Exclusive: Evidence of cell phone surveillance detected at anti-ICE protest
san.com
external-link
Mobile network anomalies consistent with cell phone surveillance were detected at a July 4 protest at an ICE field office in Washington state.
@[email protected]
link
fedilink
6
edit-2
1d

why cell phones don’t authenticate the towers they connect to.

I believe it’s because they assume it’s not necessary because it was until now

  • prohibitively expensive, but now a “tower” is less than 2k EUR e.g. https://www.crowdsupply.com/ukama/ukama
  • prohibitively complex, see above, namely you don’t need to be a TelCo engineer to get it going
  • probably illegal, namely you needed (and I bet still need in most places) wireless band allocation before you could deploy anything

… so I imagine there was no authentication because there was no practical threat beside few “fun” examples in CCC or DEF Con.

The use of Stingray by US law enforcement has been challenged on grounds that the law enforcement agencies have no spectrum license. Those challenges seem not to have found success.

On the other hand, prisons in the US have been stopped from operating cell phone jammers on prison grounds, on the same complaint of no spectrum license.

Create a post

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

  • 1 user online
  • 32 users / day
  • 150 users / week
  • 309 users / month
  • 1.58K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 3.78K Posts
  • 47K Comments
  • Modlog