Confirmed: UK police forces own IMSI grabbers, but keeping schtum on use Despite a nationally observed policy where they neither confirm nor denying using them, British police forces' widespread ownership of IMSI grabbers was confirmed today. An investigation by indie journalism outfit the Bristol Cable has has revealed that five forces, including Avon and Somerset Constabulary, have been …
about being equipped to fight the last war.
I have no doubt this kit will catch some ne'er do wells, who will have the suitably gormless look of criminals caught by the police.
I have every doubt this kit will catch really nasty bad guys who will have learned long ago what "off grid" means.
By the way, have they got enough people who speak Arabic, just in case the bad guys start facing each other in handwritten non-western scripts ?
"The minutes continued to state that “West Midlands and Staffordshire Police have recently purchased and operated 4G-compatible CCDC equipment”. "
Which is quite amusing. Basically 4G coverage, unless you are actually in Stafford, for examlpe, is basically crap. So if this suddenly improves, you know why. :)
Anyway, If what they do is currently dodgy, Government will change the law to legalise it. There are no protections because those protections interfere with our 'protection' so therefore if we require protecting from the protectors then the official stance is why are we protecting our 'protected' interests? "You must be a bad guy".
Yeah. I am with Ron Swanson on the subject of Government.
Basically 4G coverage, unless you are actually in Stafford, for examlpe, is basically crap. So if this suddenly improves, you know why.
Right, so next time I visit my sister-in-law in almost coverage free Powys I should phone in an anonymous tip to Crimestoppers about wannabee jihadis having a training weekend in the area.
Is it possible to include in a custom ROM, if not a secure authentication, at least a check whether it's likely you're connected to one of these?
Well, that's the annoying thing. AFAIK, to intercept, these things force the phone link into unencrypted mode. The part of the phone spec that says that your phone should tell you if that happens .. is apparently no longer implemented. In other words, we DID have a means to detect it, but it was apparently inconvenient to some agencies that mere civilians would be able to ask questions.
Caveat: this was from a while back, not sure this still applies so I'd welcome any updates.
They simply have valid certificates (for 3 and 4G) and appropriate OOM connectivity to get valid keys for 2G for the relevant network they are configured to capture.
I do not quite see what is the point of using them at that point by the way - if you have made the operator issue you valid crypto keys, you might as well just hook up into their gear and get a proper feed. Costs less, works across the whole country and is covered 100% by existing legislation (RIPA and friends).
Same is valid for the USA too by the way - with the amount of data captured you might as well hook up into the operator network and be done with it.
I do not quite see what is the point of using them at that point by the way - if you have made the operator issue you valid crypto keys, you might as well just hook up into their gear and get a proper feed. Costs less, works across the whole country and is covered 100% by existing legislation (RIPA and friends).
You've more or less answered your own question. Under RIPA, the police require a court order for intercept which means there is evidence it has happened and a degree of oversight, laughably small as it is. The reason for that is simple: the telephone company has its own liability to take care of, and without a proper court order THEY are exposed - the result is generally that law enforcement generally doesn't even get the time of day unless the paperwork is done (well, at least at the time when I worked with legal intercept). Oh, and naturally, such a service comes at a price (it's a telco, after all :) ).
By having their own toys, law enforcement can short circuit all that pesky due diligence stuff and can happily avoid any accountability for having it "accidentally" switched on when they get bored. Of course, after they'll still need to do the normal court order stuff or do something else to obtain evidence that is admissible in court but at least they've avoided all the annoying court cases they'd get when they listen in to someone without any valid reason. After all, who's going to know?
If this all sounded slightly sarcastic, it's because I know police investigations tend to be operated "á charge" - they are focused on finding guilt, not innocence. They are by no means unbiased, so a lack of transparency and accountability is a bad thing indeed.
The older versions (or current cheaper versions) work by using a downgrade attack to 2g/3g which has next to no security. The newer versions can work with 4g directly from my understanding.
On android phones you can type this in to the dialer and disable 2g and 3g if you want, which protects against the older/cheaper stingrays at least: *#*#4636#*#*
There are a couple of android apps that try and see if you are connected to a stingray by a few methods, some of which need a baseline connection to the cell tower in your area, which you have to assume is stingray free at the time. So has caveats. One also calls you from a US number and sends text and tries to figure out the route but not had much luck with the apps even using them at events where i'm sure they are in use.
5g, or 6g if it's too late, needs to get some proper security built in to prevent these issues. They need some sort of bridge to get over the backwards compatibility issues worldwide which currently prevents them doing it. It might close the S7 protocol issues that anyone can use to track someone.
Anyone with a laptop can create a stingray by spending about 500 quid on a decent SDR/Software defined radio and software on the web. Will it take criminals using this on a larger scale to force the upgrades?
These devices, police issued or not, force all traffic in an area through them, even if they tell it to only check for a single phone. Depending on density of the area it can cause slow data, dropped calls and other deterioration of service. There is no oversight on the effects of the innocent.
/rant
If you have people using WhatsApp, Wickr, Signal and VPNs etc, does this expensive shit give them much information?
For WhatsApp they can just give Zuck a call (so no "expensive shit" needed), but these sorts of IMSI catchers are more focused on recording regular voice calls. I'm in no doubt that by now they can tap into the phone's data stream, but if that's encrypted all you'll get is meta data of the service provider end point.
I think this is the most telling part:
Privacy International's Matthew Rice told the Cable that “the findings – by revealing the codename – show that many police forces in the UK have invested in covert communications surveillance technology, yet the secrecy around them does not inspire confidence that the police are willing to be subjected to the level of scrutiny these powerful capabilities ought to attract.”
Exactly this. Did anyone in the world really think that the UK Rozzers *DIDN'T* at least have access to this capability, let alone having it in-house? Of course not.
And yest, you get comments like this:
Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police Temporary Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Cullen eventually told us: "Our main priority is to protect the public from harm and we achieve this by utilising a number of techniques, some of them covert in nature. To retain their effectiveness we are not able to openly discuss these methods."
Noone is asking you to discuss in-depth the workings and methods. As evidenced by reading this thread, it isn't difficult to discover how these things work anyway. All people are saying is "Excuse me Mr. Constabulary - do you have the ability to intercept mobile communications? Yes/No?"
Are you using Covert Mobile Intercept Technology to illegally spy on the public with no oversight?
To which the answer is almost certainly "yes", which is why they wont talk about it.
It will all be ignored until it turns out some copper was using it to listen in on his ex-wife's calls/texts, then goes out and murders her/her new boyfriend or whatever and they can't cover it up.
"It will all be ignored until it turns out some copper was using it to listen in on his ex-wife's calls/texts, then goes out and murders her/her new boyfriend or whatever and they can't cover it up."
They'll just fit up the local weirdo for it, as usual.
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