CBS Reports 'Suspicious' Cell Phone Tower Activity In Washington DC (cbsnews.com) 188
"An unusually high amount of suspicious cell phone activity in the nation's capital has caught the attention of the Department of Homeland Security, raising concerns that U.S. officials are being monitored by a foreign entity," reports CBS News:
The issue was first reported in the Washington Free Beacon, but a source at telecom security firm ESD America confirmed the spike in suspicious activity to CBS News. ESD America, hired preemptively for a DHS pilot program this January called ESD Overwatch, first noticed suspicious activity around cell phone towers in certain parts of the capital, including near the White House. This kind of activity can indicate that someone is monitoring specific individuals or their devices... According to the ESD America source, the first such spike of activity was in D.C. but there have been others in other parts of the country. Based on the type of technology used, the source continued, it is likely that the suspicious activity was being conducted by a foreign nation.
The news coincides with a letter sent to the DHS by two congressmen "deeply concerned" about vulnerabilities in the SS7 protocol underlying U.S. cellular networks, according to an article shared by Slashdot reader Trailrunner7. Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Ted Lieu are asking if the agency has enough resources to address the threat. "Although there have been a few news stories about this topic, we suspect that most Americans simply have no idea how easy it is for a relatively sophisticated adversary to track their movements, tap their calls, and hack their smartphones."
The news coincides with a letter sent to the DHS by two congressmen "deeply concerned" about vulnerabilities in the SS7 protocol underlying U.S. cellular networks, according to an article shared by Slashdot reader Trailrunner7. Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Ted Lieu are asking if the agency has enough resources to address the threat. "Although there have been a few news stories about this topic, we suspect that most Americans simply have no idea how easy it is for a relatively sophisticated adversary to track their movements, tap their calls, and hack their smartphones."
Holy shit Trump was right! (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone is being wire tapped oh shit...
Nope. Trump was wrong again. (Score:1)
Cellphones don't have wires to tapp.
Re:Nope. Trump was wrong again. (Score:5, Funny)
No, they don't. Microwave ovens have video cameras. Toasters are for wiretapping. Duh. You can even see the wires when you look inside the slots.
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Microwave ovens do generate microwaves. Using the waves, we can:
Don't be so naive.
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The left has an easy format: .... same for fascist, nazi, etc, then:
If (what you said I don't like) then
if (try (calling them a racist)):
works: Done. You silenced them and don't have to actually discuss the topic that you know you'll lose because you're wrong.
Doesn't work:
If (try (calling them a bigot)):
try (Smashing windows, burn
Re: Nope. Trump was wrong again. (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps, as you might have outed yourself as a snowflake, you might want to research and look at facts. I know, facts aren't currently a priority of this country (if you are American, which I don't know because of, well, facts) and they are seldom cool on the internet (unless you actually work with the technology that runs it, then facts are everything) but for your own education, you might want to look into things. It's outstanding what can be learned if one tries.
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Valdezjuan, What in the world are you talking about and how does it have anything to do with my post, or the original subject? Maybe you pasted a response into the wrong reply window?
BTW, I'm certainly not a snowflake. I've worked really hard for everything I have and I have balls. I get things done. Facts are very much a priority in the US and that's a problem because the old people in power are losing it back to the people and they really don't like that. Think I'm wrong? Look up the vessel "Lady Michell
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Fascism is on the left, not the right. Learn your history.
Fascism is defined as an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
Hitler banned communism and socialism, and went on to have socialists and communists executed. Pretty funny thing to do if you're a socialist. He also went on to ban the unions in 1933, which he saw as supporting communism and socialism, had their leaders arrested and money confiscated.
Some people of extremely limited intellect might think that the "National Socialists" were socialists. In much t
Re: (Score:2)
Put people in prison for disputing his falsehoods
Offer to Pay for the legal expenses to someone who will criminally assault a protester
Admit more violence is better
Starve people to pay for more war.
Belong to the Christian Religion while breaking every rule of same.
Sorry, that's 4 of the 14, he's a fascist.
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Communism COULD be leftist, if they ever actually did it
Re:Holy shit Trump was right! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Holy shit Trump was right! (Score:2)
type of technology (Score:5, Insightful)
"Based on the type of technology used, the source continued, it is likely that the suspicious activity was being conducted by a foreign nation."
Is that because the US based three-letter-agencies just tap in at the service provider level?
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Indeed. And they do not want anybody else to have everybodies dirty secrets!
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Indeed. And they do not want anybody else to have everybodies dirty secrets!
Um...
OK, yes, the FBI, NSA, CIA wiretapping is not good. Regardless of what you think of that (some people here seem to think its OK for some reason), there's surely no way a foreign agency doing is it OK just because they did.
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Indeed. And they do not want anybody else to have everybodies dirty secrets!
Um...
OK, yes, the FBI, NSA, CIA wiretapping is not good. Regardless of what you think of that (some people here seem to think its OK for some reason), there's surely no way a foreign agency doing is it OK just because they did.
I was getting the impression that NSA wiretapping was only a problem when it was of Americans - that overseas tapping was fine. In which case foreign agencies tapping Americans is also presumably fine. Have I misunderstood?
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Have I misunderstood?
You have. Americans are _more_ equal than anybody else!
(Or at least they believe they are. Turns out they are just sheep, same as anybody else.)
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I find it much simpler to just assume everything outside of my brain is public information.
You are assuming (Score:3, Insightful)
The NSA has taps on the hardware, but other agencies do not. If people are trying to do things outside of NSA control, they would need to come up with their own taps.
The US has let security go to shit over the last decade. Foreign workers for "cheap" is a big problem, low moral from shitty treatment by administrations (happened long before Trump so don't bother with the dumbass blame game), corrupt administrators, and of course shit morals at companies executive levels.
Of course it "could" be a foreign ag
Re:You are assuming (Score:5, Informative)
Once the devices got handed out to NATO nations, the different EU nation police forces all their ex and former staff can sell the US product to the private sector.
The US is now been flooded with its own products as once very secret tech finds its way into every embassy and the private sector.
Other nations front companies, US dual citizens helping their real nations.
The UK had the same issues. Some ore gov, mil other are just random efforts by different groups.
What the UK did can often show what could be in the USA.
Fake Mobile Phone Towers Operating In The UK (09 June 2015)
http://news.sky.com/story/fake... [sky.com]
UK Cops Using Fake Mobile Phone Tower to Intercept Calls, Shut Off Phones (10.31.11)
https://www.wired.com/2011/10/... [wired.com]
Fake mobile phone towers discovered in London: Stingrays come to the UK (6/11/2015)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
The other US side would be to track US police, city workers to ensure they did not have a task force on any emerging private sector products or services.
Once a map of every phone in a wide city area was tracked, tracking undercover officials would be easy given a lack of digital counter surveillance training.
New "staff" or users reporting back into a government building every few days or weeks for a set time would be very easy to map.
Another aspect would be to counter any journalist trying undercover work. Their origin and return to their place of work would be detected if they ever had two working phones with them. Their undercover story phone and their journalist phone.
Other tracking could counter bloggers and web 2.0 attempts by citizen journalism to enter political parties or party political fund raising.
They might make an error with two phones in use. One they used for undercover work in the past, one they use for their blog.
Lack of cash could see device reuse and very easy tracking.
Also the meeting of any gov worker, federal official, contractor, mil, political staff with any journalist would be tracked by the mil, gov, party, contractor. A vast database of journalist. A political and private sector version of the NSA's FIRSTFRUIT.
The Most Intriguing Spy Stories From 166 Internal NSA Reports (May 17 2016)
https://theintercept.com/2016/... [theintercept.com]
“.. over 5,000 insecurity-related records” ranging from “espionage damage assessments” to “liaison exchanges.”
Someone is not tracking the fake networks for some reason. Political over, mil, police or gov use? Gov workers detect the fake cell products and nothing is done?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget the criminalization of security testing / research, demands for backdoors in security products for "law enforcement" purposes, further limiting / removing control of the device from it's owne
Re:You are assuming (Score:5, Informative)
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
FBI through an office in Quantico can directly tap ALL network main switches. The government PAID AT&T and Verizon to upgrade the switches to IP. The FBI added Colo cabinets at the main switch sites. The FBI can wiretap directly WITHOUT interacting with Verizon or AT&T.
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Which leaves the CIA and DIA for American three letter agencies and everyone else's external intelligence agencies..
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Relax... (Score:5, Funny)
It's just the President's Russian friends making sure he's safe from Obama's wiretaps.
Re:Relax... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's probably just the local police trying out their stingrays. You need to experiment a bit to learn how to intercept phone calls without a warrant.
Experiment? Yeah right.
The People no longer give a shit about privacy, security, or their Rights, so exactly zero education or experimentation is required in order for law enforcement to understand just how far above the law they are today.
If the situation were otherwise, the entire IMSI-catching product line would have been shut down by now.
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Nahh. I think it's the NSA trolling Trump into tweeting more insane shit at 5am.
Just wait...
Oh, look at the time.
Re:Relax... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Refreshing to have a President who does what he says, instead of the nobama snake that spoke well but fucked over the entire world (destroying Syria, starting Muslim brotherhood/ISIS, antagonizing Russia, raping the Constitution (see Snowden/wikileaks), Fast and Furious, nobama care, etc etc et-fucking-c.)
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Nah, by now the foreign countries realize that Trump is a one shtick pony. He has no nuance, no behind the scenes strategy and very little above the scenes. He's got the attention span of a gnat so there can be no behind the scenes strategy. In that environment, bugging his communications is pointless. He'll just respond immediately to crises or issues that develop. And his responses will have little to do with what he's said in the past and are likely to contradict any previous decisions.
Oh, and to get on
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Nah, by now the foreign countries realize [etc]
"By now"? Everything- and I do mean absolutely everything- you said above should have been obvious to any individual paying the remotest bit of attention long *before* he was elected.
The only "surprise" is that he didn't fulfil the (much) more-in-hope-than-expectation belief some people had that this might not be the case when he became president. That- contrary to the evidence- someone who had made it through his entire life to the age of 70 while still acting like a spoilt 8-year-old bully, who was clea
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I thought Trump was going to get into WW3 with Russia. It's hard keeping up with the lefties conspiracy theories these days.
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Don't need to worry about Obummer anymore. He's in hiding after the lady michelle was busted. Just google it. It's the Yuge story that the press isn't saying a word about.
The US government (Score:4, Insightful)
is the preeminent spying, wiretapping, snooping, eavesdropping entity on Earth. Hell, we invented most of it. We should be proud that our snoopiness is so great that everyone wants to imitate us. What could possibly go wrong?
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citation please
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Thanks, that's great. I now accept your unsubstantiated claims without reservation. Mission Accomplished!
Re: The US government (Score:2)
The pun (Score:1)
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That's not a pun, you moron.
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I was referring to the modern "collect it all" spying, not cracking the Enigma. It is a US invention.
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Lots of competent players. This sounds like cowboys...stingrays work, buy LOTS of stingrays. Look to the local or state police, political party, large corporation etc.
Also look to someone smarter, tripping 'them' up so they show on RF power bills at the towers.
I hope there is someway to fuck with a stingray and make it go 10kW until it melts on 'them'. Not likely, experts at such remote RF fuckery work for the stingray guys.
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What happens when two 'stingrays' or similar try to intercept the same channel, in the same cellular space, at the same time?
Could this be two, half competent bunch of clowns, running around DC trying to drown each other out with fake cell towers?
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And people still use Kaspersky. LOL
Re: The US government (Score:2)
...is the preeminent spying, wiretapping, snooping, eavesdropping entity on Earth. Hell, we invented most of it.
The Vatican invented most of it centuries ago, when it was still analog... and not electronic. Rest assured, it was still sigint.
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The "collect it all" technology is purely American in origin. We put the "5 eyes" team together. We built the infrastructure for it. That had nothing to do with the Vatican. You can pretend otherwise, but you are only fooling yourself.
Re: The US government (Score:1)
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So we just copied what Britain had already done? Don't think so. Who first put major taps into the communications systems in order to "collect it all"?
https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying [eff.org]
I'm shocked!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Every country on earth, barring North Korea has an embassy within pissing distance of the White House and Capitol and CBS "discovers" there's espionage. What grade did these people graduate from?
I'm shocked to find out this is going on in this establishment.
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Here's your winnings sir.
this looks like CIA propaganda (Score:1, Insightful)
the united states already has secretly deployments of armorments preventing these types of attacks. the attacks are thus normally conducted by the United States itself, sometimes in cooperation with foreign nations, or the government allows the attacks to occur.
Signals Intelligence is secretly scanning us all from space, giving us electron spin resonance scans.
There's no attack we aren't prepared for.
Why is this in the media? To spread false fear onto the population.
https://www.drrobertduncan.com... [drrobertduncan.com]
Nothing to worry about (Score:1)
Nothing to see here, move along.
Re: Nothing to worry about (Score:1)
Who cares how much it costs; Mexico is gonna pay for it, remember?!
Oh, wait....
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It'll be built by Mexican contractors whom Trump will stiff when it comes time to pay them.
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Ja, precis.
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Stop wasting aluminum foil on hats, please. It takes a lot of energy to produce.
Contradiction (Score:2)
Might Just Be Trump Propaganda (Score:1)
I find the timing in which the CIA was hacked, very interesting as well.
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Trump is in a position where he needs to prove his wiretapping claim--and fast.
Why? His campaign was built on lies which people willingly believed. I don't see how adding one more to the pile makes the slightest bit of difference.
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Trump doesn't feel the need to prove his wiretapping claims. He's already trotted out his alibi, it was those naughty people at Fox, shame on them for reporting something that would be picked up and amplified by Trump and his poodles.
Actually, Trump doesn't feel the need to prove anything. His entire life is a lie, it's all he knows. By now, his staff is realizing he's been lying to them as well, it is who he is.
Hah! (Score:1)
I've said it many times, and you can check my history, that if the average American knew how much their cell phone leaked data, they would not only refuse to own one, but refuse to allow them on their property.
I don't have anything to hide. I don't do anything illegal (that I know of, but look how many laws there are, and I'm sure I break some without knowing it), but the point is that cell phone data is only used to build a case, and only vary rarely does it exonerate someone. It isn't' your friend. It's a
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I find it hard to believe that
I think in the years I've owned one (shackled to me for employment, really)
You never once used your phone except to call for a tow truck once. No company would pay for a phone for an employee if they were never going to be called on it.
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You never once used your phone except to call for a tow truck once.
Not what I said. I said: I've used it exactly once when I could not have used a VOiP or POTS.
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I've said it many times, and you can check my history, that if the average American knew how much their cell phone leaked data, they would not only refuse to own one, but refuse to allow them on their property.
This seems to be a common fallacy among computer nerds, that people don't take steps to protect their privacy out of ignorance. Unfortunately, many studies have now shown that people simply don't care. If you ask them, they would prefer to keep private things private. But the value they place on that privacy is really small, to the point that they would give up such info willingly, with full explanation of what they are giving up and that it will be used by others for something (much stricter than the re
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Wow!! And you say you've told us this before? I'm impressed.
.. relatively sophisticated adversary ... (Score:2)
United States of America
Heh, "they" have a Stingray (Score:2)
All communication is monitored (Score:5, Interesting)
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CBS reported on the recent snowstorm. By your logic, "If CBS is only now figuring out that it snows in winter, they are fantastically bad at their jobs."
Just because it isn't new to you doesn't mean it isn't news.
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Even face-to-face communication in code is compromised, if the other party is compromised.
You say this as if it is a new thing, and hasn't always been true.
I think I know what it is (Score:1)
It's people playing Pokemon Go
Nothing To Worry About (Score:4, Funny)
It's not like America's Commander In Chief would be stupid enough to refuse a secure cell phone just so he can continue his 3am Twitter on the shitter regimen.
Oh god. We're all doomed.
Suspicious activity found in Washington DC (Score:3, Insightful)
File this under, "no shit, Sherlock". I mean, has anyone gotten a load of the White House staff lately? We had a registered agent of a foreign government receiving national security briefings and holding the post of National Security Advisor before he was thrown to the wolves for being too obvious.
The president just signed a license deal to use his name on a string of Chinese brothels. I mean, what the fuck? I miss the days when the worst thing a president did was get a blowjob from a 20 year old and lie about it.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/07... [cnbc.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... [nytimes.com]
Feed his babies (Score:2)
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I wonder how long Trump can continue to blame Obama. I suppose the right wingnuts will never lose their fear of Obama. For a crowd that claims to be about he-boy More Power, the right wingnuts act like a bunch of "girly-men" at the slightest threat.
Horrible times to be a spy. (Score:1)
It must be horrible to be a foreign spy these days. Risking your life, working with the latest technology that only the brights engineers understand, only to spy on Trumps communication. And then again risking your life while using the latest technology to try to communicate the stolen information back to the mother country only to hear "We already knew that, we read it on Twitter this morning".
Can't be China or Russia (Score:2)
Re: This is why the travel ban is needed (Score:1)
Posted like a true Anonymous Coward.
Re: (Score:2)
Except there's really been no word on improving the vetting, and no actual behavior by the white house that would indicate any real desire to fulfill an urgent security need, just the normal behavior you'd expect from a white house trying to make headlines for political gain -- up to and including delaying action so as not to step on news coverage of Trump's congressional address.
And no intelligence agency asked for the ban, and when the white house tried to get them to say good things about it, they pretty
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, let's keep America safe....like selling guns to everyone and anyone. They killed roughly 33,000 Americans per year. Now them thar terrorists, you must be a real loser to get killed by one of them terrorists. Stand yer ground, kill that neighborhood teenager who trespasses on your sacred ground.