"The US Marshals Service is running cell tower spoofers on small planes. These devices are called "dirtboxes". The devices are made by Boeing Co. and can collect information from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight. When asked about the program, the US Justice department could neither confirm nor deny the reports."
Also covered at Ars Technica , which refers to a report published in The Wall Street Journal .
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
US Marshals Flying Cell Tower Spoofers on Small Planes.
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 35 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @04:06PM
And drones.
And helicopters.
And on government building rooftops.
And in cop cars.
And everywhere else.
And they monitor everything.
And they do it all the time.
And they don't need a warrant.
And they don't care.
And you can't stop them.
And that's the truth.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday November 14 2014, @04:27PM
If the Government is not obliged to observe the law, then neither are those who were formerly regarded as "Citizens", likewise obliged. The contractual link between "We the People..." and "In Congress..." has been abrogated by the organized party.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Friday November 14 2014, @04:41PM
agreed. if I had kids, I would not be teaching them to blindly follow laws anymore. in fact, most laws made in the last 20 or 30 years are based on corp interests and keeping the power base in power. they do NOTHING to protect, serve or enhance the average life of the average citizen.
and so, since they no longer represent us or our interests, the laws they pass are effectively null and void. they don't even follow the constitution anymore. why should we honor the new base of servitude laws, then?
I'll download what I want, when I want, and not pay. I'll take advantage of every tech and non-tech loophole I can find. it used to be 'wrong' but now, its a wild wild west and anything goes - as long as you can get away with it.
I just don't fucking care anymore. and I consider those that follow stupid laws to be chumps. you are paying for a movie or song? chump! the rich guys use every loophole to avoid paying taxes; effectively getting a nearly free life. what's good for them is good for us.
my one remaining rule is: don't hurt people. but corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE and they are fair game in this new war. fuck them.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pnkwarhall on Friday November 14 2014, @07:15PM
I agree with your sentiment, but there's a problem:
if I had kids, I would not be teaching them to blindly follow laws anymore.
The problem is you're not the only one teaching the children. The public school systems, the media, and the culture -- all obviously under the heavy influence of corporations -- teach them these sorts of lessons everyday, non-stop and much more consistently than your communications and personal example. And we're not just talking about the lesson to "blindly follow the law", we're talking about lessons in values, mores, and beliefs.
The corporations are much longer-lived, and influential on a mass-scale, than we are. So how do we, in raising the next generation, effectively counter the messages being fed them by corporate power structures? If we have to live alongside the corporate behemoths, how do we ensure they don't rule us?
Do we have to live alongside them at all?
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @06:17PM
Maybe so, but they have the power to enforce their side and you don't. Does this remind you of anything [wikipedia.org]?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday November 14 2014, @06:30PM
Yeah, except the Government has almost all the guns, planes, and prisons. It's the ultimate thug.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday November 14 2014, @06:42PM
There was a coup. Everybody was so busy buying Chevy's and drinking the "good stuff" to notice. "Hey! I'd like to get invited to Hef's Chicago mansion, some day!"
Between plugging Kennedy and Reagan, the bag was all sewn up tight.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday November 16 2014, @10:37PM
MOTD on Soylent page?
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 1) by BananaPhone on Friday November 14 2014, @04:10PM
Looks like "the land of the brave and of the free" only apply if you are a government department.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @04:18PM
Only government departments are brave?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday November 14 2014, @04:34PM
Exactly how many police / security services do you Americans need? As far as I can tell you've got:
- 'Normal' local police.
- State police / state troopers (is that different from the above?)
- Private police. As I understand it, some private security forces in some places have police-like powers, ie they are more than just civilians in uniforms.
- The DEA. Presumably created to fight the War on (some) Drugs.
- TSA. Folks in blue uniforms who hang around in airports and train stations and such. I presume they were set up in the wake of 9/11 because apparently every "War on [noun]" needs its own police force.
- ATFE. Paramilitary police force who get to drive around in tanks. Is this a leftover from prohibition or something?
- FBI. Ostensibly to deal with big cross-state crimes too big for local forces.
- Oh, then there's Highway patrol, who were involved in that nudie-picture-forwarding scandal the other week. Is that a State or Federal thing?
- Then you got your CIA, ostensibly for spying on foreign countries but actually spying on everyone.
- The NSA - ostensibly for spying on US citizens but actually spying on everyone
- The DHS, which sounds like a chain of Orwellian department stores to my ears. Dunno what they are supposed to do, but I'm gonna take a punt and say... spying one everyone.
- Now we're hearing about the US Marshalls, which sounds like something invented for an action film...
Did I miss anyone?
No wonder every other crime series from across the pond has at least one scene where various people in black suits and sunglasses stand around a dead body and bicker over whose jurisdiction it is. Is it because you all grew up playing cowboys and everyone wants to be sheriff? Seriously, for a country that bleats on about "small government" your taxes seem to be paying a hell of a lot of people to dress up in different uniforms...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @05:00PM
This is exactly why us bleaters want small government. We're not saying we have it, and we certainly don't like paying taxes for all those agencies.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by boris on Friday November 14 2014, @05:29PM
Problem is most "Small Government types" I hear from are singling out beneficial social programs before redundant and expensive agencies such as TSA, FBI, and DEA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @08:19PM
This is why I question their sincerity. The obvious cuts to "big government" are the military industrial complex, security and espionage departments, and the war on drugs. If you care about individual liberty, that's where you can do the most good. Yet right-wingers love these things; they're the few departments they want to keep once they're done slashing all the "big government" programs. What they really want are low taxes, no welfare state, and a huge military. That's not small government, that's a miserly, oppressive government. They want neo-fuedalism with corporations instead of kings.
To be fair, many libertarians do speak out against the MIC and the police/security state. But they have little power or influence in the only conservative party that matters, the GOP. It's basically just Ron Paul and his son, and a handful of state level cohorts.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Saturday November 15 2014, @07:13PM
They want neo-fuedalism with corporations instead of kings.
See this [thebaffler.com] for a recent and relevant example of this type of thinking.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday November 14 2014, @05:34PM
Yep, you missed a few, starting with the Sheriff (did you know they get elected?)
It takes a lot of manpower to keep growing the record for jail population. But that's ok, because courtesy of privatization, holding people in jail is now a productive thing for the economy. And since judges need election money too, they have a really good incentive to be "Tough On Crime". And sending all these people to jail sends a clear signal that there are many people you should be afraid of; therefore you need to vote a tax increase for the police...
For all its defaults, at least the military-industrial complex helps narrow the trade deficit. The law enforcement complex just feeds itself.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Saturday November 15 2014, @12:22AM
There's also the Secret Service, which not only protects federal elected officials but is also involved in currency counterfeiting investigations.
Then there's the Internal Revenue Service, which employs armed officers. The Environmental Protection Agency also has armed investigators which can access your property without approval. Both federal.
Then theres Bureau of Land Management on the federal level with a state counterpart in Department of Fish and Game tasked with wilderness areas. State level agencies are different from state to state, but I'm pretty sure they all have a DFG.
Oh, and let's not forget the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
And I'm sure that's not it.
US Marshalls are usually tasked with prisoner recapture and interstate transferof prisoners, FYI.
But I agree wholeheartedly with your point, we (the U.S.) have far too many alphabet soup agencies.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday November 14 2014, @06:20PM
We have too many because the role of the Federal government has been perverted far past the intended design. This means there is a lot of duplication between the Feds and State laws and enforcement. The role the military may play in other countries is expressly forbidden here.
The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government. - Tacitus
These departments vary significantly in quality and customer service, even between neighboring towns. If you have a decent man running them, they tend to be innocuous. If you have a revenue-focused leader, [thefreethoughtproject.com] or one only out for his own paycheck [stltoday.com] things can get ugly pretty quickly. Since local taxes can vary by year, local police departments are looking at new ways to generate revenue from more than just traffic stops. [policechiefmagazine.org]
Although traffic details can require the police to be outside in nasty weather, there is a minimum charge of four hours. This gets passed on to consumers via their utility bills as a hidden tax.
State Police officers are generally called State Troopers, and Highway Patrol is generally the same thing as State Police. In Texas, their equivalent are the Texas Rangers. These are officially under the control of the state governor, and are usually the top law enforcement group at the state level.
As with local police, the quality and nature of these stormtroopers vary by their location. Usually, the State Police think of themselves as the biggest, baddest motherfuckers around, and certainly a step above local cops. With overtime, some make in excess of $200,000 per year [masslive.com] and it seems a lot of that is sitting or sleeping in their vehicles at construction sites with their engines running. This is one reason highway work costs so much. For example, one of the tunnels under Boston Harbor was closed at night for months, with concrete barriers dropped at either end by the construction team along with their vehicles. Yet the stormtroopers were still sitting there, entrance and exit, night after night collecting money for nothing.
Our State Police on traffic duty are expected to generate 250 tickets a month. It's not official, but they can write up their own for 'lack of zeal in enforcement' if they do not comply. Assuming the average ticket is $250, that's $62,500 a month, and $750,000 a year collected per revenue agent. The highway speed is officially only 55MPH here, but is entirely ignored, except when they want their pound of flesh. Of course, the State Police do not have any speed limiters on their vehicles, so they do not need to follow the law that requires them to use their strobes when speeding. Safety, my ass.
I haven't seen this, perhaps this exists elsewhere in America? There are outsourced prisons, and these have led to corruption [wikipedia.org] and lives derailed or worse. [nypost.com]
These were all created to fight the War on Personal Freedom. When alcohol prohibition came into effect, it was in part due to blowback from getting involved in Europe's stalemate of a war and the supposed need to save grain. Prohibition led directly to the growth of bootleg mobs, and then the agencies to fight them. When prohibition ended, the heads of the agencies at the time came up with new boogeymen like cannabis and Mexicans. A few decades before, cocaine was blamed for a rise in black-on-white rape, and opium smoking for the evils of Chinese immigrants: "If the Chinaman cannot get along without his dope we can get along without him."
The CIA grew out of the old Office of Strategic Services, [wikipedia.org] but without a hot war to fight, it got into trouble much like a 10 year old boy left at home with matches. The theocratic government of Iran can thank the CIA's involvement in the removal of the democratic government in 1952 and the installation of an autocratic Shah [wikipedia.org] for its existence. This may not be accurate, but I think of the CIA as human intelligence, and the NSA as signals intelligence.
The DHS is the growth of bureaucracy thanks to terrorism fears. They seem to have their hands in many areas that were previously under other federal agencies. Perhaps it was the political need to 'do something' that led to a reshuffling of chairs?
The TSA is worse than useless. They are underpaid, under-thinking automatons just putting us through scans and pokes and prods to provide security theater. They have either toned down their airport activities, or people have gotten more used to them, so I don't hear the same volume of complaints anymore. They do have some non-airport mission creep, such as internal checkpoints away from the borders, and it is likely if a 9/11 style attack happens again, the TSA will grow even more.
They are the police of the courts, and do some fugitive apprehension. They are likely the oldest group in your list.
The Secret Service was founded to prevent tomfoolery with our currency, but also now protects the President. If you post something stupid like "I have life-sized photos of Hussein Obama wearing a hoodie at my shooting range where I drink illegal moonshine" they will swoop down upon you so quickly you may as well lube up before you click submit.
That's just TV. We aren't allowed to play Cowboys and Injuns anymore, it's too racist, making guns out of fingers promotes violence, and running might lead to falls and skinned knees and elbows. We just can't risk that.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday November 14 2014, @11:17PM
No, actually they are not.
Highway patrol have jurisdiction on motorways and are there to enforce traffic laws on the long stretches of highway between urban jurisdictions. They are not supposed to be investigators and if they see a serious crime they are supposed to call the local authorities. (Of course they can act in hot pursuit/on seeing a felony etc. but so can a private citizen.)
State police, on the other hand, have expanded jurisdiction and scope, and will often claim to have superior jurisdiction to that of the local authorities.
Very different beasts. And you cannot always tell which you are dealing with by the name either - notoriously California has a state police agency called the California Highway Patrol! (They used to have a Highway Patrol _and_ a state police agency, merged the two, kept the jurisdiction and scope of the latter but the name of the former.) North Carolina is an example where there distinction is still held - although it's started down Californias path by incorporating other departments under the organization as well, it's still primarily a Highway Patrol and troopers primary duty is still traffic enforcement between municipalities. Texas is an example the other way - the DPS "Rangers" are a state police force that dates back to before Texas was a state, and patrolling the highways is just one of their duties.
"I haven't seen this, perhaps this exists elsewhere in America? "
Many private guards will tell you they have all sorts of powers, that they do not legally have, but often believe they have nonetheless.
Which actually isnt all that different from the ones that are being paid by the public, come to think of it.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @07:33PM
feds/state/city/county. we have a lot of cops.
in any given day you're far more likely to have your life ruined by police of some sort rather than criminals.
there's just way more of them. they answer to nobody. and most of them are unstable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 15 2014, @12:01AM
You forgot the U.S. Coast Guard which can arrest you on the water. The U.S. Border Patrol which can arrest you crossing the border. The U.S Mint Police [wikipedia.org] which can arrest you at a U.S. Mint or Treasury.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday November 15 2014, @12:33PM
In addition to the Mint Police, there is also the Sandwich Police [foundshit.com].
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday November 15 2014, @12:11PM
You forgot the Secret Service (now consolidated with the Department of Fatherland Security) which protects dignitaries and investigates counterfeiting. You also forgot the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives which sounds like an alcoholic pyromaniac's dream job but is probably quite dull.
1702845791×2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 17 2014, @12:30PM
This is a list of the 26 'most important' police forces in Washington DC.
http://washingtonpeacecenter.org/dccops [washingtonpeacecenter.org]
You missed a few ;).
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday November 17 2014, @04:01PM
Not disagreeing with you that our police are rather problematic, but the hierarchy does make some sense.
Yup, most cities above a certain size have their own police force.
Yeah, that's different. They'll handle larger cases, but mostly they're patrolling highways and handling all the areas that don't have local police. If you live in a village of 500 people, the state police may be all you have.
Hmm, I haven't heard of any private guards with special police powers, but I wouldn't doubt it, and that's certainly a problem. University police sometimes have extra police powers, but only at state schools where they are actually a government police agency.
Now we're getting into the federal agencies. Remember that our federal agencies have half a continent to handle. So instead of being separated by region, they're separated by focus. DEA goes after drugs. Much of this is the illegal War on Drugs, but it also includes prescription drugs. People stealing pharmaceutical shipments or doctors writing bogus prescriptions.
Yeah screw those guys. The *concept* isn't entirely terrible -- most of our transportation has its own police force already, so putting some feds in there too isn't a terrible idea, but the execution of that idea has been atrocious.
(Score: 2) by Popeidol on Friday November 14 2014, @04:44PM
According to Wikipedia:
The U.S. Marshals are the primary agency for fugitive operations. U.S. Marshals are also responsible for the protection of officers of the court, court buildings and the effective operation of the judiciary. The service also assists with court security, prisoner transport, and serves federal arrest warrants.
In 2012, U.S. marshals captured over 36,000 federal fugitives and cleared over 39,000 fugitive warrants.
This is possibly the most legitimate use for this technology: You have the IMEI of a fugitive's usual phone, you have the vague area he's in, so you crisscross the area with a fake tower until you pinpoint their location. They don't care about who you're talking to or what you're saying, just the physical location of a handset.
If they could guarantee that all irrelevant data was immediately destroyed I might almost support it. This isn't the NSA reading everything you write and guessing what you might be up to, this is taking people who are already going to be arrested and making it a bit faster
(Score: 1) by Gaaark on Friday November 14 2014, @05:03PM
I can just hear the Jews in Nazi Germany:
"This registering with the police is taking people who are already going to be arrested and making it a bit faster...but WE have nothing to worry about."
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @06:06PM
You have the IMEI of a fugitive's usual phone, you have the vague area he's in, so you crisscross the area with a fake tower until you pinpoint their location. They don't care about who you're talking to or what you're saying, just the physical location of a handset.
You don't need a fake tower for that. If his phone is on, it's already talking to the real towers for which getting positioning data ethically ought to require warrant but current practice is that the telcos give it up just for asking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @04:52PM
war-FLYING!
seems this mobile phone tech isn't so different from wifi tech afterall.
srsly tho, blaring electro-magnetic waves thru the etherZ is da anti-thesis of privacy.
i see one way out: remove the central database from teH equation; that is open up ya'lls wifis
so we can hop around.
seems it is m0er difficult to get cooperation from a gazillion low powered AccessPoint operators then
from one monster big cell-network operator?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday November 14 2014, @05:04PM
Seems odd that there isn't some sort of built-in security on cell phones; some sort of verification that they are talking to an authorized cell tower? Why is telephone security so totally non-existent? I mean, your computer doesn't send its MAC-address to every web-server it talks to, if you're talking https, the infrastructure is supposed to prevent MITM attackes. and people concerned about privacy have all sorts of tools to spoof their User-Agent and take other measure to prevent unwanted identification.
Why shouldn't phone offer equivalent features?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @06:10PM
> Why shouldn't phone offer equivalent features?
Because the internet was developed with open protocols in a process that tries to combine democracy with merit and succeeds about as much as is reasonably possible.
Meanwhile the cellphone system is basically captured by a handful of companies and the governments that provide them guaranteed oligopoly status no matter the quality of their products.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18 2014, @10:46AM
Yes, there should be a lot more security checking going on. The problem is that radio is hard (analog, nasty many) - VERY hard when you consider all the FCC/etc regulations you have to meet in addition to the expensive black-magic involved in just getting the devices to work in the first place. This means that most people will decide against making their own radio hardware (baseband processor), and buy it from someone else.
The end result of this is that some huge percentage of all ARM phones use the same set of radio controllers [osnews.com]. Even worse, they are obviously old hardware engineers; they're great at the very-difficult task of making analog hardware work, but often know the software side only superficially. This kind of hardware engineer tends to do a lot of nasty cargo cult programming [c2.com] and often have absolutely no concept of what moden security actually involves.
Good engineering methods involving hardware often discourage changing things that already work; so they reuse the same embedded linux from the 90s (!!) because "it works" (i.e. doesn't crash during *normal* use). They are used to working on problems that are often not understandable by even other engineers, so hey think that it's fine to store the (unchangeable) internal password as plaintext in the firmware, because "nobody would look there". They think frequency hopping spread spectrum is all the "security" you need, even though frequecy hopping provides no security [youtube.com].
*sigh*
I like hardware engineers - they do amazing things involving differential equations and wave theory that make my head hurt. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of negligent behaviour and a lot of pervasive, bad, lazy crap going on with regard to security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @06:35PM
Cell towers are huge tall things. I'm pretty sure that these are actually cell base stations, not towers.
Proper terminology - useful if communication is actually part of language.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @07:25PM
Nit-picking that ignores context is considered harmful to communication.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 14 2014, @11:07PM
End-to-end encrypted VOIP doesn't seem so tinfoil now. Between the bad guys and the "good" guys...too many interlopers listening to "nothing to hide".