Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has developed an open-source toolkit that, when installed in a very inexpensive portable hot spot, the device will report whether it sees any cell-site simulators (CSS) in your area.

CSS devices, also known as Stingrays, allow law enforcement to capture all identifying information in an area with great precision. It is blanket surveillance. The problem is that while they may have a warrant to surveil Suspect X, they don't have warrants to surveil and capture information on me, you, and everyone around us. Stingrays capture everyone's location information in their effective operating range and logs it. Also, we know very little about how these devices operate: this info is kept under very tight lockdown by the manufacturers and by the law enforcement agencies. There has been very little success in law suits filed to pry this information into direct sunlight.

Some CSS units can go beyond locating the suspect's phones and actually intercept communications. Whether they can intercept everyone's comms who it has sucked into connecting to it isn't known.

The concern is whether CSS is being used to surveil protests and religious gatherings, things that are protected by the First Amendment. There is some evidence that points to this, it is not known how widespread such surveillance may be.

This new toolkit by the EFF is called Rayhunter, i.e. hunting for stingrays. It requires the purchase of an Orbic WiFi hotspot, links in the article to Amazon and eBay show them available for $10-20. The software to turn the Orbic into a Rayhunter is available on the EFF site, but you must be running Linux or Mac OS to install it - no package for Windows at this time. I suppose you could probably run a Linux VM on Windows to install it that way. Once installed and running, in the presence of CSS a red line will appear on the top of the display and the event will be logged, otherwise a green line will show. Connecting to the device's browser will let you review the log file.

The device is not a counter-surveillance tool, it does nothing to interfere with CSS which would be against many FCC rules and probably against local and Federal law. The EFF believes that the Rayhunter is legal under U.S. law, but if you're not in the USA then you should talk to an attorney in your area to see what kind of risk that you might be taking.

Myself, I'd look into rehousing it into something else, like, say, a Gameboy box that also works as a Gameboy, as eventually The Powers That Be will be looking for people carrying this particular model of Orbic devices and plausible deniability might begin running thin. For the paranoids amongst us, perhaps having a tamper switch on the Gameboy that would fry the memory if it's opened incorrectly.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03/meet-rayhunter-new-open-source-tool-eff-detect-cellular-spying

Of course there's the 'absent exigent circumstances' clause inserted, always gotta have that. Regardless, huge step forward for privacy.

This is both complicated and simple. The simple part is that the government has a reasonable interest in preventing some things from entering the country, like drugs, undeclared/untaxed items, etc. But at the same time, our phones have become digital repositories of our lives, and even though it is not a declared constitutionally-protected value, we do have some legal rights to privacy.

From the article: "Just as in Riley, the cell phone likely contains huge quantities of highly sensitive information—including copies of that person’s past communications, records of their physical movements, potential transaction histories, Internet browsing histories, medical details, and more … No traveler would reasonably expect to forfeit privacy interests in all this simply by carrying a cell phone when returning home from an international trip."

Apple introduced a feature in the previous(?) version of their phone operating system that disables the interface port and the facial recognition unlock to tighten security. It is recognized that the government has to go through great lengths to compel you to produce something you know - a password or passcode - versus something you posses - a key to a lockbox or your fingerprint or face, being the key to your phone. By disabling these, your phone is much harder to access since the phone will wipe itself after X number of failed attempts. I believe Android has something similar, but I'm not familiar with their specifics.

A lot of people would simply wipe their phone before re-entering the USA, then reload their contacts from an iCloud backup once they're past Customs and restore everything once they're back home to avoid such things.

A second part of the article is also quite interesting: The court focused on the internet and cloud storage, stating: “Stopping the cell phone from entering the country would not … mean stopping the data contained on it from entering the country” because any data that can be found on a cell phone—even digital contraband—“very likely does exist not just on the phone device itself, but also on faraway computer servers potentially located within the country.” This is different from physical items that if searched without a warrant may be efficiently interdicted, and thereby actually prevented from entering the country."

But I'm not sure what this means for potential laptop searches and siphoning. Best to use solid full-disk encryption and a BIOS password if you're at all concerned about your laptop contents.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/federal-judge-makes-history-holding-border-searches-cell-phones-require-warrant

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/05/31/0439200/federal-judge-makes-history-in-holding-that-border-searches-of-cell-phones-require-a-warrant

Apparently they didn't like Eckhart calling their software a rootkit and sent him a C&D. Eckhart sent it to the EFF, who sent Carrier a letter explaining that Eckhart is within his constitutional rights.

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Carrier-IQ-drops-cease-and-desist-against-security-researcher-1384209.html

Very interesting stuff. This guy, John Barlow, is not only a co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, he was also a lyricist for the Grateful Dead. He had some very interesting takes on what the other people on the panel were saying because, unlike them, he personally produced creative entertainment.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/eff-co-founder-enters-copyright-lions-den-rips-into-lions.ars

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/05/25/1157250/EFF-Co-founder-Faces-Copyright-Heavyweights-At-EG8

If you have a business with extensive intellectual property holdings, the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement) is probably a great treaty for you. But just like ACTA, it's being negotiated pretty much in total secrecy. And just like ACTA, it's been leaked.

Some of the provisions would make the U.S. patent (USPTO) a rubber-stamp for applications (which sucks because Congress is actually looking at making some significant improvements there), ISP's would become extensions of Hollywood when it comes to copyright enforcement, parallel import would be banned (no more gray market goods), criminal enforcement would be REQUIRED for DRM circumvention(!). I'm sure there's more lovely stuff in it.

The Techdirt article also has links to more info at the EFF with more details and a list of all Congresscritters in both the House and Senate so you can easily contact them and express displeasure.

I just wish they would try to negotiate this in the open. There's no reason for this to be secret, except for the fact that Hollywood wants to be able to totally side-step the normal method for creating laws and gain a fait accompli over everyone.

Now, as if this isn't bad enough, they want a VERY fast approval: they want it all to be wrapped up in November OF THIS YEAR.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/00104713434/us-proposals-secret-tpp-son-acta-treaty-leaked-chock-full-awful-ideas.shtml

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=471

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/11/2134224/Son-of-ACTA-Worse-Than-Original


[EDITED 15-JUNE-2013 TO ADD TOR TAG]

This is a good thing. I don't cross the border, but I'll certainly disinfect my laptop and encrypt the stuff that I consider private if I need to.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/12/Groups_ask_court_to_review_laptop_searches_1.html

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/13/1133208