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Catalogue of Government Gear For Cellphone Spying (theintercept.com)
Advocatus Diaboli sends word that The Intercept has obtained a secret catalog of surveillance gear used by the U.S. from a concerned intelligence official. They report: "The intercept has obtained a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. The document, thick with previously undisclosed information, also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States. The catalogue includes details on the Stingray, a well-known brand of surveillance gear, as well as Boeing 'dirt boxes' and dozens of more obscure devices that can be mounted on vehicles, drones, and piloted aircraft. Some are designed to be used at static locations, while others can be discreetly carried by an individual. They have names like Cyberhawk, Yellowstone, Blackfin, Maximus, Cyclone, and Spartacus. Within the catalogue, the NSA is listed as the vendor of one device, while another was developed for use by the CIA, and another was developed for a special forces requirement. Nearly a third of the entries focus on equipment that seems to have never been described in public before."
Double-naught was in in the 60s.
Boeing collects $13B in subsidies from taxpayer https://www.washingtonpost.com... http://america.aljazeera.com/o... http://www.cheatsheet.com/busi... then spies on taxpayer. http://heavy.com/tech/2014/11/... http://www.wired.com/2014/11/f... http://www.usnews.com/news/art... Not cool, Boeing.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but at first sight I don't see any mentions of possible baseband hacks in that catalogue. That's a risk that many academics have talked about over the last few years, because several smartphones appear to give the baseband direct and unconditional access to the RAM, microphone and camera. Maybe baseband hacks are not that practical?
Look, nsa, DOD, and CIA will make heavy use of these overseas to find and track ISIS, AQ, etc. That should not be the least bit surprising. In fact, I'm sure that we make all of this equipment available to the 5 eyes, as well as other allies. What should matter should only be the cases when it is found to be used by agencies like FBI or local police and without a legal warrent. Once this equipment is illegally, then you have a real issue.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just in time for Christmas
You can't complain about the illegal, unethical, or otherwise questionable use of some equipment or method unless you know that such an item exists in the first place.
Information of the kind that was released helps inform public discussion, and in any kind of democracy that should always be viewed as a good thing and encouraged. Democracy rapidly evaporates when information is replaced with secrecy.
What a great name for a piece of cell site spoofing equipment.
"I'm Spartacus. No I'm Spartacus".
I think the British should create a competitor product called Brian.
Bob.
Massive witch-hunt expected, followed by piling on multiple charges, civil and criminal. Maybe some asset-forfeiture for good measure. Sliming in the media.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
That latest leak from the UK: (revealing that the UK spooks have been spying on British networks for 15 years while lying to Parliament).
Vodafone appears in that again:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/16/big_brother_born_ntac_gchq_mi5_mass_surveillance_data_slurping/
"In about 2008, Vodafone Cable, under its previous identity of Cable and Wireless, provided fibre optic cables to link intercepted internet communications and send communications data direct to NTAC....According to engineers who have worked at major telecommunication companies' headquarters, including Orange in Bristol and Vodafone in Newbury, the companies were compelled by secret orders to connect optical fibre links direct to NTAC in London."
Vodafone BIDS ON SPECTRUM ACTIONS, and if it knew the competing bid it would have a clear advantage. If the spooks had helped them with info on the bids (which they have from the surveillance), then it would explain why so many bids were won by Vodafone.
And the spooks (particularly the UK spooks) with access to the surveillance data, the private emails and documents that contain the sealed bids, it's in the spooks interest, they have a clear DESIRE to see Vodafone win more bids and thus more networks are under Vodafone's control and more are tapped.
The spooks may have helped all these companies (the ones illegally doing the surveillance while keeping it secret from Parliament) win bids to spy more.
The actual catalogue
And yet, the main course of Boiled Frog can't be bothered to pay any true attention, as they squee with delight at the Trump shitshow, backed up with all the other Bread and Circus offerings that they watch from their White Man Terror Bunker / SUV entertainment centers.
Another set of leaked documents they received allowed them to write a whole series of articles about the federal government's drone program. AFAIK, the source of that leak has yet to be identified and the feds have been refusing to comment.
The most frustrating thing about drone wars, bank bailouts, foreign invasions, mass surveillance, etc. is that these scumbags fund themselves by confiscating our wealth.
At least here on Slashdot they should change the spelling, especially with the American flag icon on the story. ;-)
I just finished reading another article about counterfeit goods from China. Not just fashions, but sophisticated technical gear. Common sense should tell us that there is a black market for cell phone simulators that are sold to bad guys instead of government. It is hard to imagine how many of those things are hiding near FBI headquarters, the White House, NSA, and local law enforcement.
I'm sure that government could design phones immune to sniffing, but outside the military they probably don't. Given the FBI's record with handling email technology, I expect that a secure phone engineered for the FBI would weigh no less than 50 pounds. Government and law enforcement uses the same brands of phones as we do.
On a similar theme, I saw an article about a European device that alarms when it detects encrypted radio transmissions nearby of the kind used by their police. It could give warning of an impending raid.
...they find the leaker and toss em in jail for a while :)
Terrorism now or in the near technological future has the power to deconstruct human civilization. That's the Irresistible Force and it's real.
Democratic nations who in practice abandon their liberty securing foundations will devolve into corrupt autocratic regimes of the very worst sort and likely stay there forever. This true fact makes those liberty securing foundations an Immovable Object- an object which must at all costs resist disintegrating forces, both from within and without.
Clearly, the US Government has, in practice, thrown the US Fourth Amendment in the garbage. I don't think anyone can argue otherwise with a straight face. These devices are some of the gory details of how they do this.
It's a slippery slope into an corrupt autocratic regime and we're sliding down it. We just are. /.ers don't need me to prove this to them but there are many things to think about which have not been properly teased out of the headlines. This is just one of them:
For decades, the police have been using the NSA as the actual source of their knowledge of drug smugglers' (and other criminals) travel itineraries. Using this knowledge, they have pretexted pulling those smugglers over, for say failure to signal, and then searched the car for drugs. The fact that the NSA was the real ultimate source of the tip was deliberately and systematically withheld not just from the defense, but from the entire judicial system - judges grand juries and sometimes prosecutors alike.
Now what this implies is it possible to rely on just the average local cop and apparently prosecutor to withhold knowledge of mass, ongoing Constitutional violations. This is a big deal because it is proof of a conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence, sustained for decades by thousands of the very people sworn to uphold and defend the laws and the Constitution. A conspiracy not to keep secret things secret but to keep unconstitutional processes a secret from the American system of justice.
It has been normalized to the point where veteran officers consider both the use of this technique and the hiding of its use from courts to be "bedrock police technique".
http://www.reuters.com/article...
The easy conclusion, that cops are bad, has to be false. Cops are (self) drawn from the general population and if there's any reason to think they're non-representative, it's probably to the better side of non-representative with respect to rule following and lawfulness; they are likely better than you would get from just a random draw of citizens.
So it has to be something else. Group dynamics, identification with a group, loyalty, etc. are all at play, but it's also possible that they rationally -and correctly- judge themselves to have been forced into an untenable position where they cannot do their larger job - keep society safe- and also abide by the rules we have set out for them. Giving up the NSA program would result in a worse outcome for the nation overall and giving up using the NSA information would result in a worse outcome for their communities.
In a certain sense it's our fault because we Americans cannot, in the words of Nathan R. Jessep, handle the truth.
http://www.americanrhetoric.co...
I am not saying I agree with this reasoning, I don't but for complex reasons having to do with human psychology and the dangerous dynamics of "the broken window" phenomena where a little bit of bad, seen to be unanswered, brings on an avalanche of Very Bad. Still the cop's position (as guessed at by me) is rational and motivated by a desire to do good, and moreover it may accurately describe the reality of what has to be done in order for policing to be effective. That may just be the truth of the situation.
Going on 15 years after 9-11 and 3 years after Snowden, I still see no dedicated widely
That's what happens when it isn't safe for an American journalist to put out a story like this. You have to rely on people in other countries to tell you the truth, and some of them spell funny.
I am wondering if the EFF knows one "Jennifer Lynch - Senior Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation" is providing a huge amount of handy reviews for these products which include gems like.
You’ll feel like a powerful Greek gladiator with the Spartacus II. It’s the smallest high-powered dual-band system on the market and can be moved easily from a plane to a car or even to your body — all without changing the system. While the $180,000 price tag might put it out of reach for smaller agencies, its cross-border capabilities could make it easy to acquire with DHS funding. And if it’s used at the border, you might not even need to get a warrant before you use it.
and
If you want a device that doesn’t just locate your target but makes it impossible for him to make a call, look no further than the Stargazer III. In “attack mode,” the Stargazer can jam a handset and capture its metadata at the same time it pinpoints your target’s location. But watch out — the Stargazer may jam all the other phones in the area too — including your own.
And not to be left out the ACLU has one "Nathan Wessler - Staff Attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project" providing reviews. including things like.
The National Security Agency designed this little number itself, cutting out the usual corporate middleman.
and
From the maker of the Stingray, this device provides the added power to listen in on calls and read text messages. Also useful for kicking nearby phones off the network (you can choose between just blocking a single target phone or scrambling the signals of all phones in the area). Take note: Wiretapping calls and text messages requires a special “superwarrant” signed by a judge. Playing around with a Blackfin without adequate court supervision can get you in a lot of trouble.
Which in fairness this one device mentions a warrant. Most of the others just talk about how great they are at sucking up data and fucking up people in an area.
Aren't the ACLU and EFF supposed to be the good guys? The leak would probably upset me if this was military stuff used in a war zone. What we see is quite different, where the Federal Government is happy to fund these devices for virtually any police agency in the US and devices used against it's own citizens. I'm upset to the point of being nauseous, but not at the leak.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Nothing apologetic or regretful about it, is there? With ultra-aggressive names like those (the vendors obviously know their customers), it's pretty clear that the people working in security agencies see themselves as ass-kicking warriors. War & warriors have a very simple set of priorities: "win" at any cost and the end justifies the means, which I guess makes us all merely collateral damage... or the enemy.
Troop morale is important and I have to concede that being a "kick-ass fighter for freedom" gets you up in the morning waay better than "gumshoe," but we're screwed when civilian agencies start re imagining themselves as war machines.
Words, thoughts and attitudes do lead to action.
The purpose of civil rights is to ensure that you are a free citizen in a free country. As long as the data that Government A is getting is about the citizens of Government B, from first principles there isn't an issue. Where it gets more complex is if the data is then provided to government B in a way that undermines the freedom of government B's citizens. If that data triggers legitimate data capture by the agencies of Government B - i.e. subject to the court processes of that country - then there still isn't a problem. Where there IS a problem is if Government B uses the data to undermine the freedoms of a citizen - like adding their name to a no fly list. THEN you have a problem...
The fact that this distinction is so hard to maintain, and agencies have not been good at respecting it in the past means that there needs to be severe consequences when these lines are crossed. Unfortunately they are not the obvious lines, which are the ones you are referring to.
This is a classic example of American double-standards.
This isn't even remotely an issue unique to the US and has been an issue throughout the world for much longer than the US has existed. Focusing your ire on the US here only allows your own government to get away with not fulfilling its duties.
Your own government is supposed to be representing you in this matter, just like Americans (should) expect the US government to not abuse them or allow them to be abused by the governments of other countries. There are a variety of means for governments to protect their citizens, from diplomatic to military. Your government is not standing up for you and may even be cooperating in these attacks against you. Quit whining about other governments and get your own to step up.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
CIA, NSA, FBI are the dark triad of the Executive, Judiciary, and Legislative branches. We need to acknowledge this fact and create symmetry to rejoin a corrupted organization malignant with psychopathy. Make these cogs rub hard against one another as best we can so there will exist no double think only one consolidated thought. They must merge under the governance of Order.
It is very simple to file a FOIA request.
Will EPIC or any of us be mass-filing FOIA requests or contact to spokespersons to see if law enforcement have been using these pieces of technology?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch