The Dudeism Forum

Have you ever stopped to think that your cell phone conversations might be intercepted by so-called "fake" or "interceptor" cell towers?

Could domestic surveillance and law enforcement agencies be using such towers to spy on people?

The Internet is abuzz with reports of mysterious devices sprinkled across America - many of them on military bases that connect to your phone by mimicking cell phone towers and sucking up your data. There is little public information about these devices, but they are the new favorite toy of government agencies of all stripes; everyone from the National Security Agency to local police forces are using them.

OVER THE LINE!! - http://www.westernjournalism.com/fake-cell-towers-possible-interceptors-have-just-been-discovered-in-a-very-scary-place



And...

Those Fake Cell Phone Towers You?ve Heard About Are Not Towers At All

http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/washington-dc-littered-phony-cell-towers

Or they can locate you from your phone and blast you to bits.
That's how we are hitting high value targets from drones.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/

And it turns out that the drones act as fake towers also.

Quote
As the former JSOC drone operator describes ? and as classified documents obtained from Snowden confirm ? the NSA doesn?t just locate the cell phones of terror suspects by intercepting communications from cell phone towers and Internet service providers. The agency also equips drones and other aircraft with devices known as ?virtual base-tower transceivers? ? creating, in effect, a fake cell phone tower that can force a targeted person?s device to lock onto the NSA?s receiver without their knowledge.

There's a wired article about rogue cell towers also here.
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/cryptophone-firewall-identifies-rogue-cell-towers/
Apparently law enforcement is getting away with warrentless wire taps using them.

Quote
The problem with rogue cell towers is widespread. The FCC is assembling a task force to address the illicit use of so-called IMSI catchers?the devices that pose as rogue cell towers. But the task force will only examine the use of the devices by hackers and criminals?and possibly foreign intelligence agencies?not their warrantless use by law enforcement agencies bent on deceiving judges about their deployment of the powerful surveillance technology.

IMSI catchers, stingrays or GSM interceptors as they?re also called, force a phone to connect to them by emitting a stronger signal than the legitimate towers around them. Once connected, pings from the phone can help the rogue tower identify a phone in the vicinity and track the phone?s location and movement while passing the phone signals on to a legitimate tower so the user still receives service. Some of the IMSI software and devices also intercept and decrypt calls and can be used to push malware to vulnerable phones, and they can also be used to locate air cards used with computers. The systems are designed to be portable so they can be operated from a van or on foot to track a phone as it moves. But some can be stationary and operate from, say, a military base or an embassy. The reach of a rogue tower can be up to a mile away, forcing thousands of phones in a region to connect to it without anyone knowing.

Makes you want to live in a tree house and eat squirrels and grubs.
Almost.

I have always assumed any wireless transmission is not secure unless it's using good encryption...which anything mass produced doesn't.

But, I grew up around amateur radios so I knew what could be listened in on.  I've also designed some wireless stuff, definitely hackable if you really wanted to.