US Police Now Armed With Israeli Spy Vans Simulating Mobile Phone Towers (cybernews.com) 158
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an X post by Josh Walkos, author of the Substack We the Free: If you thought Flock was bad check out Falconet. Falconet from Israeli company Cognyte serves as a cell tower simulator that intercepts cell phone data from all devices within range. Police mount these systems in Tahoes so the vehicles can collect information while driving through areas without any direct interaction with targets. This mobile approach generates ongoing records of phone locations and communications for everyone nearby rather than only suspects, which creates comprehensive movement profiles and bypasses traditional warrant requirements under the Fourth Amendment.
Cognyte sells the technology directly to U.S. agencies, as shown by the Texas Department of Public Safety purchase of four Tahoes where over three point eight million dollars went to the interception equipment. Adoption spreads through routine vehicle procurement with little external review of how the collected data is stored or shared. Once active the systems permit warrantless collection of private cell phone data across entire communities during normal patrols, which enables potential misuse and leaves individuals with no effective way to discover or contest the surveillance.
Cognyte sells the technology directly to U.S. agencies, as shown by the Texas Department of Public Safety purchase of four Tahoes where over three point eight million dollars went to the interception equipment. Adoption spreads through routine vehicle procurement with little external review of how the collected data is stored or shared. Once active the systems permit warrantless collection of private cell phone data across entire communities during normal patrols, which enables potential misuse and leaves individuals with no effective way to discover or contest the surveillance.
Ummmm..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ummmm..... (Score:5, Insightful)
"bypasses traditional warrant requirements under the Fourth Amendment." = VIOLATES the 4th Amendment. Bypassing The US Constitution to track Americans without a warrant, is a Constitutional Violation, and a CRIME.
Much more easily this would be a breach of wiretapping laws such as ECPA and would likely need a warrant to be legal, either under FISA or normal criminal law. No need to get into a complex constitutional case. It's also not going to work if you switch off old mobile modes and lock your phone into LTE, 4G, 5G or greater modes of network use, a feature which is definitely available on the free phoneOSs like LineageOS and GrapheneOS.
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Re:Ummmm..... (Score:5, Informative)
I think the alleged administration under la Presidenta has shown that laws can be conveniently ignored until some entity like the ACLU gets a court order. But that won't stop them, they'll find some comma out of place in the court order and interpret the law in a different way, and the ACLU will have to refile to get the crap stopped. Once stopped with a temporary injunction, the alleged administration will shop for a judge that will lift it. If the ACLU continues to get injunctions, eventually the alleged administration will get it in front of their paid for Nazis on the Supreme Court which will find in these extenuating circumstances that the alleged administration can ignore the 4th Amendment as if it never appeared in the Constitution.
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Re: Ummmm..... (Score:4)
Nothing is a crime anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
Your neighbor gave up on the rule of law. Maybe for the promise of cheap eggs. Maybe because trans girls give them the ick. Maybe because Fox News is entertaining for some reason. Doesn't matter why they gave it up they gave it up and you got dragged into it.
There is a small chance the Democrats will save us yet again but it's going to be tough. The amount of voter suppression going on is unlike anything we've seen since Jim Crow
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The jet belongs to the Air Force not to Donny, but I guess I should not confuse you with facts
Donny has said repeatedly that the jet will be donated to his presidential library after his term.
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Trump doesn't typically follow the law and does what he wants. So far we have his words on the matter, which are very clear. The jet will go to the Trump Presidential library after he leaves office, and he and Eric Trump have both said he will continue to use the plane for private purposes once it is attached the library. How Trump will actually do this, we don't know. Legally maybe the jet does belong to the air force. But who will enforce that? Maybe the courts. Certainly not Congress. Not the MAGA
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Also probably violates numerous FCC regulations, as well as the CFAA.
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Make an unlicensed cell tower like this and see how long it takes the government to shut you down. Or are you trying to say breaking the law is fine because law breakers already do it.
Re: Ummmm..... (Score:5, Informative)
Stingray? (Score:2)
Re:Stingray? (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_law_enforcement [wikipedia.org]
"On September 5, 2018, the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal issued two rulings. In the first, Florida v. Sylvestre, it affirmed the lower court's suppression of evidence obtained from the warrantless use of a stingray because it is unconstitutional. In the second case, Ferrari v. Florida, it reversed the lower court's refusal to suppress evidence obtained from warrantless cell-site location information.[36]"
Re:Stingray? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stingray? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, well, the U.S. are led by a bunch of criminals for quite a long time right now. "The System" seems to be unable to deal with that situation. If the midterms don't bring even a smidge of change, I assume it'd be best to leave the country before it turns into a second North Korea...
What's sad is that even if the Democrats get as much power as possible, they'll use it to piss themselves into doing nothing in the name of healing the country or some bullshit. And with no consequences, it'll just be one more election before the pendulum swings back this direction. We need consequences for the outright lawbreaking, constitution ignoring ignoramuses in charge now, but I don't see it happening with our current round of available politicians.
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If the voters don't nominate and elect different ones, then it's their own damn fault.
Except when the voters do try to nominate and elect different representatives more aligned with their needs, a nominee who has also refused to accept corporate PAC money, the DNC shows up with an obscene amount of donated corporate PAC money for their chosen candidate in an effort to keep the people's candidate from winning the primary.
Re:Stingray? (Score:4, Funny)
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Florida
Shocker. There's a reason "Florida Man" is a meme. I assume you're First Cousins with half of them?
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Re: Stingray? (Score:2)
Re: Stingray? (Score:4, Insightful)
Must admit I was under the impression they continued using [Stingrays] regardless of warrants.
Maybe they do? Just saying.
IANAL, but here goes. If you're law enforcement trying to build a case against someone, you may not be able to admit into trial information gathered from Stingrays, or any information derived from the Stingray evidence. (Fruit from the poisoned tree rule.)
On the other hand, if you're a government agency that wants to harass someone, with no intention of going to trial, then why not use Stingrays to help you do it? Or even use their supposed presence to chill the population into suppression of legitimate speech that might embarrass them if it were made public.
Hush my mouth, but it seems to me that in current times, some government agencies are using investigations to punish or influence people, rather than trials or even the threat of trials.
Re:Stingray? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. Stingray was ubiquitous when I was in criminal intelligence, and I've been retired for eight years. Set up a stingray focussed on a prison and all incoming/outgoing calls are routed through it. Great for building up a map of contraband users linked to the prison - we never confiscated the phones as there's much greater intel value in letting them run.
Time to use some mesh networks (Score:2)
lotta "excuses" here (Score:2)
seems a certain country is again invading America and the comment trolls been saying it has been going on "forever" - yeah no it is an invasion and we aren't going to let it stand
Re:lotta "excuses" here (Score:5, Insightful)
seems a certain country is again invading America
Yes, it's America.
Israel was founded by the US specifically for fucking up the middle east, mission accomplished.
Wondering how to get more ROI, we used it to conduct research the taxpayer wouldn't pay for here, but accepted "foreign aid" for Israel. Then we import the technology.
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British Mandate 1917, actually.
The UK partitioned Palestine but did not found the nation of Israel. That was the US, and it was done through the UN. America always wanted to fuck up the middle east for economic and racist reasons, but I repeat myself.
Re:lotta "excuses" here (Score:5, Insightful)
Israel was created to get Jews out of Europe.
Israel was proposed to get Jews out of Europe, but then the UK decided it didn't want to run that ball in because (among other reasons) T.E. Lawrence convinced them it would lead to atrocity. The US is ok with atrocities (being founded on top of them) and went ahead and completed the touchdown and has been busy spiking the ball directly into Iran ever since. If you still think the US gives two shits about Europe after refusing to enter WWII until after Pearl Harbor, I really have no idea what to say to you about that.
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The US is ok with atrocities (being founded on top of them) and went ahead and completed the touchdown and has been busy spiking the ball directly into Iran ever since.
Iran = Nazi Germany. Same old shit different packaging.
If you still think the US gives two shits about Europe after refusing to enter WWII until after Pearl Harbor, I really have no idea what to say to you about that.
This is a load of manifest ignorance. Everyone should listen to FDRs arsenal of democracy speech at least once in their lives.
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This is a load of manifest ignorance. Everyone should listen to FDRs arsenal of democracy speech at least once in their lives.
FDR was one guy. Also, what we're talking about here is actual actions, not fancy fine words.
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FDR was one guy. Also, what we're talking about here is actual actions, not fancy fine words.
This is so cringe... FDR was US president at the time. His speech was a call to action to mobilize US industry and labor for war to massively increase US assistance to European war efforts. It is historical fact his words materialized into "actual actions".
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This is so cringe...
Ok, child.
FDR was US president at the time
And now he isn't.
His speech was a call to action to mobilize US industry and labor for war to massively increase US assistance to European war efforts.
You are ignoring the entire historical background, assuming you're at all familiar with it. Americans didn't want to get into the war because they didn't give two fucks about Europe.
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And now he isn't.
You made a statement about US support for assisting Europe during WWII. My remarks were in response to events occurring in the PAST at the time of WWII when FDR was president. Why would you think the PRESENT impacts the PAST? Does causality confuse you?
You are ignoring the entire historical background, assuming you're at all familiar with it. Americans didn't want to get into the war because they didn't give two fucks about Europe.
According to polling conducted in 1940 most of the country wanted to help the Europeans even if it risked war. There was still a great deal of isolationist sentiment from WWI experience during the living memories of the population yet it had thawed subst
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I must say I'm more than a little confused as to why you would even mention what Americans wanted to do.
You're confused about me mentioning what Americans wanted in a discussion about what Americans wanted? You must just be confused all the time.
You yourself indicated the criteria is "actual actions" and then proceeded to violate it with a factually incorrect sidecar about what Americans want.
The actual action was not entering WWII even though we knew the holocaust was occurring because we didn't want to. I see you're confused again. It's exhausting wasting time on anyone who's that confused.
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You're confused about me mentioning what Americans wanted in a discussion about what Americans wanted? You must just be confused all the time.
Yes, I am extremely confused. I can't parse what you are saying in any sort of consistent manner. It reads like contradictory gobbledygook.
What you originally stated was "If you still think the US gives two shits about Europe after refusing to enter WWII until after Pearl Harbor, I really have no idea what to say to you about that." you later clarified your remarks by indicating "Also, what we're talking about here is actual actions, not fancy fine words."
Do you believe "what Americans wanted" is "actual
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Re:lotta "excuses" here (Score:4, Insightful)
Getting rid of AIPAC would be a great start. They literally brag about getting politicians elected.
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not really. aipac as such is just an administrative tool, the cover-up. what buys politicians and all sorts of "leaders" is the flow of money and the client network underneath. that has lots of ways to operate and is not at all easy to get rid of. if anything if you shut down aipac the whole thing would just become more obscure and you get a false closure (much like usaid, ned, etc).
popular support for zionism is already declining, which is a good thing, but that only gets that far. now what's needed is tha
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not really. what aipac does is legal. obnoxious and perverse, but legal. they may do as they please, it's in their right and they have no obligation whatsoever towards american citizens. politicians do have an obligation (as do directors of universities, media, local institutions, etc.). you have to hold those accountable, not aipac.
if you go after aipac it will just feint, mutate and continue. if you hold their assets accountable you take away aipac's leverage, whatever form it adopts.
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i'm not triggered by opinions at all. decades apartheid, long torture, rape, murder and genocide fueled land-grab otoh ...
then again i believe the main issue here is that all that is at the expense of american taxpayers.
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oh, you are a nafo sucker and a zionist lowlife? why am i not surprised ...
Re: lotta "excuses" here (Score:2)
Where's the FCC in all this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apart from warrantless mass surveillance, how to you legally operate a cell tower without an FCC licence? Is this just the government deciding not to follow its own rules? Surely the telcos, who paid good money for their spectrum, and who can't enjoy the service disruptions these government devices cause, must be pissed. Or has the FCC issued cellphone tower licences to law enforcement? Can these devices even connect calls and, if not, how could they get a licence?
Re:Where's the FCC in all this? (Score:4, Informative)
1) You are national/military intelligence and you have various secret long term warrants / exceptions which never come to court. In practice small things like murder and drugs running are calmly ignored as long as they don't involve state security.
2) You don't; the story is largely spreading misinformation; you get a warrant for an area and spy on people in that area. Courts grant these reasonably readily for limited areas.
Re:Where's the FCC in all this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The administration has spent most of its time gutting federal agencies of enforcement power. Even if the FCC said to stop, who would enforce it? Guess who controls the justice department?
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There are also power limits on unlicensed frequencies. Would you like to guess what my experience has been working on police surveillance and whether they respect those limits or not?
Different country, same problem; cops often put themselves above the law.
Question (Score:3)
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Kind of but not really. The IMEI number can be changed on most (all?) devices but this has gotten harder over time, and your provider has to know what it is to provide you with phone service anyway.
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Locking your phone to LTE mode and preferably your home network (might work wierdly in the US?) or better turns on network authentication which means that this only works with the collaboration of the network, which limits it to legal wiretaps. Legal wiretaps on the phone network could use the systems built into the network anyway, beyond the radio interface, so you weren't protected against those in the first place.
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are you suggesting LTE is more secure than 5g? source please. i am not aware of any auth/verification process
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Is it possible to put software on a phone that prevents it from being tracked this way? Sort of like randomized MAC addresses with WiFi.
Not if you want to have mobile phone/data service.
If your mobile provider supports VOIP and you have Wifi available (e.g. at home) you can just disable cellular service. Then everything will go through your Internet connection -- and everything is encrypted these days. But that only works when you have Wifi.
"now" ? (Score:2)
Seriously, "now" ?
These types of vans exist for a decade at least. Maybe not this specific model from that specific manufacturer, but I don't think that's the point here.
Yes, your government is spying on you. While hiding from you some of its most serious and worrying internals. Don't we just love how we are the people and in charge? lol.
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We are in an era where defending the US Constitution is seen as being a bad thing by the current administration in the White House. While law enforcement has had access to this sort of thing for a long time, the USE of them has required a search warrant, with a specific target in mind. Use of this sort of thing for anything that does NOT involve a search warrant is very very illegal.
Think about it another way, when you haven't done anything wrong, you shouldn't need to be afraid of law enforcement. In
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But these vehicles are sold by Israel, so that makes it so much worse! Or uh something
EFF Rayhunter (Score:5, Interesting)
Just the other day I heard an Electronic Frontier Foundation representative talk about their recently released tool called Rayhunter for finding and identifying these surveillance devices.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]
https://github.com/EFForg/rayh... [github.com]
The way things are going these days if you attend any kind of protest in the United States right now, you can expect to be surveiled and tracked by police and federal officials. So turn your cell phone off. Sad that not having your constitutional rights protected is the norm these days. I think it's been that way for years but has gotten significantly worse lately.
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He's clearly talking about the right of not being unlawfully tracked.
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I'll just tell you, there is no such right. It wouldn't be possible if you wanted to make it one.
But, look at the policy. That's not something they're allowed to do anyway without... I forget if it was a warrant or just probable cause, but a cop can already follow you around if they have probable cause.
Read the policy, tell me what's missing.
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Re:EFF Rayhunter (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides the abuse of power, and the Constitutional violations via unreasonable search and seizure, this monitoring causes a chilling effect amongst those with dissenting opinions. The protest may go unimpeded but your opinion has you targeted and monitored by the government for not agreeing.
Which part of this is lost on you?
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But more importantly, you haven't read the policy. Read it and tell me what civil rights protections are missing (you may be surprised). Keeping in mind that there is no presumption of privacy when in public, an
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Re:EFF Rayhunter (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean ICE showing up to demand you delete the post that hurt their feelings? https://newrepublic.com/post/2... [newrepublic.com]
Sounds like a blatant first amendment violation to me.
Re:EFF Rayhunter (Score:5, Insightful)
Your right to protest is unimpeaded. What Constitutional right are you talking about?
Go make that argument to Renee Nicole Good or Alex Pretti. Oh wait... you CAN'T do that, because they're DEAD!!!
So much for the right to protest being "unimpeaded".
Re:EFF Rayhunter (Score:4, Insightful)
Your right to protest is unimpeaded. What Constitutional right are you talking about?
Partial list:
* Fourth Amendment: Protects your person, house, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, requiring the government to secure a warrant based on probable cause.
* First & Fifth Amendments: Safeguard your private beliefs, right to free association, and protection against self-incrimination.
* Fourteenth Amendment: The Due Process Clause protects personal liberties from state infringement.
* Ninth Amendment: Clarifies that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not mean other unlisted rights (like privacy) do not exist
MITM attack not possible with 5G (Score:2)
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The mobile base station would need to be part of the telco's network in order to function - and these SUVs are not part of AT&T or Version's network
For the local cops, true.
For the feds, NSL incoming!
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5G RAN has been designed to make MITM attacks like this not work. ...
Disclaimer: I'm not up to speed on all the details of 5g, so I'm making some assumptions. Please feel free to correct them.
While a true MitM attack on 5g may not be feasible without close cooperation with the telcos, that does not necessarily rule out the tracking of individuals, as opposed to intercepting the communication details.
I suspect that transparent HTTPS proxies are much like these:
* If the proxy has a copy of the server certificates, it can pretend to be the server and intercept the communication
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Hypothetically, if they drive through a protest, they can snag all those identifiers. Later, they can subpoena the telco's to get the subscriber identities for all of those that were at that location at that time on those identifiers. They then have the list of protest attendees.
And cell traffic isn't the only thing they'll be picking up. Of course, they'll pick up WiFi broadcasts, bluetooth, etc etc.. which can all correlate to help identify people.
We're well into the dystopia. The only way to avoid this is to leave your phone/etc at home... but then you'll stand out like a sore thumb in your average crowd, as you'll be the only one that's not broadcasting all this info.
It is a common courtesy for people to switch on airplane mode at protests. Not just as an anti-tracking thing but having huge crowds makes it more difficult for people who need to use their phones.
Stingrays have been around for years. (Score:2, Funny)
Not sure this is really news. Well, except that Texas has stopped buying American.
Re: Stingrays have been around for years. (Score:2)
It's not really news.
The vendor being based in Israel is being highlighted to put a negative spin on it. Nothing has really changed however.
You can use the truth to make your enemies look bad, just by highlighting the undesirable aspects that haven't changed.
That's a source? (Score:3, Interesting)
Be a terrible shame (Score:4, Interesting)
Whenever some fool bleats "well you're in public..." point out the Epstein class whined so hard that the government had the FAA create LADD to hide their jets. I wonder why the Epstein class would want to hide their private jet flights?
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On one hand, the only way society should accept surveillance is if it's applied to the elites first.
On the other hand, there's no way we can trust that it's being applied to the elites at all.
Therefore, there's no way we can trust surveillance at all.
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That's precisely why it will never be applied to the elites and thus should never be allowed without a sworn warrant. Oh and we need to go back to officers giving a sworn statement under penalty of perjury with actual jail time hanging over their heads.
Pubic Service Announcement (Score:4, Interesting)
PSA: Never point those inexpensive, ridiculously powerful and probably FDA-regulation-violating green laser pens sold on Amazon and AliExpress at Flock cameras, as this may damage their sensors and require expensive replacements.
Now, when will Amazon start selling megawatt pulsed microwave emitters...?
android 16 flags them (Score:3)
android 16 is expected to start flagging rogue cell phone towers.
https://www.techradar.com/phon... [techradar.com]
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GrapheneOS, at least, does this on recent Pixel hardware (confirmed as of Pixel 9 Pro, unknown on lower models.)
It's doing a couple different things, controllable by toggles in settings:
1) Disable 2G network connections globally, which may break a few weird old international roaming connections, but also blocks some old shitty IMSI catchers. Mainly this is done because 2G has little to no protections, blindly offering up globally-trackable identifiers to anyone who asks.
2) "Network notifications" gives the
Re:android 16 flags them (Score:4, Interesting)
android 16 is expected to start flagging rogue cell phone towers.
https://www.techradar.com/phon... [techradar.com]
It does. I got a notification in early 2025 (running a pre-release Android 16 build) while traveling in NY. I got someone who was working on the feature to pull the detailed logs from my phone and they were able to get quite a bit of detail about what kind of fake tower it was. Pretty cool.
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android 16 is expected to start flagging rogue cell phone towers.
When? Android 16 has been out over a year. My phone has a pending update to Android 17.
Don't trust your phone (Score:2)
Its security sucks badly, exactly to allow governments of all kinds to spy on you. US police is just a little less shameless about it.
I saw one of these this year in NY (Score:3)
WTF? (Score:2)
4 brand-new Chevrolet Tahoes for $4.5 million this March, it looked like a routine fleet upgrade.
To be sure, the Chevy Tahoe is an over priced piece of shit. But, on what planet would a $1million price tag be a routine purchase?
What the actual factual fuck?
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Is it ok to grift the grifters?
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Not with my money, it isn't.
imagine (Score:3)
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having the world's worst criminal state as your greatest ally
I take your point, but I have to ask "Which state is which"? If forced to choose between Israel and America for the title of worst criminal state, I'd have to flip a coin.
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having the world's worst criminal state as your greatest ally
I take your point, but I have to ask "Which state is which"? If forced to choose between Israel and America for the title of worst criminal state, I'd have to flip a coin.
There are a lot of problems with both, but neither deserves the title of worst criminal state. Most hypocritical state, maybe.
Now Armed With? (Score:2)
Now?
This is old technology. Given the applicable laws (or apathy toward them) the tech has been available for years.
Let's hear it for landlines! (Score:2)
Going back to CB radio (Score:3)
Expensive? (Score:2)
Almost a million dollars per MITM tower? That seems a bit steep, doesn't it?
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Shared blacklist of cell cites (Score:2)
Phones should identify base stations that move around and blacklist them - refuse to connect to them or respond to them in any way. Base stations should be stationary - any cell station that moves is a bad actor. It could be a user option - allow connections to mobile base stations?
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And when the next hurricane hits and the telco's bring in mobile towers to take over, then what? They also deploy mobile towers at event locations where the crowd is expected to overwhelm the existing networks.
Track the trackers (Score:2)
With a little home brew technology you can actively watch and track the people watching you. The "Chasing Your Tail" project gives you a device that will notify you if someone is in close proximity for too long or just following you. The WiGLE WiFi App can do similar, and allow you to see where they have been before tracking you.
Chasing your Tail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://github.com/ArgeliusLab... [github.com]
As an Atheist... (Score:2)
I believe in the Orange Jesus, he who hasth draineth thy swamp of the pestilence known as democracy. Keep not the spy vans from accepting him in your heart.
Shall we say a prayer from the church of pseudo shaksperian atheism?
"Let thy blessed ICE officers rain down heavenly justice upon the unbelievers for he hasth woneth all elections. If thou doth not have evil in thy heart, or mobile phone, his purification needs no
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Might not be 100% true. If the van is integrated with the existing cellular network they could get the needed credentials to mimic the network from the network, in which case they would look exactly like part of the network. That's a different worry, though.