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Evidence: Cell Conversations are Being Intercepted and It May Not Be the Deep State

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Rogue unknown cell-site simulators are being actively used in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia according to News4 I-Team who worked with a mobile security expert to determine the usage of the devices.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it had seen activity in Washington, D.C., of what appear to be rogue surveillance devices that could be used to hijack cellphones, listen to calls and read texts. The devices are otherwise known as International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers or stingrays, NPR reported.

The devices work by tricking mobile devices within a determined radius into connecting onto them instead of legitimate cell towers, revealing the exact location of a cellphone. More sophisticated versions of the device can even eavesdrop and intercept calls by forcing phones to use 2G wireless technology. Some even attempt to plant malware on the devices that are being targeted.

The devices can be mounted in vehicles, drones, helicopters, and airplanes, allowing police to gain highly specific information on the location of any individual phone, down to a particular apartment complex or hotel room. But where police can use them, so can anyone else with knowledge to build them or where to buy them.

IMSI catchers can cost anywhere from $1,000 to around $200,000. They are the size of a small briefcase; some are as even as shockingly small as a cellphone. However, according to the EFF, “anyone with the skill level of a hobbyist can now build their own passive IMSI catcher for as little as $7 or an active cell-site simulator for around $1000.”

The agency added that it believes “the malicious use of IMSI catchers is a real and growing risk.” Senator Ron Wyden wrote to DHS asking for information about the use of IMSI catchers by foreign intelligence agencies.

DHS has warned rogue devices could prevent connected phones from making 911 calls, saying, “If this type of attack occurs during an emergency, it could prevent victims from receiving assistance.”

D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh said that the spy technology should be a concern for all who live and work in the District.

The I-Team’s test phones detected an absurd 40 potential locations where the spy devices could be operating while driving around for just mere hours.

The DHS hasn’t disclosed how many IMSI catchers it found or where those “rogue surveillance devices” were detected. The agency also said it did not determine who was operating them.

According to NBC the devices are operating in Langley, the Pentagon and Fort Myer to name a few places where they were found.

Although NBC tries to dismiss the devices as “rogue technology,” stating they are likely used by law enforcement, it’s worth noting the DHS has stated previously they don’t know who is operating this tech.

“The good news is about half the devices the I-Team found were likely law enforcement investigating crimes or our government using the devices defensively to identify certain cellphone numbers as they approach important locations,” Aaron Turner a mobile security expert, said.

Further, even if the technology was used by law enforcement, its usage is violating privacy and is illegal without a warrant as it scoops up all the data collected by cell phones in the area without discrimination; which violates constitutional protections, according to the EFF. And what if it’s being run by a rogue police force, like the one that operated at Norfolk, Virginia, Naval Shipyard for 12 long years before being caught, as Activist Post reported on?

DHS acting undersecretary, Christopher Krebs, the top official in the National Protection and Programs Directorate, noted in a response letter to Wyden that the DHS lacks the equipment and funding to detect Stingrays even though their use by foreign governments “may threaten U.S. national and economic security.”

Krebs wrote, “Use of IMSI catchers by malicious actors to track and monitor cellular users is unlawful and threatens the security of communications, resulting in safety, economic, and privacy risks. … Overall, DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate believes the malicious use of IMSI catchers is a real and growing risk.” The agency added that NPPD “has observed anomalous activity in the Nation Capital Region that appears to be consistent with IMSI catchers. NPPD has not validated or attributed such activity to specific entities or devices.”

After the DHS admission, three House members sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, demanding that the FCC “take immediate action under federal law to address the prevalence of what could be hostile, foreign cell-site simulators—or stingrays—surveilling Americans in the nation’s Capital.”

Last month, Senators. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called on the DHS to release an unclassified PowerPoint presentation detailing the threat, The Hill reported.

The presentation was given by a DHS official at the Federal Mobile Technology Forum in Mclean, Va., in February, according to the four lawmakers.

The PowerPoint presentation was described as “detailed,” but gave no other information about what it may reveal.

“The American people have a legitimate interest in understanding the extent to which U.S. telephone networks are vulnerable to surveillance and are being actively exploited by hostile actors,” they wrote in a letter to DHS official Christopher Krebs.

The EFF states that the “problem is law enforcement and the intelligence community would surely agree that these technologies are dangerous in the wrong hands, but there is no way to stop criminals and terrorists from using these technologies without also closing the same security flaws that law enforcement uses.”

In that respect, that means in order to stop rogue potential criminal activity the security flaws would have to be fixed and the holes patched; but if that’s done, then law enforcement wouldn’t be able to use it either. This reporter must be the only one who is okay with that? (For more from the author of “Evidence: Cell Conversations Are Being Intercepted and It May Not Be the Deep State” please click HERE)

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Investigator Says He Found Multiple ‘Fake Cell Towers’ Near White House, Russian Embassy

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Photo Credit: IntegricellThink about the phone conversations you’ve had in the last 48 hours. Is there anything personal or sensitive you wouldn’t want a stranger to hear or record?

Now imagine the cell phone conversations that took place about the Islamic State this week between lawmakers, their staff members and anyone who testified on the Hill. Think any sensitive information or key plans were discussed during those phone calls?

An investigator looking into the claims that “fake cell towers” are popping up all over the country says he discovered several active sites just in the last 48 hours within feet of the White House, around the Russian Embassy and covering the Senate buildings where key Islamic State hearings took place this week.

“On Tuesday, I believe it was at the exact time the ISIS hearings were ongoing, we drove by the Senate and our phones were targeted,” Aaron Turner, an expert in MOBILE SECURITY and information protection, told TheBlaze.

Read more from this story HERE.

By Cracking Cellphone Code, NSA has Capacity for Decoding Private Conversations

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Photo Credit: Francisco Seco/AP

Photo Credit: Francisco Seco/AP

The cellphone encryption technology used most widely across the world can be easily defeated by the National Security Agency, an internal document shows, giving the agency the means to decode most of the billions of calls and texts that travel over public airwaves every day.

While the military and law enforcement agencies long have been able to hack into individual cellphones, the NSA’s capability appears to be far more sweeping because of the agency’s global signals collection operation. The agency’s ability to crack encryption used by the majority of cellphones in the world offers it wide-ranging powers to listen in on private conversations.

U.S. law prohibits the NSA from collecting the content of conversations between Americans without a court order. But experts say that if the NSA has developed the capacity to easily decode encrypted cellphone conversations, then other nations likely can do the same through their own intelligence services, potentially to Americans’ calls, as well.

Encryption experts have complained for years that the most commonly used technology, known as A5/1, is vulnerable and have urged providers to upgrade to newer systems that are much harder to crack. Most companies worldwide have not done so, even as controversy has intensified in recent months over NSA collection of cellphone traffic, including of such world leaders as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The extent of the NSA’s collection of cellphone signals and its use of tools to decode encryption are not clear from a top-secret document provided by former contractor Edward Snowden. But it states that the agency “can process encrypted A5/1” even when the agency has not acquired an encryption key, which unscrambles communications so that they are readable.

Read more from this story HERE.

By Cracking Cellphone Code, NSA has Capacity for Decoding Private Conversations

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The cellphone encryption technology used most widely across the world can be easily defeated by the National Security Agency, an internal document shows, giving the agency the means to decode most of the billions of calls and texts that travel over public airwaves every day.

While the military and law enforcement agencies long have been able to hack into individual cellphones, the NSA’s capability appears to be far more sweeping because of the agency’s global signals collection operation. The agency’s ability to crack encryption used by the majority of cellphones in the world offers it wide-ranging powers to listen in on private conversations.

U.S. law prohibits the NSA from collecting the content of conversations between Americans without a court order. But experts say that if the NSA has developed the capacity to easily decode encrypted cellphone conversations, then other nations likely can do the same through their own intelligence services, potentially to Americans’ calls, as well.

Encryption experts have complained for years that the most commonly used technology, known as A5/1, is vulnerable and have urged providers to upgrade to newer systems that are much harder to crack. Most companies worldwide have not done so, even as controversy has intensified in recent months over NSA collection of cellphone traffic, including of such world leaders as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The extent of the NSA’s collection of cellphone signals and its use of tools to decode encryption are not clear from a top-secret document provided by former contractor Edward Snowden. But it states that the agency “can process encrypted A5/1” even when the agency has not acquired an encryption key, which unscrambles communications so that they are readable.

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: NSA Tracks Billions Of Cellphones Daily

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Photo credit: from_koThe National Security Agency tracks the locations of nearly 5 billion cellphones every day overseas, including those belonging to Americans abroad, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The NSA inadvertently gathers the location records of “tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad” annually, along with the billions of other records it collects by tapping into worldwide mobile network cables, the newspaper said in a report on its website.

Such data means the NSA can track the movements of almost any cellphone around the world, and map the relationships of the cellphone user. The Post said a powerful analytic computer program called CO-TRAVELER crunches the data of billions of unsuspecting people, building patterns of relationships between them by where their phones go. That can reveal a previously unknown terrorist suspect, in guilt by cellphone-location association, for instance.

As the NSA doesn’t know which part of the data it might need, the agency keeps up to 27 terabytes, or more than double the text content of the Library of Congress’ print collection, the Post said. A 2012 internal NSA document said the volumes of data from the location program were “outpacing our ability to ingest, process and store” it, the newspaper said.

The program is detailed in documents given to the newspaper by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden. The Post also quotes unidentified NSA officials, saying they spoke with the permission of their agency.

Read more from this story HERE.

Are Smartphones Turning Us Into Bad Samaritans? (+video)

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In late September, on a crowded commuter train in San Francisco, a man shot and killed 20-year-old student Justin Valdez. As security footage shows, before the gunman fired, he waved around his .45 caliber pistol and at one point even pointed it across the aisle. Yet no one on the crowded train noticed because they were so focused on their smartphones and tablets. “These weren’t concealed movements—the gun is very clear,” District Attorney George Gascon later told the Associated Press. “These people are in very close proximity with him, and nobody sees this. They’re just so engrossed, texting and reading and whatnot. They’re completely oblivious of their surroundings.”

Another recent attack, on a blind man walking down the street in broad daylight in Philadelphia, garnered attention because security footage later revealed that many passersby ignored the assault and never called 911. Commenting to a local radio station, Philadelphia’s chief of police Charles Ramsay said that this lack of response was becoming “more and more common” and noted that people are more likely to use their cellphones to record assaults than to call the police.

Indeed, YouTube features hundreds of such videos—outbreaks of violence on sidewalks, in shopping malls and at restaurants. Many of these brawls, such as the one that broke out between two women during a victory parade for the New York Giants in 2012, feature crowds of people gathered around, cameras aloft and filming the spectacle.

Our use of technology has fundamentally changed not just our awareness in public spaces but our sense of duty to others. Engaged with the glowing screens in front of us rather than with the people around us, we often honestly don’t notice what is going on. Adding to the problem is the ease with which we can record and send images, which encourages those of us who are paying attention to document emergencies rather than deal with them. The fascination with capturing images of violence is nothing new, as anyone who has perused Weegee’s photographs of bloody crime scenes from the early 20th century can attest. But the ubiquity of camera-enabled cellphones has shifted the boundaries of acceptable behavior in these situations. We are all Weegee now.

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA Admits Tracking Locations of Cellphones in the United States

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Photo credit: from_ko

Photo credit: from_ko

The director of the National Security Agency revealed Wednesday that the government collected Americans’ cellphone location data in bulk as part of a secret pilot program in 2010 and 2011.

The program tracked the locations of an unknown number of people in the United States who were under no suspicion of wrongdoing.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander said the agency “received samples in order to test its systems” but that the cellphone location data was not used for any intelligence analysis.

He said the NSA is no longer collecting the information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act and promised that the agency would notify Congress before it resumes the program.

“This may be something that would be a future requirement for the country, but it is not right now because when we identify a number, we can give that to the FBI,” Alexander said. “When they get their probable cause, they can get the location data they need.”

Read more from this story HERE.

FBI Can Hack Your Android to Remotely Activate Cell Phone Microphones

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesLaw-enforcement officials in the U.S. are expanding the use of tools routinely used by computer hackers to gather information on suspects, bringing the criminal wiretap into the cyber age.

Federal agencies have largely kept quiet about these capabilities, but court documents and interviews with people involved in the programs provide new details about the hacking tools, including spyware delivered to computers and phones through email or Web links—techniques more commonly associated with attacks by criminals.

People familiar with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s programs say that the use of hacking tools under court orders has grown as agents seek to keep up with suspects who use new communications technology, including some types of online chat and encryption tools. The use of such communications, which can’t be wiretapped like a phone, is called “going dark” among law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment.

The FBI develops some hacking tools internally and purchases others from the private sector. With such technology, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google Inc.’s GOOG -0.17% Android software to record conversations, one former U.S. official said. It can do the same to microphones in laptops without the user knowing, the person said. Google declined to comment.

Read more from this story HERE.

Federal Court of Appeals: Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking OK

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Photo Credit: Wang Zhao/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
In a significant victory for law enforcement, a federal appeals court on Tuesday said that government authorities could extract historical location data directly from telecommunications carriers without a search warrant.

The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said a warrantless search was “not per se unconstitutional” because location data was “clearly a business record” and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The ruling is likely to intensify legislative efforts, already bubbling in Congress and in the states, to consider measures to require warrants based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location data.

The appeals court ruling sharply contrasts with a New Jersey State Supreme Court opinion in mid-July that said the police required a warrant to track a suspect’s whereabouts in real time. That decision relied on the New Jersey Constitution, whereas the ruling Tuesday in the Fifth Circuit was made on the basis of the federal Constitution.

The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on whether cellphone location data is protected by the Constitution. The case, which was initially brought in Texas, is not expected to go to the Supreme Court because it is “ex parte,” or filed by only one party — in this case, the government.

Read more from this story HERE.

Secret Court OKs Continued US Phone Surveillance Program for Another Three Months (+video)

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By Fox News. The secret intelligence court that signs off on giving the U.S. government the authority to monitor hundreds of millions of telephone records has renewed the government’s request to do so for another three months.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced Friday its authority to maintain the program expired on July 19 and that the government had sought and received a renewal from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

National Intelligence Director James Clapper announced the new order.

The surveillance program has been under intense scrutiny since June, when former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of two top secret U.S. surveillance programs that critics say violate privacy rights. Read more from this story HERE.

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Secret Court Renews NSA’s Phone Records Collection

By Todd Beamon. The FISA Court in Washington oversees U.S. surveillance programs. It consists of 11 federal judges, all whom have been appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

The White House disclosed the FISA’s stamp of renewed approval of the court order in an effort at greater transparency after former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the National Security Agency’s secret U.S. surveillance programs to the media.

But bipartisan criticism continues to mount on Capitol Hill over the NSA’s collection and stockpiling of millions of Americans’ phone records without individual warrants or suspicions of connections to terrorism.

“By renewing the FISA court order, the Obama administration would reconfirm its support for the dragnet collection of telephone metadata, despite public outcry,” Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, told The Guardian newspaper of London.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, said the White House should have let the Verizon order expire. Read more from this story HERE.