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Feds Can Locate Cell Phones Without Telcos
schwit1 sends along an Ars Technica report covering the release of documents obtained under the FOIA suggesting that the Justice Department may have been evading privacy laws in their use of "triggerfish" technology. Triggerfish are cell-tower spoofing devices that induce cell phones to give up their location and other identifying information, without recourse to any cell carrier. "Courts in recent years have been raising the evidentiary bar law enforcement agents must meet in order to obtain historical cell phone records that reveal information about a target's location. But documents obtained by civil liberties groups under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest that 'triggerfish' technology can be used to pinpoint cell phones without involving cell phone providers at all. The Justice Department's electronic surveillance manual explicitly suggests that triggerfish may be used to avoid restrictions in statutes like CALEA that bar the use of pen register or trap-and-trace devices..." The article does mention that the Patriot Act contains language that should require a court order to deploy triggerfish, whereas prior to 2001 "the statutory language governing pen register or trap-and-trace orders did not appear to cover location tracking technology."
Can a program be written to notify if it's information is being 'given' out? Anyway, this is one more reason to NOT get one (cell phone). I was finally going to break down, and get one. With this report, it one more reason to just say no.
The sentence "Courts in recent years have been raising the evidentiary bar law enforcement agents must meet in order to obtain historical cell phone records that reveal information about a target's location. But documents obtained by civil liberties groups under a Freedom of Information Act request suggest that 'triggerfish' technology can be used to pinpoint cell phones without involving cell phone providers at all. " is weasily.
How does triggerfish lower the evidentiary bar required to authorize law enforcement to use special sensing technology to search for a cell phone?
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
McNulty and Co. used "trigger fish" to collect info after the Barksdales moved to disposable cell phones. The devices would collect info without the use of pen registers and obviated the need for a lot of paperwork such as search warrants.
But this is like going through the trash. It's clearly an end-run against privacy laws, but I don't see where the deviousness is. If you carry a cellphone around that emits radio waves, you probably don't have a great expectation of privacy if you leave it on all the time. And it's not like the triggerfish are recording the conversation.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I think it's because they want the public to THINK the courts are working, and that the government spies are having to bust their asses to do their jobs. But, they probably are 5 steps ahead, but then get outed. I wonder if anyone else is outing that Predator/drone/RPV that (almost) nightly buzzes/hovers over Glen Park BART Station with such a loud buz that it is annoying as hell. The police i talked to say they know nothing of it. They recommend I write the police chief/commissioner/city mayor.
Whatever nutcase dreamed up the drone surveillance (probably watching gangsters from LA/OC, or Salvadorian or Nicaraguan or Chilean/whomever cartel gangsters in the area, or just for gunshot triangulation, who knows?) seems to have thought that placing it OVER the GP BART building or near the freeway would mask it. But, the fucker is LOUD, and i can hear it adjusting power when coping with the local temperature and wind changes. The noise sweeps up the hill, unmolested by the thousands of homes. It may be quiet directly beneath it, but it's not at all quiet along the ridges and up the hill. They should buy a quieter model, or lose their permit to fly. Fortunately i don't have a brown-out gun, or i'd terminate it (without bragging, of course, lest i face jail/prison), not because of spying, but because that fucker makes it hard to sleep without the use of earplugs from ~~ 1030PM to ~ 0230...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Look, this kind of thing will continue until the people say enough is enough. If you want this to stop, the only realistic course of action is to expose them.
It's that simple. The courts won't stop them. The apathetic public won't. Their superiors certainly won't. The only way to stop them is to utterly and completely expose them, and leave them totally naked before the court of public opinion. You've got a camera and a computer right? Start using them. Conclusively prove what we've known all along -- that this isn't about stopping the terrorists, it's about pursuing a political agenda that hasn't really changed since the 1950s. Do that, and you'll be doing more to protect the average person's civil liberties than a hundred FOIA requests or a thousand injunctions, or a dozen oversight committees. Kill their reputation, make them a political liability and an embarrassment both domestically and internationally, and nobody else will want to touch them. They'll dry up under the bright lights of the camera.
And stuff like this IS embarrassing, as it should be for every American. It shows just how far we've fallen; to the point now where China sits on the United Nations Human Rights Council and we do not. We have no international credibility right now. We need to rebuild our justice system, and it's gotta start by permanently removing the malefactors responsible for these decisions from the system -- they can go work in retail for all I care, but remove them from the criminal justice system and do it post-haste.
Full access to the software stack. Implement the controls you want in the way you want. Complete control is at your fingertips.
rural != modern
Well, you're comparing traits on multiple axis, but to your point, individualistic remote living requires a higher level of technology than living in cities does. We probably went hunter/gatherer-tribes -> cities -> 'modern' agriculture -> rural individuals, though there's debate about which came first, cities or agriculture. n.b. sanitary sewers are rather new in the history of cities.
More concretely, you'd have a hard time arguing with the farmer running giant gps-guided irrigation robots or my friend who has linux boxes with webcams as shepherds, that rural != modern, but really any rural home is going to be packed full of technology to make life more enjoyable.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://www2.rohde-schwarz.com/en/products/radiomonitoring/product_categories/signal_intelligence/overview/
Click on the GC128 datasheet. They have a firmware for that device that turns it into an IMSI Catcher. There is
also a portable suitcase version of the device.
IMSI Catchers basically work by impersonating the cell tower of the network the subscriber is on, forcing his
handset to it by protocol and higher signal strength and then (this is important) flipping whatever calls are
made into non-encrypted mode. Some phones have a debug mode that will show you whether encryption is activated
or not so if you're making a call and encryption is suddenly off - you know what to do at least I hope.
Basically an IMSI catcher is a still a device that is used on the levels of industrial espionage or espionage
by foreign services that don't have access to the normal national monitoring - which incidentally _all_ (cell)
phone networks are hooked into. The claim US intelligence services are not plugged into their telcos and have to
go outside for surveillance by using a device like this is what it is: Disinfo.
As far as I know, phones don't transmit call logs. But the reason they transmit it's serial number and phone number and GSM IDs, is because they need to have a unique identifier to hand off call from one cell tower to another, and that ID must be traceable to an account in order to bill it properly. So you can't really opt out of this even if you controlled the hardware, although I suppose you might be able to filter the towers that the phone will talk to.
The rest of the privacy invading features are intended to provided a more accurate triangulation for use with the e911 system. This could be evaded except it's against the law to manufacture/distribute a phone without e911 support.
designed by my co-workers to agreed standards
most of those standards were specifically weakened for "the Feds" requirements (basically that meant USA & France over the interests of Germany if I remember right). It's a) clear that it's not really the cell phone industry's fault since they wouldn't get approval otherwise b) clear that "everybody" in some sense knew about this otherwise the weakening wouldn't have been done.
A very specific change made in the UMTS standard from GSM is to require that the phone verifies the network. Without that it's always been possible to intercept. The change is pretty useless at present, since all UMTS phones include a GSM radio and very few can be forced into 3G mode.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();