Microsoft has billions of dollars in US intelligence-cloud contracts and should leap at a chance to get an edge in on those. They've done things like this before; they provided incredible (and illegal!) cooperation with the NSA back at the time of the Snowden Leaks[0].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-... ("Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages" (2013))
Isn't a git commit trail basically a Merkle tree of checksums? If any developer tried to do a pull or fetch they'd suddenly get a bunch of strange commit messages, wouldn't they?
Also: code signing is / can become a thing.
I think the release files is the place they could most easily tamper - generally they're stored on Github infra so the files could be changed, and the checksum on the download page also altered (or different files and different checksums provided to different people if targeted).
Unless the builds are totally reproducible it'd be tricky to catch.
To that end, I started a project last month so that code signing can be done in multiple geographical locations at once: https://github.com/soatok/freeon
That Merkle tree prevents the naive case where the adversary tries to serve a version of a repo, to a client who already has an older version, differing in a part the client already has. (The part the client has local checksums for). They shouldn't do that. The git client tells the server what commits it doesn't have, so this is simple to check.
Code signing could be a safeguard if people did it, but here they don't so it's moot. I found no mention of a signing key in this repo's docs.
The checksum tree could be a useful audit if there were a transparency log somewhere that git tools automatically checked against, but there isn't so it's moot. We put full trust in Microsoft's versions.
Lots of things could be helpful, but here and now in front of us is a source tree fully in Microsoft's control, with no visible safeguards against Microsoft doing something evil to it. Just like countless others. It's the default state of trust today.
But it's written in rust.
That won't work. The first thing the client does is ask the server for list of references with their oids (ls-refs). It only asks for oids and reports what oids it has after the server responds.
You'd need another way to identify that the client asking for references was the same one you vended the tampered source tree to, otherwise, you'd need to respond with the refs' real oids and the fetch would fail since there's no way to get from the oid the user has to the real one.
Git is a distributed vcs after all. Every checkout is its own complete git "hub".
Git may be designed as a distributed VCS; and it'd be a different situation if it were used that way in practice. For many projects, GitHub has a full MITM. They could even—forget about the checksums—bifurcate the views in between devs—accept commits from one dev, send over those commits with translated Merkle trees to another dev who has a corrupted history, and they'd never figure it out.
I think the point is they don't have complete control over it. Sure, they have complete control over the version that is on GitHub. But git is distributed, and the developers will have their own local copies. If Microsoft screwed with the checksums, and git checks them. The next developer pull or push would blow up.
If they're pushing or pulling to/from GitHub, then GitHub has a total MITM and is able to dynamically translate checksum trees in between devs' incompatible views of the repo.
Those checksums would seem valid to the victims, as they're a self-consistent history of checksum trees they got directly from GitHub. The devs would be working with different checksum trees. GitHub would maintain both versions, serving different content and different checksums depending on who asks.
That might work for a while if dev isn't active. He would, for example have to not notice there was a new release, with an incremented version number that triggers updates. Even that doesn't work forever. Down stream dev's often look at the changes - for example a Debian maintainer usually runs his eye over the changes.
But if the dev is active this is going to be noticed pretty quickly. The branches will diverge, commit messages, feature announcements, bug reports, line numbers not matching up. It would require a skilled operator to keep them loosely in sync, and that's the best they could do.
Either way, sooner or later Microsoft's subterfuge would be discovered, and that is the death knell for this scenario. The outrage here and elsewhere would boil over. Open source would leave github en masse, Microsoft's reputation would be destroyed, they would lose top engineers. I don't have a high opinion of Microsoft's technical skills and leadership as they have been consistently demonstrated themselves to be inconsistent and unreliable. But the company too large and too successful to be psychotic. The shareholders, customers, and lawyers would have someones guts for garters if they pulled a stunt like that.
Sadly, it's only available in the Google/Apple stores (if anyone knows of a similar tool that's available elsewhere, I'd love to hear about it!)
It allows me to locate the "cell towers" I'm connecting to and that are nearby, as well as the devices around me, and will map them for me.
In fact, several years ago, I noted a brand spanking new "cell tower a block or so away (this is in NYC) that appeared to be in the street(!). It stayed there for a couple weeks and then was gone. It sure seemed like it was an IMSI catcher[1].
It's not directly the feature set you suggest, but can certainly be used to identify the towers near you -- and any new ones that might "pop up."
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wilysis.ce...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher
Edit: Another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45189302 ) mentioned snoopsnitch (https://github.com/srlabs/snoopsnitch ) and other tools which, apparently can do similar (and more apropos to the topic at hand) things as Network Cell Info Lite.
Edit: Interesting also the collection of network security via gsmmap [2]
[0] https://gitweb.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyCell.git;a=summary
[1] https://github.com/srlabs/snoopsnitch [2] https://gsmmap.org/
An enthusiastic and muddle-headed person might get inspired by disposable Internet chatter, and then go and get themselves sent to federal prison (or worse).
Also, I suspect that an attack like that would only justify (or be used as a pretext for) additional actions that are undesirable to the perpetrator.
I wonder what their lawyers think of this.
https://bja.ojp.gov/program/it/privacy-civil-liberties/autho...
Rayhunter – Rust tool to detect cell site simulators on an orbic mobile hotspot - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283917 - March 2025 (23 comments)
>At 8:58 a.m., just before the protest began, SAN began monitoring eight LTE bands present in the area and found no anomalous behavior. At 9:06 a.m., however, a burst of 57 IMSI-exposing commands was detected.
>Other bursts, present on four of the LTE frequency bands, appeared roughly every 10 minutes over the next hour, causing Marlin to issue numerous real-time alerts. A post-scan analysis confirmed the detection of 574 IMSI-exposing messages.
>It also flagged two “attach reject” messages, a type of cellular rejection sent when a cell phone tries to connect to a network. Attach rejects can occur for valid reasons, such as when a phone with an expired SIM card tries to connect to a network but such messages are rare on properly configured networks. IMSI catchers may use attach reject messages to block or downgrade connections and obtain an IMSI before it is encrypted. SAN observed the two suspicious messages at 9:55 a.m. and 10:04 a.m. at the height of the protest but did not encounter others before or after the demonstration ended.
>SAN conducted a follow-up scan during the same time period, the following day, when no protesters were present. Unlike the day prior, Marlin did not issue real-time alerts.
I see those quite frequently, the bulk of them are phones trying to roam in a network they're not allowed to though, and some cause the cell is a bit overloaded, some cause the phone sends a wrong tracking area - not sure that's a phone bug or a common scenario where the phone retains an old tracking area, then it tries to connect to the same tracking area - then the phone discovers it's is now in a different tracking area, and after being rejected, it connects with the correct one.
Could the regular mobile tower operators collect subscriber identities at will via their regular gear, with no stingray vans or warrants required, and save the information for later? That seems to be how it's done with the other subscriber location and communication contents that they collect.
> "A post-scan analysis confirmed the detection of 574 IMSI-exposing messages."
That's roughly 574 unique protestors, give or take.
Full-on autocratic tyranny—this is also what Putin's oligarchs did to Ukranians at the Maidan Protests, in Kyiv in 2014. Used IMSI-catchers to assemble lists of everyone present, and intimidate them.
https://slate.com/technology/2014/01/ukraine-texting-euromai... ("How Did Ukraine’s Government Text Threats to Kiev’s EuroMaidan Protesters?" (2014)).
The First Amendment precludes protected political speech from being used as a basis for such a search.
The Fourth Amendment further prohibits dragnet searches of indefinite groups of people, such as a protest, because it requires a warrant to "particularly describe" the "persons or things to be seized". (The "Particularity Clause").
I fully agree with your comment in the different case, which is not this case, where government merely passively observes things happening in a public space. IMSI catchers are different; one way being, in that a Stingray *actively interacts with* a device, without authorization, by sending it corrupted packets. (So I understand). A second way being that it violates general social expectations of what's in "public" and what's in "private"; by analogy, if police used laser microphones to listen in on faraway conversations; or in public crowds, used terahertz radiation to look under people's clothes; those are non-public searches, any pedantic interpretations of physics notwithstanding.
Of course, the Fourth Amendment also has clauses against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it's easy to see, from modern cases like Carpenter v. United States (2018) (which limited warrantless cellphone location tracking) why this could be perceived poorly.
But the Constitution tries to ensure that risk doesn’t come from government retaliation against lawful expression. I would ask why you're so keen to allow it.
Sure, that sounds bad. But also very different than a mob of masked protestors who feel entitled to anonymous protest.
Protestors should be proud to be there and shouldn't feel the need to hide their identities. Not in this country at least. For all the hysterical comparisons, this isn't Putin's Russia. They aren't just kidnapping random citizens and disappearing them for participating in a protest. On the other hand, during "peaceful protests" when people start destroying the city under cover of the protest, yeah, I do want those people to be arrested and tried.
Well, the links above explain exactly why there is debate around whether or not protestors are entitled to anonymous protests.
> On the other hand, during "peaceful protests" when people start destroying the city under cover of the protest, yeah, I do want those people to be arrested and tried.
I agree, but I would not trade my constitutional rights for some small (or large) property damage, that happens very rarely. (The last few weekends saw hundreds of protests across the nation - how much looting or other did you see?)
Unfortunately, this country is full of people that fall prey to newsroom propaganda, become emotional, and would gladly trade away their rights. It's a shame that those decisions affect everyone else, as well.
even still, not everyone is a citizen and the government seems to believe that protesting is a reason to remove a greencard. Not everyone wants to spend a month incorrectly detained
We're less than a year into the administration: think it's a little bit early to be assuming that those abuses of power won't happen.
The fourth amendment: unreasonable searches and seizures. This is an unreasonable search.
Also, protests aren't civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is civil disobedience. Protests are explicitly protected by the first amendment and you can protest all day long.
Completely legal protests are met with unreasonable searches, seizures, and even violence all the time in the US. We saw it all the time with BLM. Yes, they need to worry about that.
Also,
> [...] if you disagree with me and think the government is fascist and thus can't be trusted not to throw you in prison just for saying things they don't like
this is happening:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/crime/general/tourist-refused-entr...
edited for phrasing / completeness
The constitution is pretty silent afaik on whether random foreign nationals such as this tourist have any particular rights. Obviously summarily executing or imprisoning them would be a big no-no, but being asked lots of questions and thoroughly searched because they think you're a troublemaker is not uncommon. Being refused entry to a country that isn't yours and being home safe by the end of the day, is quite a few huge leaps away from being locked up in your own country for your speech.
Do I think that incident sounds like a stupid move by CBP if that is the whole story[1]? Yeah. But I disagree that it's proof we're in a fascist dictatorship.
[1] Is it also possible that the government agents didn't overhear him making some flippant comment that made him seem far more dangerous? For instance, "Yeah I can't believe I'm even coming here when that fascist Trump was elected. Wish that bullet hadn't missed." If he had said or done something to cause it to happen, you can bet he would have forgotten to mention it when he recounted his story to The Daily Star.
I'd like to leave the question of why that's true as an exercise for the reader, but your comment makes it sound as if you have trouble with this concept, so let's be explicit - a state operating autocratically can, and often will, rubberstamp whatever it decides it wants to do.
Had a quick look for the numbers from FISA to give you an example of this. https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2013/06/fisa-co... says that they denied 11 requests for surveillance warrants out of 33,900 requests over 33 years of operation.
That's a pass rate of 99.07%!
So allow me to say - a warrant wouldn't have changed anything, they give them out like nothing.
In the article though, it does say: "ICE did not respond to requests for comment from SAN. It is not clear whether ICE or any other law enforcement agency obtained a warrant to use an IMSI catcher — commonly referred to as a “Stingray” — to conduct surveillance."
On the contrary, I don't think there's anything more relevant.
That such action can be legal speaks volumes about the state of what is legal and tolerated within the US. This, like pretty much everything about the current administration, is not explicitly about Trump, but something that has been cooking for at the very least the past two decades.
I think the parent poster is saying that the present of a warrant does not make the action not autocratic. And you are disagreeing with a different idea (that the presence of a warrant doesn't matter at all), by saying it does matter, but in the opposite way -- if a warrant is present that indicates the state is losing checks and balances.
That is, a high pass rate could also indicate that it is a well functioning system with few spurious requests and none that are lacking required information.
Does requiring a warrant guarantee best behavior? No. But it does provide a solid path for accountability and a path to codify better rules, when abused.
Point me to an article if I’m wrong, but I haven’t heard even a single credible rumor that these Stingrays aren’t being used for exactly what authorities say they are - trying to find particular individuals is a general area. Have you heard of whistleblower accounts or accidentally leaked details about large scale storage ordata mining of location data from Stingrays?
If your argument is simply that law enforcement agencies don’t have the right to conduct a dragnet when pursuing a fugitive murderer, as is the case here, you’re going to need something more persuasive than a rant against authoritarianism.
This broad dragnet nature of Stingray collection has always been why it's been a major privacy issue. Like doing a wiretap by tapping the whole neighbourhood and filtering phone calls for a certain address.
Remember Kavanaugh's confirmation vote in 2018 was 50-48, Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted against, Susan Collins for, Joe Manchin (D-WV) also for [0]. Susan Collins' reluctant-voice-of-moderation act has run out of steam, finally, probably decades overdue
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh_Supreme_Court_...
Which I suppose is another thing that was predicted but not acted upon: the establishment of political parties.
[1] Bush 2000, and less directly but far more dangerously, by making Trump unprosecutable in the run-up to 2024.
Maybe you missed it when you read the article?
[0] https://san.com/cc/exclusive-evidence-of-cell-phone-surveill...
If this government has not proven that they had one, you'd be mad to trust that they did.
There are no consequences to it for lying, or for not following the law, or not acting in good faith. It has a well-documented history of doing all three, and is headed by a convicted criminal.
They clearly don't care for legality, constitutionality, anything positive or good.
This man is no longer part of the administration. But not because he was fired for this blatant disregard for the judicial branch. It's because he was nominated to be a judge (and the Senate confirmed him).
Whoops, I hope no other country in conflict with the US gets this idea, that pool has expanded significantly lately!
I recall reading about the people who slammed planes into the World Trade Center towers. They were not hell bent on destroying buildings, they were hell bent on destroying society of the US, destroying buildings was just a stepping stone. And, sure seems like they succeeded.
But the US is not in decline because of whatever anyone from outside does. It's following the same cycle all Hegemons go through over 100-200 years. Whether its Greece, Babylon, Eygpt, Rome, Islamic Caliphates or all the later European powers. They all went through a similar a cycle - rise - dominate - decline. See Oswald Spengler - Rise and Fall of the West written 100 years ago.
Then, just do whatever the hell you want all the name of protecting people from crime and protecting jobs.
What am I saying, that's completely ridiculous and could never happen in a "law and order" country like the US.
Nobody really gives a shit about the constitution it is all about ideology. ICE is going after immigrants so nobody cares about the razzias.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna206917
> Mexico’s security chief confirmed Tuesday that 17 family members of cartel leaders crossed into the U.S. last week as part of a deal between a son of the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Trump administration.
I don't know how Republicans continue to support this administration. Maybe they just don't know he's aiding criminals?
> “It is evident that his family is going to the U.S. because of a negotiation or an offer that the Department of Justice is giving him,” Garcia Harfuch said.
Looks like they're getting protection in exchange for testimony against other cartels.
I mean, our president is a criminal himself. Repeatedly violating the law and the constitution while in office. At this point those supporting the regime must doing it out of either cowardice or malice
Allegedly. No convictions have come from any of the accusations as POTUS.
I'm not sure we'll ever see one since the supreme court is in his pocket and has already ruled that that the president is allowed to commit crimes as long as it was an "official act" as determined on a case by case basis by the court
https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/border-wall-paint-...
Citizens on the streets don't need to show their papers to ICE, but that's been worked around by yesterday's SCOTUS. Being brown at Home Depot is now sufficient cause to get arrested by ICE.
nah someone made all that up after the fact
Trust me, people thought you were some wild crazy freak.
See here's how it works, watch:
There's going to be concentration camps. The volume of deportation required demands it. There always needs to be two sides agreeing in a deportation, the sending and the receiving. If there's a bottleneck at the receiving or an incompetence in the sending then you warehouse. It's inherent to any logistics.
No that feeling you have that I'm crazy, that's what I'm talking about.
Anyways... See you in a year or so and I'll link back to this.
So it is with no degree of lightness that I say that I agree and this concerns me gravely.
How about we rain check...see you in 5–10?
You just don't want to realize that this has nothing to do with ethics anymore. It's about control and money.
Or, what absolves them from not being held accountable for not taking heed to these warnings, being passive?
Meanwhile, the left out there pointing at Obama's extrajudicial killings, Bush's whole post 9/11 fiasco, Clinton's "Superpredators" nonsense, etc. etc. and making tons of noise about how this was all going to end.
Turns out, the left was right, the Dems were wrong. But the Dems are still fighting to try and shut down the left. Look at how hard the Dem establishment hates Mamdani.
I’m curious to see where the Mamdani Experiment takes you all. His constituents are one group who are for certain no stranger to the armed presence reported elsewhere today. Under pretenses all too familiar.
What are you going on about? Mamdani may or may not be a good mayor for NYC. Ask me in two years.
But he's not some sort of jihadi, Commie pinko. He's a New Yorker who is actually talking about issues that New Yorkers care about.
It certainly helps that his competition are a disgraced serial sexual harasser (Cuomo), a corrupt sitting mayor whose administration (as well as himself) is riddled with corruption and a lack of accountability (Adams) and a clownish jerk whose claim to fame is that he used to ride the subways at night with his gang and beat up whoever they felt like (Sliwa).
Given the competition. is it any wonder that Mamdani is a cinch to win the mayoralty?
And all that has absolutely zero to do with the mud being slung at him. He will be the next mayor of NYC and I look forward to his tenure -- especially since it means the other folks will go away, at least for a few years.
Mamdani may suck at being mayor. I don't know. But it would be difficult for him to be worse than his field of opponents.
And none of that stuff has anything to do with national politics or the DNC.
I say all this as an old white guy of Jewish extraction.
I don't know where you're from or where you live, but you're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too. Yuck!
Edit: I may have, as anecdata (thanks for calling me out, anecdata!) suggested (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45193191 ), misunderstood your post. Upon reflection, I probably should have been more charitable in my reading of it. That said, you're flat wrong about Mamdani's "constituents." He, for the reasons I mentioned above, is supported not just by the minorities being targeted by the Trump administration, but by huge numbers of regular New Yorkers (of all ethnicities and melanin content levels), because he's the best candidate.
I'd add that Mamdani didn't just fly in from an Iranian terrorist training camp to run for mayor. He grew up in NYC, went to NYC public schools and has been an elected member of the New York State Assembly for the past four years.
If I misunderstood your comment as to Mamdani, his constituents (the residents of State Assembly District 36 in Queens), and/or his validity/viability as a mayoral candidate, my apologies.
It's an interesting, if horrifying thought -- stripping someone of their citizenship because folks don't like his religion and/or level of melanin.
It's disgusting.
I said it already, but I'll say it again -- I have no idea whether or not Mamdani will make a good mayor -- but he's far and away the best candidate in the race.
I should have been more charitable in my reading of GP's comment.
I've edited my comment to reflect that.
I had a whole comment written up but, meh. The noisy people are made out to be conspiracy theorists, even when someone like Chomsky brings all the receipts. People want to believe the person they voted for is the "good guy" in a superhero sort of way.
Trump is partly able to do what he does because of these extreme expansion of powers from previous presidents. This is why "but my guy good!!" is among the worst forms of reasoning for justify $bad_thing.
Yes. This is what I was saying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra
John Yoo is probably the most influential lawyer of the 21st century.
People were screeching about this stuff then but they were brushed off by as "conspiracy weirdos" or "yeah they're probably doing it but who cares because it'd be unconstitutional" or "they won't use it on petty criminals" depending upon the exact year and political context you brought it up in.
Sounds like a real cool guy.
Wiretaps have always been a tool in law enforcement's hands, and if it's subject to a warrant, which the article goes on to say it was, I am completely fine with this. If the ability to tap phone conversations 75 years ago didn't cause us to descend into fascism, I don't automatically think this is scary.
Erosion of anyone’s rights is an erosion of everyone’s rights.
The balance has already slid and change that people never expected has happened. Assuming it won't happen more is foolish IMO.
There's also been recent talk about going after 'recently naturalized' individuals the admin considers criminals. How many years is 'recently'?
Signed, a Jew with a personal background in these matters.
You've got a whole lot of history to read. Because this is exactly what has happened in the past. You don't think this has happened to the Romans? The Russians? The Italians? The Germans? The Spanish?
This is a classic maneuver of a state sliding into autocracy -- if you cannot find enemies outside the state, you find them within the state. Go read Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism then come back.
This isn't 'partisan brainrot', this is literally and explicitly what they are saying and doing.
wait, are you talking about this guy and the people they killed in Venezuela or ICE?
[0] https://www.ice.gov/detain/detainee-death-reporting
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-citizen-detained-ice...
I think it is misleading to conflate murder with people dying of health issues in detention after medical care.
Therefore, I think that what is happening does rise to extrajudicial killing - killing that ICE chose not to prevent but to maintain; and inevitable killing without any corresponding sentence.
Forgive me for not taking ICE at face value. I looked through the next four accounts – assuming that, at that point there would be sufficient independent reporting that would either complement or contradict ICE's accounts.
The next four individuals died preventable deaths due to care ignored (e.g. in the case of Nhon Nguyen, who was detained with dementia), or denied (e.g. in the case of Maksym Chernyak, who was unconscious after fainting for hours until detention guards provided medical attention too late.)
- Marie Ange Blaise's death (#7) was blamed by ICE on blood pressure medication noncompliance. The narrative stitched together from Broward County medical examiner reporting, along with detainee testimony, instead argues that she fainted after taking blood pressure medications, and it took at least 8 minutes for medical attention to arrive (after a guard walked away) [1].
- Nhon Nguyen (#8) was, according to his family, detained while living with advanced dementia, and according his death report, bounced backwards and forwards between hospitals and his detention processing center before dying of avoidable pneumonia [2].
- Brayan Garzón-Rayo (#9) died by suicide after repeatedly being denied a mental health evaluation - once due to short-staffing, next due to contracting COVID-19. [3]
- Maksym Chernyak (#10) fainted - possibly due to overdose - but was denied care for hours despite attempts by others detained with him to draw attention; his death was attributed to a stroke. [4]
[0] https://phr.org/our-work/resources/deadly-failures-preventab... [1] https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-08-01/haitian-ice-deat... [2] https://www.abqjournal.com/news/article_7519bc08-a416-4275-a... [3] https://www.kcur.org/news/2025-05-13/missouri-man-who-died-b... [4] https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2025/04/24/as-immigrant-arrest...
This is based on a historical accounting of ~1 death a month in their direct care over the past 5 years, plus assuming at least as many due to other root causes. I expect that number to increase as they continue to expand operations and worsen protections for detainees.
Update: I quickly searched this to see if it was available on the latest version of iOS and you can mostly use it on T-mobile USA with ios 17+. As they have enable support for 5g SA nationwide. if your SIM card has enabled 5G SA provisioning and if you set the iPhone to 5G On, it will not fall back in any area that has good T-mobile reception meaning they would have to turn off T-mobiles towers or you to be in a deadspot for the IMSI catcher to work. If you enter field test mode you can confirm that you are provisioned for NR SA in area that T-mobile has it’s own good towers with good reception. If it shows up you are provisioned. If not you can call t-mobile and ask that they provision it but many newer sims are provisioned with 5g SA by default and you can use 5G On setting instead of auto to only be vulnerable to downgrade attacks in weak signal areas and deadzones. I’m not an expert on this so if I’m wrong please comment.
Like license plate readers and facial recognition, you're out in the world without the expectation of privacy but I think for most people that feels different when a giant automated system is sucking everything up without recourse.
This particular article was about using Stringray with a warrant. I'm sure that the government is abusing Stingray but it'd be nice to have evidence first.
"In a recently-unsealed search warrant reviewed by Forbes, ICE used such a cell-site simulator in an attempt to track down an individual in Orem, Utah. The suspect had been ordered to leave the U.S. in 2023, but is believed to still be in the country. Investigators learned last month that before going to Utah, he’d escaped prison in Venezuela where he was serving a sentence for murder, according to the warrant. He’s also suspected of being linked to gang activity in the country, investigators said.
When the government got the target’s number, they first got a warrant to get its location. However, the trace wasn’t precise–it only told law enforcement that the target was somewhere in an area covering about 30 blocks. That led them to asking a court for a Stingray-type device to get an accurate location.
The warrant was issued at the end of last month and it’s not yet known if the fugitive was found."
https://san.com/cc/exclusive-evidence-of-cell-phone-surveill...
Your IMEI will never be send in clear over the network. Not even back in old 2G networks.
If the gov needs your data they can use standardized lawful interception interfaces. This interface offers all juicy data - not only voice, SMS and your phone number.
Which is another reason I simply just stopped carrying a cell phone a few years ago. Absolute freedom.
----
I paid my vehicle off early just so I could disable the infotainment's cell-link. My city has OCR cameras on every 4-lane highway (so I'm still tracked) but it sure is wild how important locations are these days.
slippery slope, I know...
https://www.cise.ufl.edu/~butler/pubs/ndss25-tucker-marlin.p...
Ideally, this is something I could hack together in the next few days since ICE is prepping to invade my city.
Not usually that I’m aware of as a single data point in any system but if there are other reasons to thing you’re trying to act surreptitiously you are going to be very close to the top of the list of people of interest.
There’s a lot to be said in 2025 for appearing uninteresting to anyone who might be watching.
Is this too extreme? How expansive are the queries theyre running on these identifiers? Are they running algos to detect burner phones based on the highly anomalous activity patterms described above?
It's becoming common practice for protesters to store their phones in faraday bags. I don't think "no phone" would stand out as much as you think it would.
Just turning the phone off and wrapping it tight in aluminum foil is almost certainly better.
They can and do have the ability to MITM traffic though. There is not anything to stop someone with the hardware from doing it and everyday that passes it seems the rules matter less and less.
Sounds like "no phone" is the winner
The entire modern game is very literally, don’t be interesting and don’t do weird shit that normal people wouldn’t do. It’s a needle in a haystack problem so don’t go and start creating a really weird signature of whatever it might be: behaviour, communication, RF emissions etc. The anomaly is the signature and has been for about 20 years now.
The fact that there are a lot of people there is actually the strength of it.
I’d probably think carefully about what you want to use it for and what I had on there though. I wouldn’t recommend bringing a device with a a bunch of incriminating evidence to an event like that.
I think a good threat model is just operate on the assumption that maybe someone stops you and asked to look at your phone. Go ahead and also assume that they will ask at the most inconvenient point in the day also. Act accordingly and I wouldn’t anticipate much in the way of trouble from having one.
Also, look at it through the eyes of the opposition, what are their goals here…
1. Fix the signal to noise ratio in a crowd
2. Identify people
3. Map out networks
And your goal is to not to be “invisible” (you can’t anyways) but to be uninteresting. They aren’t the same thing and the difference is important.
For the overwhelming majority of people I don’t think there is much yet to worry about in simply attending a protest (Assuming you’re a citizen and you act sensibly because otherwise that’s an entirely different threat model and you probably shouldn’t be there at the moment).
But I would leave you with this bit of advice also… they very much want you to think they are the all knowing, all seeing and ever present 50ft tall enemy. That isn’t true. There is also no shortage of people who really seem to get off on pretending things are more dangerous than they really are but that shit turns into paranoia real quickly and then people become terrified to do anything or you start making bad decisions. Fight both of those things when you run into them.
You can and should feel good about getting out in the streets at the moment, it’s not going to get easier the longer it goes on just be sensible.
That seems a tad naive. I think being recorded by local/Federal agencies at a protest, especially one critical of current government actions, is a legitimate concern. Especially since those tools are being brought out specifically for the protest, not because they are looking for some murderer that happens to be a block away from you.
Also, the word "yet" is doing a lot of work there. Considering that data can be stored indefinitely with little oversight, there is little to stop police from searching through the database and looking for "targets of interest" like phones that showed up to multiple protests.
Being at a protest is already known to make you interesting, which is why those tools are being brought out in the first place, why police are "friending" protest organization FB pages to gather membership data, etc. Keeping yourself out of databases that could be used later to jam you up is reasonable. There is also no way for police to tell who has a phone and who doesn't at a protest, so you aren’t highlighting yourself anymore by not bringing your phone (or turning it off), unlike say wearing a mask and sunglasses to reduce facial recognition visually highlights you.
Even the CIA had to stand up a whole new department years ago when the realised they even with all of their tradecraft and gadgets they couldn’t even move around London without the Brits knowing about it and had to totally change how they did business as a result. It’s not just an average protestor on the street problem at all.
I think a big part of the problem comes from this idea that you’re trying to be invisible and you keep running into all these new layers of problems all the damned time.
Maybe I’m using E2EE apps but the people I’m talking with take screenshots and run them through co-pilot or put them into their iCloud backups or a million other scenarios. It just feels like such an unwinnable game sometimes that you can very easily and convincingly get yourself to a place where you feel overwhelmed and you just freeze which is such a trap in and of itself.
I’d recommend keeping the illegal activity side of things extremely fucking low to non-existent personally and everything else will become much simpler as a result. It’s much easier to just not have evidence than trying to hide it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do things with a sense of purpose though. There are many ways to frustrate the opposition, to tie up their resources, to send them on wild goose chases, to wear down their morale that are all firmly in the legal category.
You can remove the battery, put it in a Faraday cage and charge it turned off (or in another device/out of one). It can be on only when you need it.
Here’s something [1] that’s was public almost 20 years ago at this point. Things have advanced a lot since then. I don’t think you quite understand just how much of a pipeline there was for this kind of technology that went almost directly from quite classified SIGINT stuff in the GWOT to casual LEO / domestic stuff.
I know the whole no phone thing sounds like a real high speed operator move but it’s very literally a signal they go looking for when trying to sift through large amounts of data.
[1] https://www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_re...
Btw, to help understand the technical challenges involved with this, the whole reason Tesla focused on vision-only for its self-driving was the difficulty of integrating sensor data from multiple sources, e.g. lidar + vision would be significantly more difficult to achieve. It’s not that this isn’t possible in theory - it’s just that there’s no evidence of anyone having done it for “lack of phone” detection, and that’s probably because it’s not really a requirement that’s in high demand.
They realised that technology had changed for them even that long ago that all it was doing was just making a really clear signal for the opposition as to who they were and that they were someone interesting.
I think the advice you have is very literally decades out of date.
If you have an hour or two to kill I’d recommend taking a look at this for a real no bullshit modern way of thinking about this problem space: https://youtu.be/0_04-lTu2wg?feature=shared
But the OP article is about a Stingray operation covering 30 blocks, and other discussion in this thread is about protests such as the anti-ICE protest which gathered cellphone info from the protestors. In those kinds of environments, if you don’t want to show up on surveillance, you’re much better off not carrying a phone.
Being more specific, this comment of yours is not supported by evidence:
> No phone actually stands out a lot in real life surveillance systems and will very quickly get you a bunch of additional attention because it’s so unusual.
But, if you’re getting your information from videos like the one you linked, I can see why you have these beliefs.
I have very good reasons to know what I’m talking about here but again, I’m not here to argue with you.
You are exactly right!
Because the gub'mint can track the nasal implant inserted when I was anally probed by the aliens!
You're making a ridiculous claim that makes exactly zero sense.
If folks are tracking cell phones, they can track yours just as well as everyone else's. Which means they can identify you.
If you don't have a pocket surveillance device on you, unless you're broadcasting RF waves with your (tiny) penis, you cannot be tracked via radio/cell. Full stop.
Your chance of even being able to move from your home to a protest and back completely anonymously is close to zero without you standing out very quickly. Honestly, do what you want but I’m telling you with a great deal of certainty that the only thing you’re are doing in reality is inviting a greater deal of scrutiny and your security situation is actually worse as a result of it.
Before when I was talking about the needle in a haystack problem which is the biggest weakness of the modern big data era.
So to give a really concrete example imagine you need to meet a source clandestinely in the past it’s lots of sneaking around doing surveillance detection routes and meeting in hotel rooms and things like that. Those days are completely dead. You stand out immediately.
Instead you’re looking to have very normal and plausible reasons to be in the same space together while remaining in a large crowd and not having contact usually outside of that.
So imagine you and I both get season tickets to the local sports team and we go there to watch a game just as regular fans and we find a way to communicate in that crowd.
Even the best data analysis / ML algorithms are only ever going to see two people going to a sports match every few weeks. There’s nothing interesting about either one of them that stands out.
It’s just a very different way of doing business basically but hopefully that’s an illustrative example to show you what I mean.
That's a reach. Literally.
The aliens are very efficient!
Perhaps if I read you my last comment in a voice lowered a few octaves like in that video, you’d believe me.
Because that 1000% is a real capability you will have to deal with and like sure, do what you can to make the costs associated with that as hard as possible but don’t get confused into thinking it’s a technical solution that is going to fix this problem.
Fully patched iOS in lockdown mode isn’t going to save you from someone physically making you open it in front of them.
Think something a lot closer to this xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/538/
Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-targeted-top-iranian-le...>
I'm listing the Times of Israel first as it's an Israeli publication, though it cites the following NY Times article which researched the story:
"Targeting Iran’s Leaders, Israel Found a Weak Link: Their Bodyguards"
Despite all the precautions, Israeli jets dropped six bombs on top of the bunker soon after the meeting began, targeting the two entrance and exit doors. Remarkably, nobody in the bunker was killed. When the leaders later made their way out of the bunker, they found the bodies of a few guards, killed by the blasts.
The attack threw Iran’s intelligence apparatus into a tailspin, and soon enough Iranian officials discovered a devastating security lapse: The Israelis had been led to the meeting by hacking the phones of bodyguards who had accompanied the Iranian leaders to the site and waited outside...
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/us/politics/israel-iran-a...>
(Archive / paywall: <https://archive.is/XdZet>)
It's not just your phone, it's the phones of those around you. Whether or not you have a security detail.
This is one factor which makes pervasive surveillance so absolutely insidious.
However, my endeavor here is more focused on awareness and transparency for the masses than subterfuge for the individual.
[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/34449/investigating-surveillanc...
You can't get the IMSIs passively anymore, but LTE doesn't make these attacks impossible, just less practical, especially for criminals that don't have warrants on their side.
No big need to dig down deep into the radio and protocol layer.
>In its most basic functionality, the [LTE] IMSI catcher receives connection/attach request messages from all mobiledevices in its vicinity. These attach messages are forced to disclose the SIM’s IMSI, thus allowing the IMSI catcher to retreive the IMSI for all devices in its vicinity... a fully LTE-based IMSI catcher is possible, very simple and very cheap to implement without requiring to jam the LTE and 3G bands to downgrade the service to GSM. [2]
Exploits on 5G to retrieve the IMSI. [3]
[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/09/12/long-secret-stingray-man...
You can just jam everyone in the area and see who reconnects.
There are IMSI catchers - but they all require GSM. At least on Google Pixels you can turn off 2G with a switch. The phone even shows a message about its insecurity.
In Germany I'm running 100% on LTE/5GNR-only for many months now without having a single coverage gap.
looks like iPhones will need to enable Lockdown Mode to disable 2G, at least for iOS 17+ per https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest
Only option is stay in airplane mode and use wifi.
If I am understanding correctly, I would need a mobile device?
Would this work using the phone as a hotspot? If so, then I guess my previous comment is moot.