Canadian court gives limited OK to warrantless Stingrays

Canada's domestic spy agency has won permission to continue using IMSI-catchers, in some cases without warrants, following a decision by the country's federal court. The legality of these so-called Stingray devices was challenged in a case questioning the conduct of a still-secret terrorist investigation, details of which have …

[corestore]

And what exactly...

Are the telcos doing to protect their customers from such devices?

After the Snowden revelations, various companies - Google, Microsoft etc. - moved publicly to help protect their customers privacy from the spooks - encryption on by default, encryption on the backbone, end-to-end encryption etc etc.

What are telcos (and indeed phone manufacturers) doing to combat Stingray? The square root of sweet fsck all as far as I can see. Do they have ANYTHING, or anything in the works, to ensure that customer devices ONLY connect to, and exchange data with, genuine cell towers???

It's THEIR networks the spooks are spoofing; they have both a right and a duty to secure their networks so they can't be spoofed! But over the years since Stingray has been known about, what have I heard? Oh, crickets. El Reg should be asking the telcos hard questions.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: And what exactly...

They are being thanked by the government for their "unique contribution to Canadian culture" while being reassured that the laws preventing any outside competition will remain

[Lysenko]

Re: And what exactly...

It isn't just spooks. Domestic/commercial FemtoCells essentially do the same thing - we have one in the office because coverage sucks otherwise. The same general principle applies to WiFi access points of course. If you're going to carry around a device which is designed to advertise its presence over several RF stacks (discoverable Bluetooth works too) then it isn't particularly surprising if your presence is detected. If you don't like it, turn the thing off.

Personally, I'm totally opposed to locking phones to one particular network - though I can't see much risk of it happening since it would completely break both international roaming and all coverage blackspot mitigating strategies like our FemtoCell.

[Anonymous Coward]

'What are the telcos doing to protect their customers from such devices?'

They're working for the 'Other 4' of the 5-Eyes...

Same as before really..... What did we expect...

[PhilipN]

Stingray

All hail Gerry Anderson!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Stingray

Perhaps Trey Parker would be more appropriate ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Stingray

All hail Steve Irwin...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm missing something here but were the court not told that IMSI-catchers also catch voice and sms?

Also, If they have the suspect under surveillance do they not already know where they and the phone are?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do they connect the IMSI to the person if they don't then ask the telco for a look-up of all the IMSIs they have captured?

What are "the identifying characteristics" of a phone - other than its IMSI, location, call/receive phone numbers?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

What are "the identifying characteristics" of a phone

Where it spends the night, which other phones it is seen near

[sloshnmosh]

identifying characteristics

CSIS wanted to capture "the identifying characteristics" of a mobile device.

Probably to aid in identifying exploitable aspects.

Another good reason to b lock bug and error reporting.