- Earlier this year ICE ordered new vehicles equipped with smartphone-tracking hardware.
- Cell-tower simulating “Stingray” devices gather records on phones in their vicinity.
- Luckily, Android 16 includes new measure for detecting when you may be monitored in this fashion.
android 16 has a secret weapon: google has already sold your data
Users who have already updated their phones to Android 16 can even tap into some system-level protection with the new “Network notifications” option
Wanna bet that feature will soon be cut by google? For your safety of course.
GrapheneOS my beloved
Only if they supported more devices
GrapheneOS is built from Android, right? Wouldn’t subsequent versions of GrapheneOS lose this functionality as well?
Only if Google makes such sweeping changes to make forward-porting the feature impossible.
Must be frustrating to keep so many patch sets alive after a while. Any insight into how they do this in a scalable way?
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Ah, shame. I still consider the 10 to be a downgrade from my 9 Pro. I want Battery Share.
I’m also less likely to be subjected to surveillance, I’m guessing, as I live in northern Europe. Hopefully. 😅
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Right, but considering where in northern Europe I live… I don’t think we’re a target before it’s time to upgrade phones at least, honestly. 😅
They may ban it like how the Spanish government did in Catalonia 🤡
Police and government agencies can track phones even when they’re connected to a genuine cell towers, via mobile operators. It’s just slightly more convenient for them to use an ISMI catcher because they collect data without going through a third party.
Assume a mobile phone can be tracked if it’s powered, regardless of iOS or Android version and settings.
Many are trackable when off, too. So, that just fantabulous.
Just out of curiosity, how?
They don’t fully turn off. I don’t remember the official name for it, but it’s a low energy state. It’s how Apple can track your stolen MacBook or iphone, even if the thief turned it off.
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too bad android 16 also has the garbage “registered developers” and blocking apk installs insuring i’ll never upgrade.
I’m using f-droid on 16 without issues (so far)
That’s coming next year AFAIK, and I don’t think staying on 15 will prevent it
Good but it isn’t the version of Android it is in Google Play Services. So however far back Google is pushing the current version for.
that’ll get pushed to you regardless of if you upgrade
Is there really any chance they don’t have direct access to data from the cell towers and actually need to do tracking by other means? I figured this was just a parallel construction type of thing.
Time to tell on myself a bit, I was a 35N in the US army with experience adjacent to this subject. Stingrays are commercially available devices that pretty much anybody with big money can get their hands on and use. Private companies make various stingray-type devices and those private companies have salesmen who actively want to sell YOU on buying their equipment.
For law enforcement, getting a continuing agreement with telecommunication companies to have legal access to bulk USP data is a big nightmare with lots of red tape. Even if a police department were to get these agreements with the telecommunications company you’re now introducing all of the inconvenience of dealing with AT&T customer support to get your data from them. This isn’t a joke, pretty often you will still have to work with/through the telecommunications company you have an agreement with to get your data. And to be honest their techs and reps are dumb as bricks, they are so often a common pain point.
Setting up a stingray on the other hand gives the police department direct access to all the data themselves with no middle-men, and often they even have supplemental support from whichever company they bought their stingrays from. It’s easier, faster, and more convenient data collection 99% of the time to not go through the genuine cell towers.
But we’re talking about a federal agency here, not local law enforcement. It’s been confirmed that systems they tried to keep secret exist for them to have direct access to traffic going through ISPs, so why wouldn’t they have set up something similar for wireless networks, that would eliminate the need to go through any corporate bureaucracy? To me it seems reasonable to assume that such programs exist without being divulged because it would be basically similar to what else has been confirmed to exist, and there’s a really obvious incentive.
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