Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stingrays and Dirtboxes: how cops can secretly track your phone

theintercept.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 215 posts

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

#111

Post by vanusa »

op03 wrote: post #92
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…

It doesn't have to target you directly in order to have a significant negative impact on your life.

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

#112

Post by rootsudo »

gruez wrote: post #104
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

If you have gapps installed (every stock ROM unless you're in china), you should probably assume google is tracking your location through wifi networks. As such, you should probably install lineageos for additional security.

This is more reason then ever to flash a generic android image.

Google does track your wifi and have amassed a huuuuuge library of SSID name, freq, mac addresses and this is what they use alongside IP geo location for google maps and other services.

It's good and also bad. And if you restrict these things, you "look" like a bot so you have increased friction to accessing information!

The looking like a bot, makes sense I get that and ddos prevention but it goes in a circle, doesn't it?

iPhone is not the answer either, but an iphone w/ no google apps doesn't mean you're free from the ecosystem.

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

#113

Post by xkcd-sucks »

Slightly off topic: Why don't cell networks get shut down more often during large protests etc.?

It seems that police use cell phones for internal communications pretty extensively -- Even when there are encrypted radio systems or channels.

My guess is that UX of encrypted radio is generally terrible, and that it's a nightmare to distribute keys to all multiple agencies that might be operating in an area. So departments configure encrypted radio for internal use, but when there's large scale activity they need to fall back to cellphones for guaranteed un-eavesdroppable comms

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

#114

Post by blantonl »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #105
arsome wrote: post #8

Do they even need to bother with a Stingray, can't they basically just pull up whatever provider's law enforcement portal and click a few buttons?

Anecdotally from listening to police scanners, whenever there's an areawide BOLO notice or anything exciting involving a known party, they always say where the last "cellphone ping" was. E.g. "Look out for a Black male driving a white Nissan, last cell ping was on the north side of Lowell 15 minutes ago." Not sure if a warrant is required, but it happens pretty quickly

That data is typically from the cell phone network provider themselves, not stingray and dirtboxes. It's part of the Enhanced 911 system in the United States.

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

#115

Post by chocolatkey »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #93
zamadatix wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On my Samsung Galaxy S10e (Android 10) it is the default

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

#116

Post by mixmastamyk »

notyourday wrote: post #88
alain94040 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this possible?

Unless you can physically disconnect the battery, your phone may not actually be fully off. For example, on my Android phone should I drain the battery into oblivion ( let the phone die ) and let it sit for about a week in that state, takes about 90 seconds to become fully functional to the lock screen from the moment it is plugged into a charger. On the other hand if I do hard power off of a phone followed by poweri…

I had assumed phone hardware generally won't power on until the battery has charged to 5% or so, ostensibly to prevent power drops. Not sure which idea is more accurate without a mobile electronics engineer chiming in.

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

#117

Post by omarchowdhury »

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

Are these logins legally purchasable or is there some black/grey market for them?

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

#118

Post by sschueller »

AftHurrahWinch wrote: post #74
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

In Portland hundreds of demonstrators used the mesh-networking app Bridgefy, and some affinity groups used goTennas which even served streaming movies, music, and documentaries that spoke to the revolutionary tenor.

How does bridgefy make money? It's not open source. The website leads to a level 3 default page.

How do you know the feds don't own it?

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

#119

Post by mixmastamyk »

jjulius wrote: post #4
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.

You can't expect end users with little-to-no technical know-how to have the same common knowledge that you do.

Most folks generally understand how radio works.

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

#120

Post by ideals »

throwaway_drt2 wrote: post #49

I used to work for DRT, they make the "dirtbox" mentioned in the article. I would really encourage journalists to dig more into this company and their products.

You could contact https://twitter.com/KenKlippenstein via Signal with any information you didn't see in the article which should be. He seems to be a journalist interested in related fields.

No one is going to know unless the people who worked there reach out.

Post reply on HN