Exclusive: Evidence of cell phone surveillance detected at anti-ICE protest
san.com
Mobile network anomalies consistent with cell phone surveillance were detected at a July 4 protest at an ICE field office in Washington state.
  • plz1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    6 days ago

    I don’t understand why cell phones don’t authenticate the towers they connect to. Is this really just a “standards lag behind modern security” thing, or is it on purpose to allow these Stingray devices to be used?

    • utopiah@lemmy.ml
      3·
      5 days ago

      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.

      • mkwt@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 days ago

        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.

    • lauha@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 days ago

      Even if they did, I don’t see government having trouble getting a proper authentication key.