Most people aren’t aware that this kind of technology has been used on a regular basis for years by law enforcement in the US and in Canada … especially in large gatherings or protest events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
Police set it up at major events to monitor public activity, track people and identify people … most of the time as an excuse to monitor possible terrorist activity but worst to identify leaders and key people and figure out how to manage the protest event.
And sure, there are many opportunities to use encrypted devices and transmissions but those setups are only used by those who are organized enough and have setup those system ahead of time and know what they are doing. Most people are technically illiterate and still do a lot of communicating on open networks and systems that are easy to track and intercept.
Police go after low hanging fruit and once they find those people … they go after them, arrest them to justify their continued use of this technology and to fund, develop and use even more invasive types of monitoring and scanning.
Which means that if you are attending any public protest event that will have hundreds or thousands of people in it … never bring your personal every day phone. If you do, learn about encrypted communications and encrypting your device. It’s best to just leave it at home and go without one or use a burner phone. Because if you are ever arrested with your phone, even if it is encrypted, you may be forced or coerced to unlock it. Most of us are not trained undercover agents that can face some officer pointing a gun at you or handcuffing you while shouting at you to unlock your phone.
Because if you are ever arrested with your phone, even if it is encrypted, you may be forced or coerced to unlock it.
To add, if you do encrypt it, always use a password or passcode, because they cannot legally compel you to divulge the content of your own mind (at least in the USA… for now) while if you use a fingerprint or facial scan, they are totally allowed to force you to show your face or use your fingerprint to open it.
It would be really helpful/cool if people got into building LoRa swarms of small texting devices for such events.
LoRa swarms of small texting devices for such events
I wasn’t able to easily find any articles or sites that explain this … any recommendations on where one could read about this more?
Here’s a proof of concept from 2023: https://msglab.co/project/lo-ra-msg
There’s others as well, and as this project notes a lot of the underlying code is a mishmash and generally unfinished and buggy.
https://meshtastic.org/docs/introduction/
Meshtastic is another fantastic LoRa network project.
Edit: here’s another
https://www.tindie.com/products/bobricius/armachat-meshtastic-compatible-lora-messenger/
i remember this being reported a while back on reddit, people noticed these fake towers all over the place. but it never got any other media attention.
Because they are only temporarily setup and most people don’t know what they are, what they do or that they even exist. It’s almost become normal because not many people know about them. Police just come in, setup a tower, intercept everyone’s cell signal and get to collect free data on everyone without any encrypted communication. All those SMS texts just get throw around without any encryption for anyone to read if its going through their tower.
The Thought Emporium just put out a video on Nebula (should be up on their YouTube channel soon) about this. This is a huge part of why every guide out there tells you to leave your phone at home when going to a protest, or at a minimum turn it off before you get there and only turn it on when you are at least a few blocks away. A burner phone is an option of course but that’s an additional expense and you need to plan for it.
Off and in a faraday bag—along with your wallet. Leave your smart watch at home.
Faraday bags are a big deal nowadays.
iPhone and Android both continue to broadcast BTLE and possibly mobile depending on model while off for hours for Find My features.
While the BTLE beacons should be anonymous, very few things actually are to the right adversary.
Also, many devices with wifi broadcast a list of saved networks whenever looking for a network to join, or did at one point anyway. Useful for people to know who might otherwise be using xfinitywifi or similar.
Right, my keys have a fob. Good catch!
I’m suprised there isn’t some counter measure, like a device that just spams and spoofs so much random data that it makes them using something like this useless
Unfortunately that’d end up just acting as a jammer.
repeat after me
leave your fucking phones at home
Or, have a phone only for protests (if you have analyzed the implications of it linking you to all protests you’ve brought it to, both if you are and aren’t arrested with it) and do not leave your home / work / coffeeshop near your house wifi in saved networks when attending a protest with it… even using your home wifi and then deleting the network is Asking For It if it doesn’t randomize its MAC address with every connect.
Understanding the security implications is beyond most people’s computer shit knowledge so yeah, easier to either leave phones at home or have a burner phone running GrapheneOS and don’t leave any saved wifi networks on it when actually going to a protest.
