Police keep quiet about cell-tracking technology

Discussion in 'privacy general' started by lotuseclat79, Mar 22, 2014.

  1. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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    Police keep quiet about cell-tracking technology.

    -- Tom
     
  2. DoctorPC

    DoctorPC Banned

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    How this was done before was each 'area' had a US Marshall Service Van that allowed monitoring/tracking of everyone with a cell phone. These vans could be 'requested' by Police Departments. So say XYZ police are looking for a husband, after he hit his wife. They'd contact the Marshall Service, and be linked to the van, which would then 'track' the person in realtime, and feed this back to the department. The main stipulation with this technology was that if said police department revealed it's use, or even it's existence they'd loose access to this resource.

    Then Stingray, and other products became available. For roughly $250K a police department could purchase their own in-house system for this. Some have it, not all, but even at that price rural police departments can afford it.

    Recently we had a man kill his lover in another city. Police responded, but found the dead guy, and the other guy was a 'suspect' at that point, but they could not locate him. Within 60 minutes they converged into my area at a house with armored vehicles. How? Easy. They tracked his cell phone. He was hiding at the home of a 'friend' nobody knew about.

    Another trick, and you heard it here first. Let's assume you use a prepaid phone to avoid/reduce your attack surface. The first time you turn on a new phone - even unactivated - it's GPS tagged to that location. Which means if you register it under a fake name, with a prepaid visas, they STILL have the root GPS tag, and can still 'somewhat' pin it on the owner.

    The method of avoidance is simple;

    1) Buy a Virgin Mobile Smart Phone with Cash.
    2) Charge it in your car, or away from home.
    3) Take a 'drive' to the nearest highway overpass. Park underneath, turn on the phone for the first time. GPS tag.
    4) Drive to a public WIFI network (McDonalds, etc) and on a MAC spoofed laptop. Load a private browsing session, activate phone under a fake name paying with a prepaid card.
    5) De-activate location services, GPS, etc. Go into developers menu, turn off push service, sync, and triangulation services, and disable 9/11 functionality.
    6) Install firewall (Grey Shirts, etc) start blacklisting/whitelisting applications/services.
    7) Install VPN, and Encrypted SMS.
    :cool: Install SMS/Phone Whitelist/Blacklist product.
    9) Encrypt Device, and if relevant - SD Card

    Now you have a private phone. Enjoy.
     
  3. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  4. DoctorPC

    DoctorPC Banned

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    Also relevant.

    Make sure to turn off connection optimizers. What these do is essentially 'roam' for you. But they can spoof those connections with false pings, and since it's unattended, you are at risk. Even drones, circling federal aircraft, and acquisition towers can infect you using this method.

    A good phone firewall, combined with manual connection allocation goes a long way for protection in that regard. Also, encryption means even if they connect, they aren't unencrypting your stuff. Use app-level, SDCard, and complete phone encryption in layers. That's assuming you don't use my method above to ensure your phone is private. Also it doesn't hurt to re-allocate a new number to yourself every year, then push a text out to all of your contacts at once so they can update their records. If you are using a fake name, that number change is an added security bonus.

    These databases rely on people being complacent, lax with privacy. I've never in my entire life activated a phone with my real information. As such I can practically guarantee no database they have would be accurate, and hence, no tracking would be valid. I used EMF-Proof phone bags years ago. If you want absolute proof toss the phone into one of those if you want some privacy. If I was a criminal on the run, I'd keep my phone, use it, then toss it back into the bag and move on. Foiling all of the methods to track properly. But I'm not a criminal so I am not worried about that, I take more passive measures to improve privacy.
     
  5. Enigm

    Enigm Registered Member

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    ROFL

    It really don't matter diddly, the NSA is recording ALL US-phone-calls and storing them indefinitely . Voices on unknown phones will be matched to voices on known phones automatically ..
     
  6. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  7. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  8. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  9. Dermot7

    Dermot7 Registered Member

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    Cops Need a Warrant to Grab Your Cell Tower Data, Florida Court Rules | WIRED

     
  10. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  11. DesuMaiden

    DesuMaiden Registered Member

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    It benefits them, so of course they are not going to complain about it.
     
  12. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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    Now There's an App For Detecting Government Stingray Cell Phone Trackers.

    -- Tom
     
  13. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  14. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  15. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  16. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  17. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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  18. noone_particular

    noone_particular Registered Member

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    With those who choose not to carry a cellphone, those who don't feel the need to be connected and reachable 24/7, the Stingray is a useless weapon.
     
  19. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  20. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  21. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  22. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  23. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    Feds change policy to require warrant for use of Stingrays
    https://threatpost.com/feds-change-policy-to-require-warrant-for-use-of-stingrays
     
  24. lotuseclat79

    lotuseclat79 Registered Member

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  25. mirimir

    mirimir Registered Member

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    Good news :)

    I must say, however, that this guy was using a cellphone, while wanted for a probation violation, and while carrying a gun (perhaps obtained illegally, and probably illegal for him during probation). Bad OPSEC.
     
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