Feds Put Fake Cell Towers On Planes, Spied On Tons Of Innocent Americans by Mike Masnick. (TechDirt.)
From the post:
The Wall Street Journal broke the news that the DOJ has been spying on tons of innocent Americans by putting fake mobile phone towers on airplanes and scooping up all sorts of data from people who thought they were connecting to regular mobile phone towers.
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You can search Techdirt for more stories on Stingray (fake mobile phone towers). As of today, 4,920 results.
See the Wikiepdia entry for IMSI catcher for general information on how such devices work.
For a recent take on defensive measures as well as pointers to DYI IMSI catchers, see: IMSI-Catch Me If You Can: IMSI-Catcher-Catchers by Adrian Dabrowski, et al. (preprint, paper to appear at ACSAC 2014, December 8-12, New Orleans.)
Not that anyone would consider sitting outside federal or law enforcement facilities to spy on not-so-innocent Americans and posting those results online but outliers do exist.
Federal surveillance will stop when the cost of a surveillance society becomes too high. Anyone suggesting otherwise is either uninformed, a liar, or both.
PS: Techdirt doesn’t mention them but even if government agents don’t use a private plane, other danger zones for you include:
- Black Friday shopping malls (and other high traffic shopping days)
- Golf courses
- Graduation (Google Search)
- Megachurch services (Google Search)
- New Year’s Eve Celebrations
- Parades (Google Search)
- Sports events
- Resorts
Any large gathering of people is a potential target for gathering cellphone data. (not to mention them sitting outside your home)
PPS: Warning: Applicable law on interception of electronic communications varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This post covers technical aspects of these techniques and their current usage, with pointers to further information. No representation is made concerning the legality of any of the described activities or equipment. Consult legal counsel concerning your rights and liabilities under local law.