Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

91–100 of 230 posts

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

#91
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it might be emotional if you're one of these people about to be sent to South Sudan It's either right or wrong for ICE to run a dragnet through a city, cuffing everyone, checking their papers, as they hope to find someone undocumented. Either human beings have rights and deserve due process, or they don't. People are reduced to the point of keeping airtags on them so loved ones and their lawyers can find them be…

[flagged]

> Really don't understand the hyper-emotional hyperbole around this topic.

If you can’t understand the emotion of being sent to a random country and being separated from your family, I can’t help you.

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? They're either chasing down people with an administrative warrant (which as far as I can tell are largely valid) or they're using reasonable suspicion which SCOTUS just decided can be determined by a combination of ethnic, economic, and geographic factors. The latter seems wrongly-decided but it is lawful by definition. What actions are you referring to and what is the treasonous intent? They seem to just be sel…

The SCOTUS abdicating their duty to the constitution does not make ICE's actions any less illegal, it just makes the Supreme Court as an institution illegitimate. It is unfortunate that things have devolved so far, but it is more important than ever that we state things clearly and succinctly in the face of those that have decided the constitution no longer matters.

Immigration 'mostly' falls under plenary powers of The Congress and the courts have little to no authority in these matters (similar to how Presidential pardons may not be overturned by the Court or Congress). This legal theory has been changing over time but it still mostly holds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenary_power https://cis.org/Report/Plenary-Power-Should-Judges-Control-U...

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well also a lot of what they're doing to enforce laws without warrants, arresting citizens without cause, lack of due process, etc is illegal. But a lot of this won't change without "active, provocative, non-violent" resistance as Gandhi would say.

Out of curiosity, what makes "arresting citizens" illegal? If I'm in a crowd in the presence of a number of other law breakers, why would I think that I couldn't ever be temporarily detained? I mean, yes, it shouldn't be indefinite and there shouldn't be a high bar to clear to prove actual innocence, but we have process for this. I can be arrested without much provocation at all. I then have to be charged, I have the…

[deleted]

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might believe SCOTUS has abdicated their duty, but that doesn’t make it illegal. The whole reason the Supreme Court exists is because there is no such thing as “clearly illegal” without some kind of adjudicating body that can decide if something breaks the law. Laws aren’t like math axioms; you can’t prove or disprove that a law has been broken with pure logic, you have to have humans interpret the words and appl…

By definition, the law is what we, collectively, agree on as being the law. The Supreme Court is only able to serve as the executor of the law on the basis of the institution being seen as legitimate and by virtue of being given that right by society. The Supreme Court suddenly deciding that the constitution does not matter does not make their decision law, it erodes trust in that institution and removes their mandat…

Immigration has always come under the plenary powers of The Congress and is not subject to judicial review. This plenary power doctrine has weakened over the centuries but it still holds.

https://cis.org/Report/Plenary-Power-Should-Judges-Control-U...

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean we created an environment where people could come and find success and live their lives, and we perhaps weren’t as strict as we could’ve been in some situations… I don’t think that violently kidnapping people off the streets, without showing badges, in unmarked vehicles, masked, etc is a punishment that fits the crime. Missing a court date once multiple years ago, failing to navigate a complex process, an…

"due process" means "This is the process the government must follow" and is not shorthand for "You are allowed to appeal to the USSC". I think most people would be surprised how little process is owed to someone who is not legally present in the United States and how few opportunities there are for appeal.

Little... but not none.

Follow the law. I'm not asking for more process than the law specifies, but ICE has to actually follow the law. If they won't, then they no longer have legal authority to do what they're doing, and they're just another gang.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They bring their own ill-fitting gear and jump out of U-hauls. Sure they have the occasional off-the-shelf imsi catcher. "Wannabe paramilitary", final offer.

> bring their own ill-fitting gear and jump out of U-hauls ICE ran a 5AM motorcade through my mountain town, compete with helicopter escort. We’re in a red state, though, and border a red farm state, so I understand they were actually told to knock it off. > "Wannabe paramilitary", final offer The only part of a definition [1] that ICE might fail is in whether they’re professionally designated to act as a secret poli…

I'm unfamiliar with the business of finding illegal immigrants. Isn't the idea of detaining them that you're worried they might flee if they know they're going to be deported? If so isn't it counterproductive for ICE to make noise (announcing themselves basically) if doing a 5am raid for farm workers? You'd think showing up at the field in a separate bus and spreading out would work best.

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

#99

Why aren't they using the official lawful interception interfaces? They will get all the data. Not only voice, data and SMS/RCS. All modern smartphones (like Pixels) allow you to switch off 2G. They even warn if you want to activate it.

Lawful interception requires things like paperwork, warrants, probably cause, and some kind of reason why you need to tap cellular comms in the first place. If you're operating a deportation agency in the style of roaming gangs of officers, you're probably not going to want to wait for the courts to dismiss your brute-force attempts to find illegals behind every door you break down.

The anti-2G security measure is pretty much exclusive to a few high-end phones as far as I can tell. iPhones can enable it with lockdown mode (which also disables things like JIT and can make websites and app run slower), Google has added a toggle, and I think a few other manufacturers have it too, but you need support in the modem firmware to actually do anything with it.

Even then, 3G and 4G can also leak identifiers if you can fake being a base station. The identifiers are not as easy to obtain as on 2G, but there's a reason 5G added a masking feature to LTE. Especially combined with access to an SS7 capable line, you can pretty much replicate all of the 2G hacks with cellular tech at least up to 4G, maybe even newer than that.

Cellular firmware protection mechanisms seem to be targeting 2G exploitation so far. It'd be extremely unpractical (and probably impossible) to enforce some kind of "5G NR only" mode, but without such a mode you're going to be at risk of Stingray-like devices.

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

#100
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well it might be emotional if you're one of these people about to be sent to South Sudan It's either right or wrong for ICE to run a dragnet through a city, cuffing everyone, checking their papers, as they hope to find someone undocumented. Either human beings have rights and deserve due process, or they don't. People are reduced to the point of keeping airtags on them so loved ones and their lawyers can find them be…

>It's either right or wrong for ICE to run a dragnet through a city, cuffing everyone, checking their papers, as they hope to find someone undocumented.

What does the fact that ICE is doing it to catch illegal matter? Because as far as I'm concerned ICE has no bearing on this. It's wrong no matter who does it or what their goals are.

Being an illegal is barely a crime. Whoops, you overstayed your visa, big fucking deal. If we are going to take issue with this sort of enforcement behavior used on such minor infractions then we need to do so on principal, because not giving a shit when it was used on drug dealers and terrorists and tax evaders and everything else that's "bad" is how we fucking got here.

Post reply on HN