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Tracking Via Anonymous SIM Cards
Noryungi writes "The New York Times reports that Al Qaeda operatives were tracked using the ID of the GSM phone chips sold by a Swiss company named Swisscom. Very interesting."
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And now that the terrorists have moved on to other techniques, is our privacy restored by removing the ability to track users' cell phones? Of course not.
The lame excuse we are given is that we need to track cell phones for 911 purposes, but that needn't be mandated by the government. If you want a cell phone that can give your location to authorities, buy one with a built-in GPS receiver that transmits your location. There was never any legitimate need to upgrade the infrastructure to allow for tracking any cell user at will.
It's no different than what happened after TWA 800 was shot down by the Navy. They screamed "Terrorist! Terrorist!" and so they placed all these onerous security restrictions on the public (having to show your papers when travelling, for instance.) But once they agree on a cover story implicating the center fuel tank exploding (something that had never happened before and has never happened since), do they restore our privacy and our liberty?
Not on your life.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Big breaking news! Who'd have thunk it?!? They can track you via your cell phone!
And in other big breaking news:
Did you hear about the Lindbergh baby?
You are being tracked too!
For great justice and hot grits all over NATALIE PORTMAN !
How is this a big deal, they can track cell phones... not news.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The terrorism investigation code-named Mont Blanc began almost by accident in April 2002, when authorities intercepted a cellphone call that lasted less than a minute and involved not a single word of conversation. Investigators, suspicious that the call was a signal between terrorists [...]
Read that again: investigators became suspicious after listening to the call. They basically admit to what people have suspected for years: that intelligence agencies cast a broad net to monitor all sorts of communications traffic with little regard to the law or your privacy.
Naturally, playing the Fear Card will let them justify their actions. "Fear" is government's best excuse for carte blanche destruction of your freedoms.
Trolling is a art,
aaaa
The terrorists were lulled into a false sense of security when they kept changing phones, but took their SIM cards from one phone to the next to keep their number and minutes. Therefore, while the hardware changed, the identity didn't. That's what did them in...
traked via anonymous post
The terrorism investigation code-named Mont Blanc began almost by accident in April 2002, when authorities intercepted a cellphone call that lasted less than a minute and involved not a single word of conversation.
I think what I find particularily frightening about that sentence from the article is the implication that this was initiated by what appears to be routine cellphone monitoring.
Is this kind of thing routine?
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
for buying 867-5309.
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Before anybody thinks the spooks were monitoring the "anonymous" prepaid cell phones randomly... RTFA. What got the investigation started was that they found a list of phone numbers when arresting another terrorist, and they all turned out to lead into the hands of high-value targets and the people who spoke to them.
it was the Freemasons that shot down TWA 800.
So they think I am always in my underwear drawer, since that is where the SIM card for my last GSM phone has resided for the last year.
TDMA for life!
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
Swisscom
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
a little terrifying, but not so terrifying that i'm going to stop using my cell phone. hey, i don't fit the profile and i only discuss my evil plans back-to-back through a voice modulator. and my secret code is way cooler than thirty seconds of silence.
-ninjaneer
Now if only they could let 911 and others (pizza delivery man) pinpoint your location using your cell phone I would be find with it but just to let to GOV know where I am at all times just because is kind of a pain in the ass.
even though the NYT link works! (thanks google partnership) _____________________ March 4, 2004 How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and DESMOND BUTLER ONDON, March 2 -- The terrorism investigation code-named Mont Blanc began almost by accident in April 2002, when authorities intercepted a cellphone call that lasted less than a minute and involved not a single word of conversation. Investigators, suspicious that the call was a signal between terrorists, followed the trail first to one terror suspect, then to others, and eventually to terror cells on three continents. What tied them together was a computer chip smaller than a fingernail. But before the investigation wound down in recent weeks, its global net caught dozens of suspected Qaeda members and disrupted at least three planned attacks in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, according to counterterrorism and intelligence officials in Europe and the United States. The investigation helped narrow the search for one of the most wanted men in the world, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to three intelligence officials based in Europe. American authorities arrested Mr. Mohammed in Pakistan last March. For two years, investigators now say, they were able to track the conversations and movements of several Qaeda leaders and dozens of operatives after determining that the suspects favored a particular brand of cellphone chip. The chips carry prepaid minutes and allow phone use around the world. Investigators said they believed that the chips, made by Swisscom of Switzerland, were popular with terrorists because they could buy the chips without giving their names. "They thought these phones protected their anonymity, but they didn't," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. Even without personal information, the authorities were able to conduct routine monitoring of phone conversations. A half dozen senior officials in the United States and Europe agreed to talk in detail about the previously undisclosed investigation because, they said, it was completed. They also said they had strong indications that terror suspects, alert to the phones' vulnerability, had largely abandoned them for important communications and instead were using e-mail, Internet phone calls and hand-delivered messages. "This was one of the most effective tools we had to locate Al Qaeda," said a senior counterterrorism official in Europe. "The perception of anonymity may have lulled them into a false sense of security. We now believe that Al Qaeda has figured out that we were monitoring them through these phones." The officials called the operation one of the most successful investigations since Sept. 11, 2001, and an example of unusual cooperation between agencies in different countries. Led by the Swiss, the investigation involved agents from more than a dozen countries, including the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Britain and Italy. Cellphones have played a major role in the constant jousting between terrorists and intelligence agencies. In their requests for more investigative powers, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other officials have repeatedly cited the importance of monitoring portable phones. Each success by investigators seems to drive terrorists either to more advanced -- or to more primitive -- communications. During the American bombing of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001, American authorities reported hearing Osama bin Laden speaking to his associates on a satellite phone. Since then, Mr. bin Laden has communicated with handwritten messages delivered by trusted couriers, officials said. In 2002 the German authorities broke up a cell after monitoring calls by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been linked by some top American officials to Al Qaeda, in which he could be heard ordering attacks on Jewish targets in Germany. Since then, investigators say, Mr. Zarqawi has been more cautious. "If you beat terrorists over the head enough, they lear
When I bought my latest phone, I had to get the SIM card activated, the salesman asked me for my name, address, etc.. so I began pulling out my wallet for him to copy my ID down. So instead.. he gives me a scrap piece of paper and a pen to put it down, this really seems weird to me.
Nothing was stopping me from putting down the wrong info (looking back now, maybe I should have). It just struck me as odd how easy it would have been to fake it all..
I'd use slashdot to post messages. No one would figure that a site this dumb can be used for anything evil
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Dit is toch een engelstalige site? ;-)
Like in Bad Company, starring Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock.
Terrorists setting off a dirty bomb in NYC? Is that really so bad? Isn't gay marriage more important?
March 4, 2004
How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web
By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and DESMOND BUTLER
ONDON, March 2 -- The terrorism investigation code-named Mont Blanc began almost by accident in April 2002, when authorities intercepted a cellphone call that lasted less than a minute and involved not a single word of conversation.
Investigators, suspicious that the call was a signal between terrorists, followed the trail first to one terror suspect, then to others, and eventually to terror cells on three continents.
What tied them together was a computer chip smaller than a fingernail. But before the investigation wound down in recent weeks, its global net caught dozens of suspected Qaeda members and disrupted at least three planned attacks in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, according to counterterrorism and intelligence officials in Europe and the United States.
The investigation helped narrow the search for one of the most wanted men in the world, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to three intelligence officials based in Europe. American authorities arrested Mr. Mohammed in Pakistan last March.
For two years, investigators now say, they were able to track the conversations and movements of several Qaeda leaders and dozens of operatives after determining that the suspects favored a particular brand of cellphone chip. The chips carry prepaid minutes and allow phone use around the world.
Investigators said they believed that the chips, made by Swisscom of Switzerland, were popular with terrorists because they could buy the chips without giving their names.
"They thought these phones protected their anonymity, but they didn't," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. Even without personal information, the authorities were able to conduct routine monitoring of phone conversations.
A half dozen senior officials in the United States and Europe agreed to talk in detail about the previously undisclosed investigation because, they said, it was completed. They also said they had strong indications that terror suspects, alert to the phones' vulnerability, had largely abandoned them for important communications and instead were using e-mail, Internet phone calls and hand-delivered messages.
"This was one of the most effective tools we had to locate Al Qaeda," said a senior counterterrorism official in Europe. "The perception of anonymity may have lulled them into a false sense of security. We now believe that Al Qaeda has figured out that we were monitoring them through these phones."
The officials called the operation one of the most successful investigations since Sept. 11, 2001, and an example of unusual cooperation between agencies in different countries. Led by the Swiss, the investigation involved agents from more than a dozen countries, including the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Britain and Italy.
Cellphones have played a major role in the constant jousting between terrorists and intelligence agencies. In their requests for more investigative powers, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other officials have repeatedly cited the importance of monitoring portable phones. Each success by investigators seems to drive terrorists either to more advanced -- or to more primitive -- communications.
During the American bombing of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001, American authorities reported hearing Osama bin Laden speaking to his associates on a satellite phone. Since then, Mr. bin Laden has communicated with handwritten messages delivered by trusted couriers, officials said.
In 2002 the German authorities broke up a cell after monitoring calls by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has been linked by some top American officials to Al Qaeda, in which he could be heard ordering attacks on Jewish targets in Germany. Since then, investigators say, Mr. Zarqawi has been more cautious.
"If you beat terrorists over the h
spoke
This is the reason I don't carry a cell phone. (other than the fact that I am a student and couldn't really afford it) This is also why I refuse to use the key cards that the school provides for us to open the doors. Call me paranoid, but I don't want anyone knowing where I am. Its just a personal thing.
So now that they have exposed this strategy so it won't work anymore, what is their next strategy that they aren't telling us? What is the cost to our right to privacy?
The article talks about the "accidental" listening of cell phone calls. I've worked for the government, nothing is accidental. There's usuall three forms of paperwork for everything
Seppuku: Your solution to my problems!
...I suggest we start installing tracking devices into powered exoskeletons before it's too late.
Thats all well and good, but calling it "one of the most successful investigations since Sept. 11, 2001" really cheapens what they have accomplished here, since the investigative bar was lowered so far pre-9/11.
So they are greatly sucessfull in relation to one of the most incredibly flawed and costly intelligence failures in recent times? Thats not saying too much IMHO
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Swisscom is essential Vodafone Switzerland which is part of Vodafone Global one of the largest, if not the largest mobile network provider, in the world.
----
They also said they had strong indications that terror suspects, alert to the phones' vulnerability, had largely abandoned them for important communications and instead were using e-mail, Internet phone calls and hand-delivered messages.
Way to go, NYT; now they're gonna abandon email, Internet phone calls, and hand-delivered messages!
Don't tell anybody they sometimes talk to each other in person, they might be reading this.
I would suspect that authorities can learn much about people and groups simply by mapping who talks with whom (using technques discussed hrer). Even if many of the subjects use anonymous SIM chips and phones, their patterns of calling create a map. And if anyone they call is a known party (e.g., know "terrorists" or their family members), then their anyonymity becomes compromised.
The authorities can probably even deduce leadership structures from the sequence of calls. If A calls B and then B immediately calls C, D, and E, we might suspect that B is a leader of a cell with D, E, and F as members. Add data on physical location (phone towers) and the authorities have even more data to map out a network and assess likely roles of unnamed people.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Further proof that the Bush regime knew what was happening on 9/11 and chose to turn a blind eye to it. Come November, it's going to be one of two things:
1. Regime change: We eject Bush with the votes of the people in a free and fair election (unlike the last time).
2. Regime change: We eject Bush with our right to start a civil war against an unjust and corrupt government.
Which one is it going to be folks? The time is coming when the North must either secede from the Union or teach those damn pre-reconstrutionist southerners a lesson about what the world really wants.
Some of my favorite quotes:
From both the mental image and funny-long-names-of-stuff-in-Germany file:
- "If you beat terrorists over the head enough, they learn," said Col. Nick Pratt, a counterterrorism expert and professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
And the enjoying-that-feeling-of-absolute-superiority-oveAnother official agreed: "They'd switch phones but use the same cards. The people were stupid enough to use the same cards all of the time. It was a very good thing for us."
And I'm sure this one has already been posted, but...
From both the kill-joy and tinfoil-hat/nuking-new-$20s files:
- "They thought these phones protected their anonymity, but they didn't," said a senior intelligence official based in Europe. Even without personal information, the authorities were able to conduct routine monitoring of phone conversations."
Sigh...This isn't new at all - we've heard about it a couple of years ago here in Switzerland. BTW, Swisscom happens to be the not-so-former telecom monopoly here, pretty big stuff, not just some random company exploiting a legal loophole. Thing is it's been possible to buy totally anonymous GSM cards here for ages (8 years or so), effectively providing you pre-paid phone number to use in any GSM phone, in and outside of Switzerland.
For about $50 you get a SIM card that you can put in you GSM mobile. You now have a phone number and some initial credit. You can buy credit (a card with a hidden number to dial) from any news stand anytime. Never in the process does your name appear anywhere. You can even buy the cards in supermarkets.
The question of such anonymity was raised several times, but ultimately the decision was that it wasn't possible to require personal information for such items. Since there's no contract and no bills in the system, there's no reason to ask for your name, address, etc. And there's millions of them in use already.
Note that all operators offer such cards. It's a bit more expensive than regular price plans but damn useful if you're a traveler, want to control expenses or can't get a regular plan because of bad credit. To my knowledge, many other european countries offer such prepaid cards now... We just happened to be the first.
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
alert to the phones' vulnerability, had largely abandoned them for important communications and instead were using e-mail, Internet phone calls and hand-delivered messages
So now that technology has been shown succesfull in stopping "terrorists", and those "terrorists" have moved to email/VoIP, get ready for another push in legislature to regulate those mediums more tightly. It doesn't matter that the corporation put those chips in their products by their own will. Traditional phone companies will see a spot to shove their foot in the door and lobby their representatives to regulate the up and comming internet telephony industry in order to stiffle the competition. So there is "antiterrorism" working and corporate money working in the minds of the government. What else is new...
Is this kind of thing routine?
:)
Given the first +5 Informative FUD troll on this thread it's clear we're in full conspiracy theory mode, so let's trot out Echelon again.
It's theorized that there exists a gigantic electronic SIGINT monitoring network, known as Echelon, which is operated across the Sort Of Free World by the United States, the United Kingdom, and other allies. The system is supposed to be powerful enough to monitor every phonecall, every email, every satellite communication, and handle *all of it simultaneously*. Pattern matching and keyword analysis are done by computers in realtime. Echelon can also make toast, predict stock market trends, and runs it's own psychic hotline.
On a more serious note, how routine that kind of thing might be requires a more careful analysis of the laws of the United Kingdom, which are not the same as the laws of the United States. I don't know what the rules are over there governing the implicit privacy of information.
Big deal...
This 'top secret tracking" is available to consumers and companies in the UK see:.
http://followus.co.uk
http://www.fleetonline.net
Of course you need the phone owners permission.
Or does the RFID chip already installed in my skull make that a grand waste of time?
The few meth addicts I have known use prepaid GSM cards for everything. I would say they are one rung below terrorists on the paranoia ladder and you cannot get them to talk on a landline or registered modile line.
Monitoring a single number is much easier.
Why don't they put a calling card on the market that allows to place very cheap calls to a specific country (let's say Pakistan).
That way it is easy to track even the use of every public phone booth.
Net sa best, mar it koe minder
When does the tipping of our security gathering techniques end?
I know that the terrorist may realize this but there are other dumb ass crminals who get ideas from this type of information.
all over America ballots. you could At 7east.' Nobody
The modded firmware of some phones can Jam and hop Ids randomly to leech airtime. This is a real problem in some countries with mature cell nets.
Node logs are not perfect.
As every drug dealer busted can tell you that buying your phones in bulk and dropping them (Or purposely losing them in a public place) every 24h removes the chance of getting a tap put on in time.
To live in Fear and Ignorance, only teaches one paranoia.
a lot of people are calling this an invasion of privacy. This is hardly that.
Al Qaedia and its operatives have been identified as enemy combatants. Effectively, there's already an international 'warrant for their arrest'.
This technology, if had to be used in the US, would require a judge to approve a warrant for this type of information gathering. There'd have to be specific evidence that the individual was commiting a crime or likely to. Al Qaedia already falls under this category, IMHO.
Even further, this was a COMBAT action. In other conflicts, (see: wars) this is the same as using radar to identify enemy positions based on the metal used in their vehicles, etc.
And EVEN FURTHER, knowing where you are is essential in a cellular phone network. To forward the voice packets, the phones have to know the signal strength from your phone to the nearest towers. it figures your motion and signal degradation to determine the most likely cells to send your data to. knowing your approximate location is just a function of cellular technology.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
this is a nice example of the parallel existence of privacy and legitimate law enforcement. note that i say parallel, not tradeoff, the latter being the superficial way the alleged "tension" between the two is described. we can have both, and stronger than they are now.
... our methods seem gentle in comparison.)
i'd like to think i'm a decent pro-privacy civil libertarian, but i also admit getting a kick out of the law and order episodes when they so often trace someone's movements thanks to bridge tolls or telephone calls or ATM cameras or whatever. cool, hey presto and the bad guy is tagged. here, it's those bin laden cretins, no tears shed; and so it happens in real life). (the israelis once assassinated a man by detonating an explosive in his cellphone -- they waited to hear his voice and
now we have trackable cellphones (which are becoming ubiquitous), rfid chips, red-light cameras with OCR, etc. pretty easy and non-paranoid to imagine the automated abiity to track anyone anywhere.
there are so far as i know few constitutional problems if the data collected is publicly observable information, i.e., no expectation of privacy even if the sophistication of the technology to collect, process, and digest that information would astonish most of us (this does at least rule out Big Brother in your home). the old model was that evidence could be collected only with periodic intrusive methods like breaking down doors or inserting wiretaps, moderated by warrant and the exclusionary rule and so on. what no one expected, though, is the situation now where *unintrusive* methods continuously collect everything one might need. the fourth becomes an anachronism, and the patriot act seems quaint.
the only answer i see, or rather the inevitable path ahead, is to intelligently moderate access to and use of the data. the constitution is only the floor, congress went much farther with the anti-wiretap law. draw the "border" between leigt investigation and fishing expeditions. frankly i don't think we can do a good job of it, but it's the only route i see ahead. all these "public eyes" can not be shut, because we *like* too many of them and even a few innocuous steps may prove to open the door wide.
AT&T uses such patterns to look for deadbeats who sign up new calling plans to flee old debt.
I am not afraid of this technology, because I have nothing to hide. Please, my beloved leaders, use the tracking abilities you already have and introduce new tracking features as you see fit. I have the utmost trust this power will not be abused.
One of the big problems after the war was that a lot of SS/Gestapo officers destroyed their records in an effort to claim that they'd served with other units, had had lower ranks, or hadn't even served (a similar thing that is being seen with senior Baathists in Iraq today). In the end, the prosecutors wound up proving the service histories of their suspects by finding that all of them had filled out their government pension paperwork when they'd joined their units or received promotions.
Again, it was simple greed (or stinginess) that led to their downfall.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Has a story on this as well.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
Despite Swiss law about not buying SIM cards anonimously SIM cars still freely awailable for online shopper. But all this affair show that Al-Qaeda is not quite tech savvy. List of the phones on the paper ? Not encripted ? Well it's sound good :). They also didn't use smartphone with software voice scrambler, though scrambled talk also could rase suspicion. Don't know how many people scrambling them really. Not 100% sure but I think existing high-end smartphones powerful enough to produce unbreakable scrambling. Even they arn't encripted text messagess could be made practically unbreakable ...
It was the Stonecutters, aka the No Homers :)
Surely you meant:
257 2332
I am NaN
Why do you think they call them "cell" phones?
Might there be a possibility that they were transmitting messages using frequency outside audible range during the silence phonecall.
Which they thought might not be easily traceable, but unknowingly make them more easily identifiable.
Hey, that's my password you are typing
d00d! It's Jennie's number!
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You Insensitive Clod!!!
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
e
i am seriously interested in modifying firmware. thanks.
Remeber when phones had lines? Did anyone squack that it was a massive invasion of privacy that it was possible to trace the call or witness you standing there at the booth?
..and anyone who complains about "showing their papers" while travelling clearly hasn't done much of it anyway. If you can't rent a fscking Toyota without ID, why the hell do you think you should board a 747 without it?
Geezuz. It's not like the Swiss sat down in a room and said, hey, in 2002 it will be reaaly useful to the Americans if we do this. Now, in 2004, they're not going to sit down and say, "right, mission accomplished, shut it down."
Those who desire a total lack of accoutability must live with a total lack of trust.
BAH.
What I would be much more interested in would be - how many Americans of Arab decent happened to purchase the same phone? Just because an Arab decides to get a pre-paid phone with International capabilits - were they then automatically brought under suspicion. I'll put money on, yes. The sad part, and the reason the story is interesting to me, is the injustice caused by this sort of "investigative style".
What's to stop this conversation: We found that most terrorists choose to wear light colored cotton clothing, and they look like they are of Arab decent. Create a file for anybody you find that matches this profile. Look into their background. If they sell expensive rugs, this could be a front, investigate where they buy their rugs from.
it's possible, but over the kinds of distances i assume they were transmitting across, i think they'd have to use a pretty easily traceable infrastructure. (i.e, the cell tower's IM capabilities)
-ninjaneer
I find it intersting that this story has been published at all. And with such a wide varity of direct quotes. They basically tell any would-be naughty person using a mobile phone to change the SIM card and the phone everytime they make a phone call.
I'm reminded of a satelite photo from the mid '80s the showed a radar picture of the Nile Delta. Why would you publicly show a picture that told everyone that you could see 30 metres underground durring the Cold War?
Just what can 'they' really monitor if 'they' know that you know that your moble phone is monitored?
Que te den por el culo, puto sudaca
All hail the overlord!
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Ever wonder why Osama bin Laden can't be found?
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Regards,
Kilgore
What's interesting is that the government will track civilians with this technology, protecting its invasion of your privacy with the fear of terrorism that is now its lifeblood. While letting bin Laden go free! Of course, if they had targeted bin Laden's phone with a missile, they'd have no fear to work with right now. And firing missiles at bin Laden is "wagging the dog", just a ploy to distract us from a blowjob!
--
make install -not war
Doesn't this strike you as one of those things that maybe the government should not be advertising to the world? Let the idiots keep falling victim to the same blunder but who knows maybe it's just me :P
Problem solved.
Someone has been reading Savage Love!
I have no doubt that cell phones are used for tracking. Why bother with GPS on the vehicle.
How widespread is the ability to turn on the cellphone mics and monitor conversations (you know, like the Mercedes incident), even when the phone is not being used? How about when the phone appears to be turned off?
I do not know if those capabilities exist, but I would certainly be trying to obtain them if I were in charge of developing intercept/tracking tech.
are called by your known terrorist friend
call your known terrorist friend
known terrorist writes down your tel. number
In addition you may become suspect if you use a card marketed for swiss teenagers exclusively in rather unsafe parts of the world. You should also avoid using it too much near the place you live.
But if you treat it as a "disposable card for making that single important call" it should work quite well.
And I am not suprized they did not change cards. Card==tel number at which you are reachable.
BTW. I have bought mine at the flea market in Basel.
--
Tomek
Help me out here. I was under the impression that the Swiss, as a policy, prefer not to get involved in such things as assisting in tracking wanted people and surrendering information to governmental and law enforcement bodies and the like. I imagine that this is s major reason that a Swiss company was appealing to terrorist cell-users. Is this no longer the Swiss outlook? Have I been misled in this arena? Does someone who is Swiss have some input on this?
I have a question about that NYT article. In the old cell phones there was a phone ESN and then the subscriber info entered in the NAM. So it was always possible to track a phone no matter what user had it. Now we have these GSM phones with SIM cards and the NYT article is a bit vague but seems to imply that the SIM card was the tracking mechanism and not the phone hardware. My question is, is there an embedded phone ESN in the GSM phone, or is the subscriber info entirely in the SIM card?
...is our privacy restored by removing the ability to track users' cell phones? Of course not.
Location information is generated automatically by the GSM network. Depending on the layout of the GSM net you can determine in which GSM cell the user is and even (roughly) determine his location within the cell. The location info is required for the network to operate properly. All this article has really accomplished is that Al Quaeda is, as this is written, instructing its operatives to ditch their anonymous simms after a certain short period for new ones to make tracking more difficult or to abandon GSM phones alltogether. It would have been nice if more of those terrorist [EXPLETIVE DELETED] had fallen for this before it was advertised by the press. Loose lips sink ships, or burn skyscrapers in this case.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The New York Times reports that Al Qaeda operatives were tracked using the ID of the GSM phone chips sold by a Swiss company named Swisscom
I would have been more impressed if they had dropped a bomb on these guys using the same signals
an ill wind that blows no good
By *whom*? The Northern Alliance, sure, but who else? Unless you mean America, who's law and declarations of war don't apply to the rest of the world.
Okay, but where's your evidence that the person is a member of AQ in the first place? Or that he specifically aims to commit a crime? Unless, of course, you can prove that he is a combatant, in which case I guess you're allowed to shoot him, forget violate his privacy.
While I fully support this sort of action against terrorists, I just hope that everybody realises that we are looking at a privacy invasion against non-combatant, possibly law abiding citizens here - but perhaps it is a necessary invasion.
from the article:
"The call was placed on April 11, 2002, by Christian Ganczarski, a 36-year-old Polish-born German Muslim [...]"
It is indeed ridiculous to even think the Navy could ever shoot down a civilian airliner.
Geez, camera phones, games, bluetooth, and now TRACKING DEVICES?
:P
I just want call quality & reception to improve. Tracking devices are useless when the phone can barely make calls and the user smashes it on the sidewalk.
Hmmm. I recommend you stay away from the video clip of the WTC owner talking about 'bringing down' Building #7. No, stuff like that is merely delusional. Move along, citizen....
And, it turns out, a single individual purchased a ton of SIM cards in bulk. There wasn't any injustice. Rational people would call your post a knee-jerk reaction. I just call it stupid.
Wait a minute..
-K
tech support recited the details of my phone that was brought into the network, e.g. they associated their SIM (rented by me) and the phone I bought off the web. she also told me which phones I'd used with the SIM in the past 2 years.
The loss of privacy in closed systems is very real. Most printers can be uniquely identified by certain features (invisible to the naked eye) that are created on the printouts. And I am not talking about the currency counterfeiting options. We can be sure that if email was implemented using appliances, every mail message would have a unique ID. Microsoft Office embedded a unique ID in every document it produced and that feature was only disabled due to a huge outcry by their customers. Has everyone forgotten the original P4 ID, and how it was to be used for tracking (called "authentication")? The only way to guarantee privacy is to have open systems which will ensure that a universal tracking system cannot be successfully implemented.
If I remember my time in the telecom industry correctly, phones only record and transmit a limited frequency range. The phone tops out at 8kHz. 16 bit samples at 8kHz gives you your 64kb bandwith of the PSTN.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Sheesh. Another troll gets by the moderators. Nice job, asshats.
Since it's the SIM card that identifies the (GSM) phone, changing the handset but putting the old SIM card in is a pretty stupid thing to do if you don't want to be tracked. What the terrorist should have done was the reverse: change the SIM card, but use the same phone.
Well, probably. Some GSM expert will probably now correct me saying that the phone can also be identified independently of the SIM card!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I'm sure that the investigators who uncovered this mistake by Al Queda spent a lot of time bashing their heads on their desks as they ran into dead ends. Like most police work, this "lucky break" probably only came to light after a lot of fruitless efforts. These investigators made their luck out of a lot of legwork and late nights.
We like to pretend that Al Queda is inept because it helps us sleep better at night. That fact is that in this case the good guys were simply better (and more persistent) at uncovering tracks than Al Queda was at concealing them.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I just bought a prepaid SIM card for 5 euro. It has a prepaid credit of 5 euro when I choose to register I get an additional prepaid credit of 10 euro.
The mobile carriers also have the abillity to track you with the unique IMEI number of your GSM. With Software it is possible to change the IMEI of your GSM. A new SIM and an IMEI change means you are anonymous again.
Dutch police routinely asks the Mobile Carriers for subscriber data from customers who where in the same area where a crime has been committed.
Most phone systems don't support the transmission of sounds outside a human's hearing range because then why would you do it via phone?
The phone company used to send signals this way (In-Channel Signalling, IIRC) which is the source of the 2600 Hz. They now use Out of Channel Signalling just about everywhere in the industrialized world.
oh and when you bring over the T-shirts, don't forget the bullets."
My alibi would be "Yes. We were talking about vintage t-shirts for the Washington Bullets basketball team."
there is no more telecom monopoly here since 7 or 8 years...
Thing is it's been possible to buy totally anonymous GSM cards here for ages (8 years or so)
that's no more the case since years (but I can't say since when exactly, not so long, maybe 3 years ago).
Note that other countries offer pre-paid cards, the only difference is that you have to send an anonymous people bought it for you :)
If the summary you provide is assumed, then SPAM may be benefitial (to those who dislike monitoring) in that it significantly reduces the signal-to-noise ratio, thereby making it harder to monitor the desired network traffic.
:)
So SPAM away, all you conspiracy junkies - for the good of the Internet!
This is not my sig.
now heres a thought, inseted of using a GSM card repidialy buy a whole lot of them and use them as one-use units, if your just using them to signal attacks anyway... and talk on the damn things, what you say wouldnt be improtant if the signal is the the key.
just the stuff everyone sould see,
Oninoshiko
"run had risen" i didn't know run had even died. good to know he's risen though. i just hope jammaster jay rises too!
To your links, I should like to see something better. So, I dilligently did a search, and maybe government sources aren't your friend. So I figure maybe one conspiracy site deserves another.
Between these two non-government entities, both having belief in the conspiracy view - the divergence of facts is too great for me to fathom. I am left somewhere in the middle, believing myself that the NTSB probably found the culprit. If there were a cover-up, it would seem that they would have been given impirical evidence (planted by the appropriate agency) to clearly show exactly what it was supposed to be. The NTSB official report was not conclusive. Although Section 1.12.7 of the official NTSB report is very good reading. I expect more than this out of a cover-up conspiracy.
Basically, because the NTSB report is not conculsive, there is no convincing you that your position is wrong, and there is no convincing me that it was definately a cover-up.
So when some of us, after plenty of good reason, don't trust our government, we're made fun of and told to put on our tin-foil hats. But when Al Qaeda is beaten even after taking precautions of using phone "chips" that they bought anonymously, we laugh at them for not being cautious enough.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
God bless them -- The 'Nice Germans'... da!
Yes, it's a knee jerk reaction, but it's one that is indeed based on the article. I couldn't find the text in the article that says that the US wouldn't do this. After all, I was writing in the hypothetical.
Theorized? No, fact. Echelon is 100% real. Here's the EU report on the subject. Published 7th Sept, 2001; kinda bad timing for any news story.
If I remember right, the technology was "invented" to track down and capture Kevin Mitnick. Trangulation of cell towers signaling to/from your cell phone.
I believe the movie or was it a book about this was called Operation Takedown.
Now the ability to do it on a large scale is what was implemented recently. If I'm not mistaken.
Maybe there are a shitload of terrorists that need to be tracked.
Who will guard the guards?
If I remember right, I can't find the newspaper article.
Back when Clinton was visiting Brazil (?) many plots (3 or 4 different cells of terrorists) to kill him were foiled by authorities. It turns out that the intelligence agencies (US) just snooped the cell (and maybe landlines too) traffic for the "entire country". Turns out the scum bags were using pre paid cellular phone bought with cash.
Who will guard the guards?
You don't need to follow cell phones; you don't need satellites. All you need to do is follow the money. Everyone except your average goofy couch-potato American knows that some very powerful Saudis are funding this whole terrorist network. When we remove their ally from the white house, we might be able to take real action against the terrorists.
Dear AC:
I often go out riding my motorcycle long after dark. Sometimes (well most of the time) I have no idea where I am, where I am going, or how I got there.
I know, most people would say I have my head up my ass, but for me it's a way of life.
And just the other day my motorcycle just burst into flames while I wasn't even riding it. So I stood 50 yards away from it, in the event it blew-up like the cars do in the movies.
Who will guard the guards?
That's the bottom line here. The people who shout long and hard about the government are evidently people who desperately want to believe someone cares about them and what they do.
The fact is, the government has bigger fish to fry (say Al Qaeda) and they really don't care about the college dope head or the guy pirating Simcity. Sorry. They have lots-o-money, but they also have a big world in which some very vengeful and dangerous people are hiding.
Most government types (some of my friends and people I went to school with, by the way) are scrupulously honest and have more rules to follow than you'd ever believe. There's no doubt some corruption at the top -- as in every bureacracy -- but most of the worker bees are honest and overworked and trying to stop someone from slicing your mother's throat and blowing your father up to make some kind of statement.
... parroting the right-wing "guilty until proven innocent" mentality.
I object to your characterization of that mentality as right-wing.
The right has no monopoly on it. It's characteristic of ALL authoritarian political leanings, and quite as prevalant (if not more so) among the PC crowd as it is among the knee-jerk branch of the right.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Padilla is getting it easy: he deserves the firing squad. That is what treason gets you.
Treason is tightly defined by the constitution. It can't exist except in time of DECLARED war (which we DON'T have at the moment.)
This is why Jane Fonda got to marry a billionaire rather than twist slowly at the end of a noose.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is the New York Times we're talking about here. Has anyone independently verified that this actually took place?
Think for yourself a little more. Rely less on major news outlets for your opinions. Another suggestion: don't simply accept as truth everything people in authority tell you.
"Enemy combatants"... you are parroting a term invented by the U.S. government to allow them to do things which are not permitted under U.S. and international law.
You, sir, are the characteristic sheep.
The article says that, when all was said and done, and the terrorists had been tracked despite having bought the SIM cards anonymously, the Swiss responded by passing a law to prevent people from buying SIM cards anonymously. Isn't this sort of stupid for two reasons. First, the terrorists wouldn't have fallen into the trap if they had to provide ID to buy the cards. Second, this only makes it hard for people who have a legitimate reason to want privacy.
I'm not worried about attracting the attention of the NSA and international intelligence agencies because I'm not doing anything illegal, much less terrorist related. I do want to be able to buy anonymous SIM cards, however, to prevent the telecom companies from keeping my call history and selling it to marketing agencies. I don't really trust their privacy policies and it's questionable how legally binding they are anyway if the company is sold to another company and they're bought by someone else...
Fear of government invasion of privacy is certainly a concern and always has been (lots of laws already exist) but the new trend is much more invasion of personal privacy by big business then was ever possible before. This is where we really need to look at new laws and policies.
Since when is a SIM card anonymous? It's the "SUBSCRIBER IDENTITY MODULE".. April 1, yet? Yes? If there's anything news worthy in this it's that they were stupid.
Poof.
My cellphone is somewhat odd... everytime the battery is removed, it resets and I must manually set its date.
The default date from scratch is the day WTC was destroyed.
Spooky.
Don't forget all you conspiracy types: Any transmission can be traced and cell phonce calls aren't secure.
The government largely doesn't care what you do so long as you don't get fameous or infamous. That's why you don't get busted for going five miles over the speed limit but 20 will get you pulled over.
If the government wants to find you they will and usually will because of your own carelessness, not some secret technology.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
"Investigators were particularly alarmed by one call they overheard last June. The message: "The big guy is coming. He will be here soon.""
Um, right, because: a) al Qaeda operatives naturally speak in English so they can be more easily understood; and b) they naturally use silly English idioms when they speak.
"A half dozen senior officials in the United States and Europe agreed to talk in detail about the previously undisclosed investigation because, they said, it was completed."
and
"The Mont Blanc inquiry has wound down, although investigators are still monitoring the communications of a few people."
OK, which is it? Is the investigation over or are they still monitoring a "few people"? And if they are monitoring a few people, are they sure those people don't read the NYT?
"During the American bombing of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in December 2001, American authorities reported hearing Osama bin Laden speaking to his associates on a satellite phone. Since then, Mr. bin Laden has communicated with handwritten messages delivered by trusted couriers, officials said."
Well, folks, if you know enough to know he is writting his instructions by hand and delivering them by hand, then you know where he is. Otherwise, all you can say is that you "belive" he is doing this, which is the equivalent of saying you don't "know" anything.
Personally, I think all the space aliens who visit the Earth must be invisible because I have never seen any of them. It would never occur to me to doubt that space aliens have visited the Earth. :-P
There are other over problems like the fact that the government (German or otherwise) was monitoring a guy's phone calls because he was a muslim convert, apparently. Now, they say he contacted "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed" "who is accused of being the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks" (does anyone remember when it was Ayman al Zawahiri the Egyptian doctor who had masterminded the attacks, or even Mohammed Atta?) but of course, they would only know who he called becaue they were monitoring his phone calls already. Yes, it is a wide net.
As someone else pointed out on here, this is not news, so the interesting question is why this story is being told at all right now. I don't for a minute believe it is because "a half dozen senior officials in the United States and Europe agreed to talk in detail about the previously undisclosed investigation."
"Agreed to talk in detail" indeed! That would imply that the request for the discussion came from the NYT, which would, of course, be impossible since the investigation was "previously undisclosed." Obviously, the impetus to talk about this came from the "senior officials." The question is: "why?" Is it to boost George Bush in the polls? Is it to bolster the cause for new eavesdropping legislation? Or is it something I am not yet guessing?
Folks, it is not becuase the government wants you to know their spying techniques. They don't even want you to use PGP!
Alcmaeon
For those interested a company named Telphia in San Francisco records the header records of all domestic US cell phone calls and stores a two-year history. They do not (or at least say they do not) record the calls, but the header records capture the source and destination numbers and the geographical cell ids of the source and destination and the length of the calls. The same information is in billing records of your cell phone provider, but Tehphia captures the information over the air and thus is not bound by any restrictions your provider may have. They claim the primary use of the information is for marketing research, but for that purpose they could aggregate the information and not save the actual cellphone numbers. I am sure that law enforcement makes some use of this "commercially available database" which may be why they don't question the precise legallity of Telphia's actions.
Many years ago I worked for the first GSM operator in one of the countries in the middle east. We had setup the gsm network, Motorola was the overseer of the installation. All of us were Arab engineers, mostly native to the country we were setting up in. Anyway, we setup the network and were almost through with the testing phase. About a month before official start of operations (selling to the public), the Motorola project manager tells us that one of his guys will be installing equipment in the Switching Center, and that we would not be involved. At least one of us was always involved during any installation since we might have to troubleshoot later. We were in the OMC (operations and Maintenance center), and he told us that we would not have any access to this equipment. This guy later arrives with a shitload of equipment and installs it. We were explicitly told not to touch it. The only thing I and the others could tell was that it was for listening in to the GSM calls, since the very nature of GSM (TDMA, etc) makes it difficult to just use a radio scanner. Best we could figure out was where the wires came in from and went out to. Turns out they were connected to the general intelligence department of the mukhabarat (sort of like FBI). Thus the intelligence boys didn't have to listen over the wireless, they tapped straight into the switching center, leaping over the whole GSM complexities. I suspect the US, UK, et al can tap straight into GSM over-wireless. But hey, if you live in one of the "friends-of-the-US" countries, you can go straight to the center.
Our fine fine government can track cell phone calls BUT NOT JUMBO JETS THAT ARE 400 MILES OFF COURSE!
Whether or not you believe that Bush engineering 9/11 - one thing is certain - The Air Force must have had that day off
I remembered his story incorrectly: I thought he was captured in the process of armed conflict against US troops.
John Walker on the other hand, is a different story. While he may not fall under the guidelines for treason, and thus execution, he should be given no quarter.
At any rate, here is a famous case of treason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Rosenberg
I've just been doing some research, and it seems (I could be wrong) as though the Korean War was not declared. President Truman seems to have set the precedent for unilateral action by a commander in chief. Yet the Rosenbergs were executed for being Communist spies.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Hum.. I guess not..
This slashdot thing is not too bad, in spite of the weird alphabet and the left to right text.
I hope you find this message. Anyways:
Please tell Mr. SMITH that his FRUIT shipment is ready for delivery, and that the PROM QUEEN is in the TAXI.
--------
Free the world from the great Satan
Very good points, indeed (one of the fortunate minority to not send this one downward!). I'll clarify where I originally meant this one to go.
/. and the public in general to get something wrong - it's only human. It's disturbing however, when the people who are responsible for major decisions(corporate,governmental) either go with incorrect information and not bother to verify the information at all - or let politics give incorrect information about the issue, sometimes with disastrous results. I'm not saying they should either take forever for the correct solution, or that they arent capable of making a correct decision - just that they should remember how much of a scale their decisions make. Just as those in the military (recent example: both sides in the Iraqi conflicts, even with the psyops) who had the knowledge, the ones who used it most effectively went in the direction that did not mean a certain, pointless bloodbath(sometimes for both sides to of the conflict to all live); the less effective ones deciding to care less and continue to go at it, if it meant some political or personal award.
Don't try to set up a "me against everyone" type of discussion, because it is both false (because I am merely part of slashdot) and self defeating (because you are part of slashdot).
Well, what was meant by that, was the majority of slashdot (low uid, high uid, and those who decide to AC) after(and before) 9/11 seems to have a surprising amount of a blind trust in those who defend our nation; even if the well-informed opinion of those who are in charge have inaccuracies in their conclusions, deliberate or unintentional. It's one thing for the
As for the part about Al Qaeda, IANAOI/IANIOH (I am not Arab or Islamic/I am not Israeli or [of the] Hebrew [faith], the two prevalent groups in the Middle East that have gone against each other) - my perspective of this is a Catholic one, which from time to time can and has its own imperfections in it. To look at it, regardless if it's Al Qaeda wanting to impose their variation on an already extreme variety of Wahhabism (the belief system in Saudi Arabia where Osama bin Laden originally is from) on the world via terror, those in the US that you have named, or those in Israel(and beyond) who only know that it is more profitable to go for an encore of bloodshed, despite whatever has happened. I am not advocating distributed hate to all; that would be be taking the position of the betting house, taker of all that is in any bit of extremism. It is just tiring to see cultures that have been in both positions of opressor and oppressed for at least one time during known history "to go for the holy dollar, no matter who dies"(to paraphrase from Queensryche); to only end up coming up with extremism almost every time, to end up with them back where they started, switching places every few hundred years around known existence.
If anything, it is not me looking at slashdot (the site) although it is correct that you did call on the personal slant. It is myself looking through all of history and culture that I am currently aware of; seeing where the lack of correct information, the desire of humans to to overlook the correct information, and get the collisions that cause history to repeat itself- and I'm only (at this point) the observer who would rather divert from this self defeating route, but has to step back in to survive amongst the majority. Sometimes I forget that I've stepped back in, but with increasing wisdom, I find it possible to survive longer outside those who decide to live with ignorance and power.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
I do agree that there is a disturbing trend in the U.S. to blindly go along with the direction (I can't bring myself to call it "leadership") put forth by the current administration. Of specific concern is the definition of "criminals," that I lay into above. That, however, is a topic far bigger than can be addressed by a simple post.
As I said, I get nervous when law enforcement approaches the line between investigation and abuse, but they are trained to walk that line. As long as we have the freedom to examine their actions under the harsh light of day and speak freely of what they are doing, we keep the balance.
Finally, I want to apologize if I came off harshly in my earlier post. As I said, your shorthand ("slashdot" instead of "many people on slashdot") got under my skin. I tried to keep my tone civil and polite, but I fear I may have let some emotions get the better of me. Again, apologies if I was anything less.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."