
What Happens When the Surveillance State Becomes an Affordable Gadget? - sergeant3
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-10/what-happens-when-the-surveillance-state-becomes-an-affordable-gadget
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themartorana
_" He reasoned that the government had to have a gadget that masqueraded as a
cell tower, tricking his AirCard into handing over its IMSI, which was then
matched up to the IMSI connected to all his online phony tax filings. It was
all inference, at first, but if it was true, that would be enough for him to
make the case that what was done to his AirCard was an illegal search."_

I'll bet all my money he'd have been called a crazy conspiracy theorist before
Snowden, etc.

Drives me nuts. When the government starts embodying the worst of conspiracy
theories, I become a lot less comfortable dismissing conspiracy theories.

~~~
bravo22
I'm not sure an IMSI catcher would be needed. Cellphone companies CAN
triangulate his location for E911 purposes with reasonable accuracy. All LEO
would need is to put the apartment block under surveillance for a few days and
figure out which resident is home when the laptop connects to the network.
This is even easier if he moved around with his laptop.

~~~
mystic001
Wouldn't this take a warrant?

Sounds like IMSI catchers are being used without warrants.

~~~
ams6110
Surveillance doesn't necessarily require a warrant, if it's something like
watching who's coming and going from a public vantage point. Wiretapping,
reading mail, other eavesdropping would.

~~~
mystic001
Triangulation seems very targeted and would require a warrant (which was the
point of my comment).

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maxander
> Soghoian isn’t optimistic. “The FCC is sort of caught between a rock and a
> hard place,” he says. “They don’t want to do anything to stop the devices
> that law enforcement is using from working. But if the law enforcement
> devices work, the criminals’ devices work, too.”

It's telling that law enforcement priorities work out this way. They're not
terribly concerned about what hijinks highly-educated hackers get up to or the
occasional tech-savvy stalker, they would much rather be able to nab the
untrained- the working-class dropouts who own a cellphone but don't know how
it works- as quickly and efficiently as possible. Nevermind that the average
citizen is much more concerned about identity theft than someone smoking weed
on a street corner.

~~~
Balgair
As usual, it is all about incentives.

What are the incentives for law enforcement? How are they 'graded' at the end
of the year? What do they need to do to keep their jobs?

They have to catch criminals. You can pick apart what each of the words in
that sentence means, but that's the deal. If those are all low key guys, like
the know-nothing drug dealing kid in your 8th grade English class, so be it.
They are paid all the same, it's all about the number going up every year.

~~~
yuhong
I think this is part of where the phone encryption scare comes from, right?

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anexprogrammer
Aside from the ability to pinpoint a location, this just returns us to where
we were in the 80s.

Any fool with a scanner could listen in on police, fire, the neigbour's
cellphone before GSM, their wireless landline phone, and any number of other
things. Almost no one cared. Anyone who did was a tinfoil wearing nutcase.

So whilst I can hope, I doubt much will change. Not enough for things like
Signal to become mainstream, or for there to be general pushback against
privacy invasion. Now if a few politicians get outed in the inconsistency of
their public/private beliefs or an affair or three, perhaps. Though they will
probably demand a new phone network for public figures only, with secure
encryption and vast cost. :)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
The difference is that you had to have a human physically listening in. Now
with the right access, a half-dozen people, and a few thousand dollars, an
entire small town could be surveiled.

The fact that it's always been possible doesn't change the fact that it's only
recently become practical.

~~~
coldtea
People (even technies) always forget that technology is a multiplier, and a
multiplier is an enabler for things that before would be impractical...

That something was already _possible_ "back in the day" doesn't say much, if
it was also impractical and costly to perform.

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blakesterz
This is _really_ interesting. I know the old "Attacks always get better; they
never get worse." but I've never thought about "Tools and technology always
get cheaper and easier to use" before as it applies to security.

~~~
pdkl95
As Dan Geer warned[1], technology changed the balance of powers when the cost
tends towards zero:

    
    
        The central dynamic internal to government is, and always
        has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature
        to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much
        money they can hand out.
        ...
        Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter,
        that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes.  Does
        that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the
        Executive more?  I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially
        changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away
        from the Legislature. While President Obama was referring to
        something else when he said "I've Got A Pen And I've Got A Phone,"
        he was speaking to exactly this idea -- things that need no
        appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances.
    

The "power of the purse" doesn't mean much when technology drives prices
towards zero.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-
TGvYOBpI#t=625](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=625)
[http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt](http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt)

~~~
digi_owl
While a bit banal in this regard, it bring to mind the notion i have had that
copyright was not strongly enforced previously in part because it would
necessitate a cop in every home.

Now however there is at least one cop in every home, or at the very least a
snitch. This thanks to internet connected computing devices.

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CapitalistCartr
I wonder how the various "powers-that-be", from politicians to lobbyist to
bureaucrats to federal agents, don't see that within a decade they will be as
vulnerable. Anyone who wants to know everything they do will be able to
cyberstalk them with utter effectiveness. Including reporters and dangerous
nutjobs with guns. The Secret Service can't protect them all.

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sandstrom
Is there any work in the 4G/5G/YG standards to protect against this? For
example using randomized or constantly changing IMSI values?

~~~
TACIXAT
Zero knowledge IMSI?

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evolve2k
Seems the cheaper tools work by forcing the phone back into 2G then just
scraping up what is made available by the less secure standard.

On the iPhone is it possible to disable the 2G fallback?

