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ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

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Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#191

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

shakna wrote: post #189
CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe's size may not lead you to comprehending the US' size. Why not? Europe seems to be about 10 million km2 in land size, and the USA 9 million km2. Are you trying to say that because Europe has bigger land size, it's hard for Europeans to imagine individual states' sizes?

By everyone thinking you can get 100% coverage across the Great Basin Desert? Yes. Yes I do think that the population density of Europe leads them to think everything is closer and easier than it is. That one desert, of many, is about 190,000 miles in size. That's half the size of the whole of France. Are you really saying covering that, with 100% coverage, with no dead spots at all, is a reasonable task to undertake…

> Are you really saying covering that, with 100% coverage, with no dead spots at all, is a reasonable task to undertake?

Well, do people live in this desert? If not, then I wouldn't say that's reasonable.

But then I don't feel like your replies here are reasonable either and pretty disingenuous overall, so maybe lets just leave it at that, and you can continue believe your country is much bigger than it is.

Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#192

Post by Nervhq »

intermerda wrote: post #163
msie wrote: post #97

I hear ICE's budget has grown to an absurd amount and they can operate through the shutdown.

Trump's bill allocated 170 billion dollars to ICE. That figure is greater than annual defense spending of every country in the world other than US and China. I believe it's spread over four years, so amortized over that time period it would have more budget than all but 12 countries in the world.

[flagged]

Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#193

Post by shakna »

CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #191
shakna wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By everyone thinking you can get 100% coverage across the Great Basin Desert? Yes. Yes I do think that the population density of Europe leads them to think everything is closer and easier than it is. That one desert, of many, is about 190,000 miles in size. That's half the size of the whole of France. Are you really saying covering that, with 100% coverage, with no dead spots at all, is a reasonable task to undertake…

> Are you really saying covering that, with 100% coverage, with no dead spots at all, is a reasonable task to undertake? Well, do people live in this desert? If not, then I wouldn't say that's reasonable. But then I don't feel like your replies here are reasonable either and pretty disingenuous overall, so maybe lets just leave it at that, and you can continue believe your country is much bigger than it is.

Yes, people do.

But no, I don't live in America. I live in the much, much, much less dense country of Australia. Where tourists frequently die, because they believe that they'll have cell signal everywhere.

Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#194

Post by godelski »

CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #188
shakna wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe's size may not lead you to comprehending the US' size. East to west, Texas is larger than most European nations. Meaning it has rural areas larger than some European nations. Whilst there probably are other complaints to add to build the explanation, scale isn't one. The US does have vast and empty spaces.

> Europe's size may not lead you to comprehending the US' size. Why not? Europe seems to be about 10 million km2 in land size, and the USA 9 million km2. Are you trying to say that because Europe has bigger land size, it's hard for Europeans to imagine individual states' sizes?

Size can mean multiple things.

Here's some quick facts comparing population and area

  - There are 17 European countries >100km2 but 37 US states are
  - 13 states (only one of those is 100 people/km2 but 25 European countries do (I'm rounding Albania up)
  - California, the most populous state, is smaller than Sweeden, but larger than Germany in area. It has half the population of Germany. 90% of CA's population lives in 5% of the area (near SF and LA)
  - Driving North-South through California takes a bit over 13hrs but if you add 30 minutes you'll only hit one of those areas. 
  - Driving East-West across Texas takes 12 hrs and you'll only go through 2 major cities. You are likely to see more tornadoes than cities and definitely more cows than people (I know from experience)
Most of the US population is in the East and West coasts. With far more in the east. Most of the US is just empty, but also the land is not nearly as nice as in Europe.

I don't think it is hard for Europeans to imagine individual state sizes, but likely won't imagine how empty it is. Hell, even Americans aren't good at that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_Europea...

Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#195

Post by DaSHacka »

Nervhq wrote: post #192
intermerda wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump's bill allocated 170 billion dollars to ICE. That figure is greater than annual defense spending of every country in the world other than US and China. I believe it's spread over four years, so amortized over that time period it would have more budget than all but 12 countries in the world.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#196

Post by Havoc »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #128
godelski wrote: post #106

If you're running an Android phone open settings > Network & Internet > Internet > click on your network (e.g. Google Fi) > turn on 2G network protection (at the bottom). Alternatively: Security & privacy > Advanced Protection > Device protection. That does other stuff too though I'm not aware of a way to do this on iPhones... I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that many of these attacks work by performing 2G…

> a way to do this on iPhones A quick search suggests Lockdown mode might do it, which is corroborated by their support docs. It also does a bunch of other things that will probably degrade most users' experience, for what it's worth. https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120 > Wireless connectivity: Your device won't automatically join non-secure Wi-Fi networks and will disconnect from a non-secure Wi-Fi network when y…

There is also a 5G standalone option that forces everything on to 5g

That would appear to cut 4G too though which is not great

Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#197

Post by habinero »

godelski wrote: post #175
xvector wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security engineer here. Bundling these together actually makes sense. - Message attachments are blocked because Apple has not figured out to serialize and deserialize attachments without buffer overflows. Look at how many zero days are due to message attachments. It's pretty clownish tbh. - FaceTime is blocked because Apple has not figured out how to prevent an incoming FaceTime call from silently spying on you, whic…

I'm sorry, but you didn't make a case for bundling together and why finer grain control is would not make sense. I have no doubt that the problems you guys solve are incredibly complex. There is no question about that. But does bundling really make sense? I'm not sure why being subject to a 2G downgrade attack is relevant to my threat model including message attachments or FaceTime. For example, going to a concert, p…

Also security engineer here. You're thinking too small and in the wrong direction. You're not protecting against 2G downgrade attacks, you're protecting against an attacker who has a whole library of things to try on you to see what works.

Lockdown mode is intended to protect against sophisticated actors, the kind who will buy 0days for six or seven figures, roll it into a new version of their product and sell it to governments.

Lockdown mode blocks the riskiest parts of the platform. For example, iMessage no longer automatically unfurls links, because anyone can send you a message and potentially send an exploit that your phone happily triggers without you doing anything.

You don't get to pick a la carte because Apple wants the feature to be effective and simple to enable.

Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#199

Post by habinero »

cosmicgadget wrote: post #166
joshuahedlund wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about denying the Fourth Amendment rights of US citizens to be secure in their homes in the recent Chicago apartment raid? https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-sufferable-evil How about detaining US citizens without warrants for days at a time and then releasing with no charges? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/09/george-...

Let's hope the people not subject to a warrant sue ICE's pants off. As far as I can tell, most of the dragnets are either in public places or with the permission of the property owner. I'd love to be wrong because it means the judciary has a chance to shut this down but I fear outside of a few civil rights suits this will have to be remedied at the ballot box.

It's essentially impossible to sue ICE, they have qualified immunity. Police have been doing similar things for years.

Re: ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones

#200

Post by cosmicgadget »

habinero wrote: post #199
cosmicgadget wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope the people not subject to a warrant sue ICE's pants off. As far as I can tell, most of the dragnets are either in public places or with the permission of the property owner. I'd love to be wrong because it means the judciary has a chance to shut this down but I fear outside of a few civil rights suits this will have to be remedied at the ballot box.

It's essentially impossible to sue ICE, they have qualified immunity. Police have been doing similar things for years.

The officers do, not the agency or police department. People sue and win against police departments all the time.
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