonomous. This particular rationalization is profoundly false. It is not true that science marches on in defiance of human will, inde…

If a rapist stops being a rapist, does someone immediately turn around and pay someone else to become a rapist? No? Then the rape analogy isn't a perfect fit. The question is still valid, IMO.

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#97

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

refurb wrote: post #69
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #34

Pro-tip: If you want fairly good OPSEC when going to a protest, get a burner Android phone, put it on airplane mode with WIFI only. Then purchase a couple of Comcast / Xfiniti logins off the web, and use those to connect to "xfiniti-wifi" hotspots. Most cities have them, the speeds are fairly decent too. We're truly living in the panopticon

Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but if you're arrested, what's stopping the cops from matching the phones MAC to public wifi connections?

Realistically nothing, however if they're using a Stingray to target large swaths of people, you're more likely to avoid getting your phone pinged on WIFI. Not to mention going after specific MAC info from Xfinity takes a long time.

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#98

Post by sbierwagen »

helios_invictus wrote: post #72
GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #34

Pro-tip: If you want fairly good OPSEC when going to a protest, get a burner Android phone, put it on airplane mode with WIFI only. Then purchase a couple of Comcast / Xfiniti logins off the web, and use those to connect to "xfiniti-wifi" hotspots. Most cities have them, the speeds are fairly decent too. We're truly living in the panopticon

You should not have to be good at opsec or economically advantaged to be able to demonstrate.

Then don't bring a cell phone to a protest?

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#99

Post by jagged-chisel »

samtheprogram wrote: post #41
jagged-chisel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was comfortable I think perhaps you meant the opposite? You have about 30min to edit your comment...

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, the other words in GP’s comment, along with his other comment here [1], clearly indicate that you’re right. Unfortunately it looks like 30 minutes have gone by. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24039707

Not to mention the logical discontinuity in “I left because I was comfortable” - I’d expect one to stay if they were comfortable. I would expect them to leave if they were not comfortable. But regardless of my expectations, I certainly could have been wrong.

According to several other comments of theirs, discomfort drove them out. So I didn’t believe I was incorrect. It’s been awhile since I commented, so I hadn’t even noticed any downvotes.

Re: Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

#100

Post by sbierwagen »

ExThermoGuy wrote: post #79
alain94040 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this possible?

Your phone is never really off.

Heads up: your account has been autobanned, maybe because you're commenting too many times as a new user, or for some other reason.
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