UK Cops Using Fake Mobile Phone Tower to Intercept Calls, Shut Off Phones

[midnight]

Source: WIRED

Britain’s largest police force has been using covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network to intercept communications and unique IDs from phones or even transmit a signal to shut off phones remotely, according to the Guardian.

The system, made by Datong in the United Kingdom, was purchased by the London Metropolitan police, which paid $230,000 to Datong for “ICT hardware” in 2008 and 2009.

The portable device, which is the size of a suitcase, pretends to be a legitimate cell phone tower that emits a signal to dupe thousands of mobile phones in a targeted area. Authorities can then intercept SMS messages, phone calls and phone data, such as unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes that allow authorities to track phone users’ movements in real-time, without having to request location data from a mobile phone carrier.

In the case of intercepted communications, it is not clear whether the network works as a blackhole where intercepted messages go to die, or whether it works as a proper man-in-the-middle attack, by which the fake tower forwards the data to a real tower to provide uninterrupted service for the user.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/datong-surveillance/

[Arctic Dave]

1. Coming to a protest near you.

Wonder if it works with old fashion radios or CB.

[saras]

2. Old radios - of course not. But someone else monitors that stuff.

There's other ways too - wireless computer networks, various kinds of radios.

But nothing as convenient as cell phones. The real problem with this arises if they can stop cell phones from uploading videos.

[boppers]

3. Well, cell phones *are* radios.

Jamming radio signals is trivial.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

4. Coming to a phone near you...

Now Apple wants to block iPhone users from filming live events with their smartphone

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2004233/Apple-files-patent-block-iPhone-users-filming-live-events-smartphone.html#ixzz1cQSFVNK5

The days of filming a live concert or sporting event on your iPhone may soon be a distant memory.
Apple is developing software that will sense when a smartphone user is trying to record a live event, and then switch off the device's camera.
Anybody holding up their iPhone will find it triggers infra-red sensors installed at the venue.

[AsahinaKimi]

5. Take that a next step

Chips in a policeman's badge can trigger the iphones to shut off when a police offier is present.. that includes when trying to film cops beating down people in a protest movement.. Its coming very soon!

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

7. Oh, I see...

... I was channel surfing a while back and hit on a documentary/news show where they expounded on the real and working idea of putting microchips in automatic pistols that will disable them if pointed at a police officer who has an rfid type of microdevice in their badge. So what you mentioned is truth. They could probably also program things to give officers free donuts out of vending machines, too.

[Marazinia]

8. If they can do it to stop people filming concerts

You're right, they can stop you filming a cop the same way.

[lbrtbell]

9. iPhones are shit, crApple products are shit

Use real computers instead of toy-Macs and iPads, put Apple out of business. Then switch to Linux and put Micro$haft out of business.

With all the good digital video/still cameras out there, why would anyone use an iPhone, anyway? One look at Keith Olbermann's Twitter feed can tell anyone how terrible the image quality is.

It's not bad enough Apple sells sub-par junk, then they want to exert Big Brother-esque control over them.

Remember that 1984 commercial they did? How's that for delicious irony.

[Ghost Dog]

10. Apple criticism (yay): The Who's Townshend slams 'vampire' Apple

AFP - Pete Townshend, the legendary frontman behind British rock group The Who, attacked Apple's online iTunes service for bleeding artists "like a digital vampire".

Townshend, speaking in Manchester in northwest England, called on the online giant to do more to help the artists from whom it was making so much money.

"Is there really any good reason why, just because iTunes exists in the wild west Internet land of Facebook and Twitter, it can't provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire... for its enormous commission?" he asked.

Record labels and music publishers had in the past provided a range of services to artists, offering editorial guidance and nurturing them creatively, he said.

He said Apple should hire 20 talent scouts "from the dying record business" to help new acts and provide financial and marketing support to the best of them.

/... http://www.france24.com/en/20111101-whos-townshend-slams-vampire-apple

[markbark]

16. Sure, Pete...

"He said Apple should hire 20 talent scouts "from the dying record business" to help new acts and provide financial and marketing support to the best of them."

Hey Pete, I've got an idea: Since you've not written anything listenable in the past 30 years, why not take part of that pile of cash you made in the 60's and 70's and hire 20 talent scouts "from the dying record business" to help new acts and provide financial and marketing support to the best of them?

[OnyxCollie]

6. K&R. nt

[No Elephants]

11. "I love Big Brother." Winston Smith, main character in a work of fiction entitled 1984, after his

government-provided brainwashing has been completed.

"In the novel it is not clear whether Big Brother is (or was) a real person or a fiction invented by the Party to personify it.

In Party propaganda Big Brother is presented as a real person: one of the founders of the Party, along with Goldstein. At one point in 1984 Winston Smith, the protagonist of Orwell's novel, tries "to remember in what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at some time in the sixties, but it was impossible to be certain. In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London..." In the year 1984 Big Brother appears on posters and the telescreen as a man of about 45. Goldstein's book comments: "We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born."

<snip>


"Though Oceania's Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Plenty, and Ministry of Peace each have names with meanings deliberately opposite to their real purpose, the Ministry of Love is perhaps the most straightforward: "rehabilitated thought criminals" leave the Ministry as loyal subjects who have been brainwashed into genuinely loving Big Brother.

<snip>

In 2011, media analyst and political activist Mark Dice published a non-fiction book titled Big Brother: The Orwellian Nightmare Come True which analyzes the parallels between elements of the storyline in Nineteen Eighty-Four and current government programs, technology, and cultural trends.<9>
See also

Spychips
Cult of personality
Mass surveillance
Memory hole
Narcotizing Dysfunction
Panopticon
Totalitarianism
1984 (television commercial)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_%28Nineteen_Eighty-Four%29

"I love Big Brother." No Elephants, a fictional name for a poster on a political message board.

[dipsydoodle]

12. Its not just our police can do selective blackouts.

London 2012 Olympics: chaos for mobile phones.

A deal struck between the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG), BT and O2 currently means that some 40,000 executives and guests in its corporate entertainment areas will only be able to use mobiles with an O2 contract – forcing them to adopt a new mobile number, or face a communications blackout.

Attendees will be able to use rival operators such as Vodafone, Three, Orange and T-Mobile in the shared public areas of the Olympic Park, but they will have to swap their Sim cards for an O2 one if they want to make calls within the corporate zones. Executives will effectively be forced to port their number to O2 on a permanent basis in advance of the Games, or use a temporary number and reprogramme their phones.

It could turn into a "communications nightmare", said a source. "There will be thousands of chief executives and business people unable to use their normal phone numbers because LOCOG isn't dealing with the situation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/london-olympics-business/8857497/London-2012-Olympics-chaos-for-mobile-phones.html

[lunatica]

13. Every Science Fiction fan knows this can and will happen

This is probably already in being done in a few cities here. After seeing Rachel Maddow and Richard Engel's documentary about the aftermath of the 9/11 attack we already know there are surveillance cameras everywhere. Enough to track a person everywhere no matter where they go in Manhattan. And the helicopter that can see someone light a cigarette at night from a mile away using infrared and can film people well enough at that distance to identify them. Manhattan is approximately 2 miles wide which means the helicopter gadgetry can see from East/West shore to shore.

So I think they have these cell phone interceptors too.

[hack89]

14. Anyone can buy a cell phone jammer

some local restaurants use them.


http://www.cell-phone-jammers.com/

[IDemo]

15. Illegally, if so

http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Public_Notices/DA-05-1776A1.html

[hack89]

18. No doubt - but easy to get and hard to detect. nt

[snooper2]

17. Hackers have proven this as well...If people would actually read the whole article..

The scary headline and scary picture of cops at the top of the article are enough for most though :rofl:


I would think the phone would have to be roaming though, unless they have some magic to simulate say a Sprint GSM tower(?), which I doubt anybody can do right now....


On Edit, doing some gooooooogles searches found this little tidbit to prevent----


Configure your phone to ignore 2G GSM networks: MITM devices can only intercept GSM communications, because 3G UTMS enforces authentication of the cell tower

[cyberpj]

19. Doesn't it make one wonder if it wasn't done here first? Or still is? nt

[JackRiddler]

20. Sure puts the Murdoch "phone hacking" scandal in perspective.

Of course, some high-level cops are in on that too. Is it any wonder when the department itself arrogates powers like these?

[ManiacJoe]

21. The old tech was to just turn off the real towers.

No one should be surprised that the technology has moved forward.

[MADem]

22. This is new? I always assumed that the Po-Po could listen in on cell or landline calls.

With or without little suitcases to mimic towers....

[Celefin]

23. For some reason the first thing this brought to mind was Monty Python

Bit like this, really:

http://www.humorlinks.com/python/pictures/different/21.html

(keep left) :b