ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/

by cmurf • 7 months ago

280 246 7 months ago

cdrnsf4• 7 months ago

Dissolve ICE. Prosecute and/or disallow all ERO agents from any future public service positions.

i80and3• 7 months ago

A decade ago I put this stance into my LinkedIn profile tag line, and was a little surprised how many engineers reached out to praise that decision.

I think it's rapidly, finally, entering the realm of political viability.

therobots9273• 7 months ago

All it took was a white mother (and US citizen) getting shot in broad daylight. As much as I hate to admit it, a large enough segment of the population needed something blatant like this to care.

RickJWagner7• 7 months ago

So you did it when Obama ( and the current ICE management ) were handling deportations?

phillipcarter3• 7 months ago

The most maximally vindictive candidates are earning my votes in the coming election.

antonvs• 7 months ago

Careful, without any further qualification you just endorsed Stephen Miller.

jtfrench• 7 months ago

What if their maximally vindictive traits just makes them want to use the same invasive tools and techniques?

phillipcarter3• 7 months ago

Like today?

It’s entirely possible to prosecute the heads of all of these horrific things into the stone age, comb through internal data and throw every agent who’s murdered someone in jail, and not punish everyday people who just cast a vote.

wyre• 7 months ago

Compared to the alternative of staying on our current path of American fascism and WW3?

I’ll take the odds for vindictiveness.

NeutralCrane• 6 months ago

They already are. Playing nice and hoping the other side will come to their senses and return to normalcy doesn’t make sense when they’ve already shown you they will try to destroy you regardless.

silisili• 7 months ago

most maximally vindictive candidates

I think that's how we got to this point today, tbh.

moogly• 7 months ago

It's been building for a long time; it's not recent per se, just accelerated.

2025 showed that you can't just go "ok, it's over now, we'll go back to business as usual" (like I know the limp-wristed Dems will want to do) or it'll repeat after every other election until it's successful. You just cannot have this many people constantly being convinced they live in this alternate reality for much longer without civilization collapse.

But I think it's gone too far and we're witnessing the fall of the empire in real-time. I'm just hoping that fall won't screw up the rest of the world too much, but I'm pretty sure it will.

rambojohnson• 7 months ago

pussy-footing and reaching across the isle never did anyone of good conscience any good.

whatever1• 7 months ago

No we got to this point because the hope for a better future evaporated. People are thirsty for answers. Any answer to this question will have a big following.

Gambling, influencing, day trading, kick out the immigrants, anything works as long as it can promise to change your life for the better.

energy123• 7 months ago

Cost of living and social media. Populists are a symptom.

marcosdumay• 7 months ago

I think you and the GP are using completely different definitions of "revenge".

thrance2• 7 months ago

Quite the opposite actually. Democrats have been so complacent with the proto-fascists for so long, that republicans will now justify murdering a mother in broad daylight, filmed under 3 angles clearly showing she is fearing for her life. The solution to fascism is not compromise and weakness.

RickJWagner7• 7 months ago

Center/right voter here. I believe you are correct.

UncleMeat2• 7 months ago

Imprisoning fascists who break out laws and shoot people dead is good.

The fact that the fascists want to kill people for being brown doesn't change this.

empath752• 7 months ago

Yeah I get into a more Jacobin and less Girondin mindset every week that goes by.

wantlotsofcurry• 7 months ago

404 continues to do great work.

nemomarx2• 7 months ago

Any tips on how to avoid this? I suppose those tin foil signal blockers might be useful?

doublerabbit3• 7 months ago

Not use any device that has GSM/LTE, or Bluetooth.

Alternatively, broadcast a hidden SSID WiFi AP via an enabled RPi and use only devices that's have WiFi. Hand them out to people for free to increase the spread.

Attach magnets to the RPi's and go rogue by sticking them to buses, cars and trains et cetera to increase range.

nemomarx2• 7 months ago

Are there decent wifi communicators on the market? I looked into some Lora projects for this but they never seem to actually ship or get past prorotypes

lxgr• 7 months ago

Hidden SSIDs are generally much worse for privacy than non-hidden ones, since all stations (clients in 802.11 terminology) need to constantly go around yelling "hey, is SSID abc available?" while they're not connected to any SSID.

bens74• 7 months ago

a hidden SSID WiFi

Don't do this!

The BSSID is still visible, and is the unique identifier any trackers will be looking for anyway. Also making the SSID hidden just means the AP isn't broadcasting it, any listeners can still see the SSID whenever any client interacts with the AP.

atoav• 7 months ago

The true answer is: Hold your politicians accountable for this at every level, including at the "boring" local level and on all levels all the way up to the top.

This type of problem needs to be fixed on the society level.

gruez10• 7 months ago

See my other comment. At least in this particular case the databrokers are getting the data from apps themselves. If you don't grant location permissions to shady weather/transit/delivery apps, you should be safe.

Vegenoid• 7 months ago

Without more information about how the system works, a casual "eh if I don't grant location data access to shady apps I'm probably safe" seems very risky. What apps are "shady"? How does the real-time bidding system obtain and divulge location data?

I think that it is not a safe assumption that the only way corporations are obtaining people's location is via OS location APIs.

drnick15• 7 months ago

Do not use devices that can be trivially tracked through the cell network, or that can be surveilled by big tech. This means a device bought anonymously, a free/libre OS like Graphene, no Google/Facebook/Apple spyware apps, and an anonymous SIM paid for with cash or crypto. This should be done by everyone to avoid the possibility of mass surveillance, not only people who have something to hide from a three-letter agency. If you really have something to hide, then the cellular network shouldn't be used at all.

gruez10• 7 months ago

Do not use devices that can be trivially tracked through the cell network, or that can be surveilled by big tech. This means a device bought anonymously, a free/libre OS like Graphene

GrapheneOS isn't magically exempt from cell tracking, and both android and ios phones can go into airplane mode and have location disabled, which provides similar privacy.

and an anonymous SIM paid for with cash or crypto. This should be done by everyone to avoid the possibility of mass surveillance, not only people who have something to hide from a three-letter agency.

No, it's much harder than just "an anonymous SIM paid for with cash or crypto". You need to practice proper opsec. There's no point getting an anonymous sim when you then turn around and then use it as a 2fa number for your bank, or carry it around with you every day.

8note3• 7 months ago

a device bought anonymously
an anonymous SIM paid for with cash or crypto

i think these already have you screwed. that anonymity is going to be superficial at best. you will be recorded making these purchases, and tracked to your identity

chasd004• 7 months ago

Just leave your phone at home and bring a plain old small digital camera, agree ahead of time with friends on when and where to meet up. It's interesting to me and i guess showing my age that this isn't self evident to everyone everywhere.

everforward• 7 months ago

I suspect the old school stuff is generally less monitored. I think some of the cheap Baofeng radios support AES256 encryption. I think that's technically only legal with a business license from the FCC or some such, but I'd be a lot less worried about an FCC fine than having my phone tracked. There's probably some quick keypresses to clear the encryption config so it looks like it was on plaintext.

mghackerlady2• 7 months ago

One way to minimize the info they gather is by using a dumb phone. I have a flip phone running some RTOS that doesn't allow any kind of apps and doesn't have GPS, meaning the only trace it leaves is any cell activity

saubeidl• 7 months ago

They're building 1984. They're building the Social Credit system they claimed China was building.

Don't let them!

titzer• 7 months ago

Wait until they find out what Google Location Services collects.

anjel• 7 months ago

I did a deep dive into gemini privacy decs and apparently google is now also into the financial credit score business.

chaps3• 7 months ago

"They" already know about google location services. But this article isn't about what google collects.

standardUser2• 7 months ago

I wish this country had a libertarian right that cared one iota about widespread suppression of civil liberties instead of only whining about taxes.

pixl97• 7 months ago

Na, the libertarian right just wants to make money without laws first... then be authoritarians.

empath752• 7 months ago

The dirty secret about American politics is that people care about any of that stuff only to the extent that it supports their actual ideological goals. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, state's rights, all of it. They want it for them, and don't care if anybody else has it _at best_, and actively want to take it away from others at worst.

Documents like the Declaration and Constitution only get written after centuries of bloodshed that we are far removed from, and people forget why anybody cared about such abstract principles to begin with.

Hizonner2• 7 months ago

Um, what "ideological goals"? "My friends and I get to do anything we want and fuck everybody else" isn't much of an ideology. Ideology means "abstract principles".

Terr_• 7 months ago

Its collapse / take-over / mask-off over the last decade (interpretations vary) has been very disappointing.

I mean, FFS, what kind of principled third-party invites the authoritarian "opposition" candidate as the keynote speaker to their convention?

dangus• 7 months ago

Good news! There’s a progressive left that cares very much about widespread suppression of civil liberties!

Contrary to common misconception, you don’t lose your tech bro man card if you join them!

The best part is that you also shed the physics-defying libertarian viewpoints that largely make no sense.

everdrive2• 7 months ago

So this is getting to be pretty real and pretty scary. How many of you have actually considered just not using your mobile phone any longer? Turning it off, only powering it on when you need it, and not bringing it when you leave your home?

Within a lot of our lifetimes, this was the norm. Are these devices so useful that put up with carrying a tracking / listening device on us at all time?

cdrnsf4• 7 months ago

Anecdotally, Joseph from 404 does not use a mobile phone at all.

spicybright• 7 months ago

My only comment is being able to call emergency services wherever you are is very useful. Pre-cell phone times was just hoping there was a landline somewhere. And you weren't able to get instructions from the operator and be with a fallen person at the same time.

dandellion• 7 months ago

Can't you just put your phone in a shielded bag, and take it out if you need to use it?

mercanlIl• 7 months ago

Just one anecdotal perspective:

I do not of know a single person in my extended family/professional network/social circle who has had location tracking or app eavesdropping directly impact their life. The only impact I’ve seen is via advertising exposure.

(For me) The convenience of Google Maps for navigation, and messaging for communication, is too beneficial. The _impact_ of these technologies as surveillance tools _in my life_ is hypothetical.

dylan6045• 7 months ago

I do not of know a single person in my extended family/professional network/social circle who has had location tracking or app eavesdropping directly impact their life.

yet. that's always the problem with such a strong declarative. things are not finished to be so finite

awkwardpotato• 7 months ago

FYI, powering off your iPhone does not prevent it from being tracked. It continues to broadcast a low-power Bluetooth signal other Apple devices will relay to iCloud.

"Participating in the Find My network lets you locate this iPhone even when it's offline, in power reserve mode, and after power off"

Settings > Apple Account > Find My > Find My iPhone

soupfordummies• 7 months ago

I really dream of doing it. I gave it a soft-run a few years back when mine was stolen and it was really hard. Not just creature comforts and habits like GPS etc but even things like so much of the modern world assumes you have a phone on you. Things like parking, event tickets, restaurant QR code menus (thankfully this one seems to be actually getting better though.)

icameron• 7 months ago

When I first heard the advice to ditch your phone when you go a protest, I thought maybe that's a little extreme. But it's a real threat. We already knew post Snowden there is an extensive big brother apparatus. We saw post 911 that all rights can be taken away in the name of counter-terrorism. Now with a government that's operating outside the law and labeling peaceful protesters as terrorists, I don't think we can rely on telcos to protect our identity. The mass surveillance will fingerprint a device, and the telco will know your name so it's not at all an extreme precaution to ditch your phone.

daheza2• 7 months ago

If we all ditch our phones then how will we record the abuses of power?

chaps3• 7 months ago

....cameras exist :)

pavel_lishin• 7 months ago

Burners, which you never bring anywhere near your home, and which you do not drive your car to pick up.

gruez10• 7 months ago

Phone on airplane mode and with location services disabled?

lapetitejort• 7 months ago

Point and clicks with no internet connectivity. Practice unloading and reloading SD cards in came someone comes to destroy evidence

everdrive2• 7 months ago

People have allowed themselves to become so dependent on mobile phones that I'm frankly disgusted. You're talking about a scenario where you're worried about being illegally arrested by the secret police -- aided by their tracking of your phone, but it's still not enough to consider using your phone less. It's no different that a rat starving to death but continuing to push the lever for the cocaine hit.

[edit]

Vote me down all you want. If a bulletin went out that said "we're going to use your phone to steal your children and torture them" you'd have people saying "but, but .. how am I going to do my banking and check my messages." It's the height of absurdity.

beej71• 7 months ago

I have an old point and shoot (20x optical zoom) and a SIM-free phone that has never been used in my name for anything.

ActorNightly3• 7 months ago

Hate to break it to you, but people just simply dont care as much as you think they do. We have the right to own firearms for the purposes of protecting us against tyrany, but thats pointless when we cant even realize tyrany right outside our door.

codingdave• 7 months ago

Buy a camera. And/or an audio recorder. Or pull the SIM out of an old phone and use that.

layer8• 7 months ago

There are standalone pocket cameras.

dredmorbius6• 7 months ago

There are inexpensive dedicated still and video cameras, for as little as $40.

Higher-quality devices will still cost markedly less than a flagship, or even several-years-old smartphone, and will have much greater lifespan absent misadventure.

pklausler• 7 months ago

Disposable film cameras and FRS walkie-talkies, I think.

kazinator5• 7 months ago

- Use a different device: tablet, or camera.

- Do bring your phone, but put it into "airplane mode" so that it doesn't talk to any cell towers; then upload the video somewhere as soon as you get out of the area

fsflover• 7 months ago

Librem 5 phone has a hardware kill switch for the modem. The camera is not so great though.

embedding-shape5• 7 months ago

Basically: if it has a modem in it, it can be used against you in some way. Phones, routers, cars, public signs, cameras.

It's been so turbulent lately, that it's hard to register events that would have blown our minds if so many things didn't also happen around the same time. Remember when Israel made a bunch of pagers explode indiscriminately across Lebanon and Syria? So many things going on, one worse than the other, that it is hard to stop and really consider the implication of these single events fully.

baggy_trough3• 7 months ago

Indiscriminately?

ActorNightly3• 7 months ago

Its important to not be hyperbolic in these times.

The two technologies ICE uses rely on permission for apps tonuse geolocation data for advertising purposes. Same reason you start seeing ads for local things when you travel.

Technically they can subpoena cell records to see which towers your phone connects to, but this is not viable for multiple people.

For privacy, if you care, having a rooted degoogled phone with no sim card is sufficient enough. You can check its signature by using your laptop as a IGW and capturing traffic to see if any apps or services ping anything.

If you want off grid comms, meshtastic devices are very nice, me and my wife use LilyGo Tdeck pluses for comms and finding each other at festivals. The portable modems are also nice because you can use them for GPS for your phone vs built in location services.

nickthegreek• 7 months ago

whenever this topic comes up, I like to point people to EFF's Rayhunter.

https://github.com/EFForg/rayhunter

Rayhunter is a project for detecting IMSI catchers, also known as cell-site simulators or stingrays. It was first designed to run on a cheap mobile hotspot called the Orbic RC400L, but thanks to community efforts, it can support some other devices as well.

And

https://bitchat.free/

bitchat is a decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over bluetooth mesh networks. no internet required, no servers, no phone numbers.

CGMthrowaway• 6 months ago

Half the country learned this after January 6. The other half is learning it now, apparently.

nphardon2• 7 months ago

M.I.A.'s clothing brand is looking real good now. There are others but hers was the first I heard about. Seems like the waist bag would be critical for activists.

From the Ohmni website:

"...fabric's work by utilizing the principles of a Faraday cage to block or shield against electrical signals, electromagnetic radiation (EMR), and radio frequency interference (RFI)."

filoleg• 7 months ago

"[...] fabric's work by utilizing the principles of a Faraday cage to block or shield against electrical signals, electromagnetic radiation (EMR), and radio frequency interference (RFI)."

But what's the point of bringing a phone at this point?

Other comments mentioned valid points about tradeoffs of using an offline camera vs. a phone, with pro-phone arguments listing things like "being able to livestream and get the evidence out even if the device is damaged/destroyed" and "messaging/coordinating/comms". The anti-phone/pro-camera side also had good points, saying that those things also make it easier to track/identify you. The choice between those two options is definitely not clear-cut, and it is all about individual tradeoffs and risk assessment.

But if you are rocking something that's essentially a wearable Faraday cage that block all signals (I am just assuming it works exactly as stated, without attempting to judge its efficacy), what's the point of bringing (an essentially fully offline) phone in the first place, as opposed to bringing a camera with zero connectivity?

juuular• 7 months ago

You can put it in your pocket and go somewhere else with less of a chance you'll be tracked

nphardon2• 7 months ago

There's levels, for some, no-phone is the safest only route, for others, this could be a good solution. There's vids on her site showing how it works, it's very nice.

gilrain• 7 months ago

But what's the point of bringing a phone at this point?

Really??

You can take it out of your pocket and use it to communicate.

fusslo• 7 months ago

But what's the point of bringing a phone at this point?

I don't have much experience with protests, but I'd think people still need to commute to them. Either by their own car, public transport, or uber.

It would be nice to have your real phone for the commute to/from the protest, or in case of emergency, or if you leave the protest for some food or coffee.

A lot of cameras have built in wifi now, so when you leave the protest you could upload your camera's photos through your phone.

There's still a lot of utility of having a phone and selectively being able to prevent signals emanating from it.

gruez10• 7 months ago

The material does not say how Penlink obtains the smartphone location data in the first place. But surveillance companies and data brokers broadly gather it in two different ways. The first is from small bundles of code included in ordinary apps called software development kits, or SDKs. SDK owners then pay the app developers, who might make things like weather or prayer apps, for their users’ location data. The second is through real-time bidding, or RTB. This is where companies in the online advertising industry place near instantaneous bids to get their advert in front of a certain demographic. A side effect is that companies can obtain data about peoples’ individual devices, including their GPS coordinates. Spy firms have sourced this sort of RTB information from hugely popular smartphone apps.

Sounds like if you're denying location permissions to shady apps (why would you allow in the first place?), you're probably fine.

aredienhcs• 7 months ago

Not really, if weather apps are sharing the location as it says, then a lot os people are unkowingly allowing theses apps to collect the location.

dzdt• 7 months ago

If you install 100 apps on your phone, and 50% are participating in the kind of ad network that this data is sourced form, and 10% of the apps convince you to enable location services either by having a plausible need for it or by dark patterns or by your carelessness, that means there are still multiple sources where this information gets out. The math is on the trackers' side, not the users'.

gruez10• 7 months ago

If you install 100 apps on your phone

Why do you need 100 apps? Moreover why do you need 100 apps that have location permissions? Both android and ios makes it easy to tell which apps have location permissions. The list should be a very small list, and limited to "while using app".

and 10% of the apps convince you to enable location services either by having a plausible need for it or by dark patterns or by your carelessness, that means there are still multiple sources where this information gets out.

I'm not claiming that nobody is getting picked up by data brokers. The fact that they're in business implies that there's enough people careless enough to make it a viable business. But what I am claiming that such tracking isn't too hard to avoid. You can see some people in this thread who think otherwise, thinking that they need to go of the grid or switch to burner phones, when they all need to do is spend 1 minute to check the location permissions list.

array_key_first• 7 months ago

You should install the absolute minimum amount of apps possible and should prefer a website whenever you can. And, of the apps you do install, install them from trusted open source repositories, and allow them the absolute minimum permissions to do whatever you need them to do. They're tools for you.

drnick15• 7 months ago

Paywalled.

therobots9273• 7 months ago

I’d like to personally thank the tech billionaires for inflicting a domestic paramilitary force on the US population under the guise of “enforcing immigration”. Now they have access to the same surveillance tools used by the IDF to track and murder innocent civilians with plausible deniability.

anthk2• 7 months ago

Richard Stallman was right. Buy a dumbphone, an actual one. Call's, SMS', nothing else.

Did you know that women's period was tracked by propietary smartphone apps?

There goes your freedom.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61952794

Hizonner2• 7 months ago

You can still be location-tracked with a dumb phone. Yes, even if the phone has no GPS. Any communication with the network gives away your location to the "right" people.

mghackerlady2• 7 months ago

it can, but it's significantly harder. With good enough opsec the info leaked through cell activity is practically negligible

anthk2• 7 months ago

Pocket Faradays cages (and metallic clothes) exist. In the end if you use as a landline phone substitute it's almost a hardware issue and software would be just testimonial there.

ck2• 7 months ago

I submitted this three hours earlier but apparently my links are now shadow-banned?

eh at least it's being seen

Be sure to read their other DHS coverage

Jtsummers• 7 months ago

404media links are shadowbanned, not necessarily yours. They have been for years, people vouch for them to bring them back from the dead.

dredmorbius6• 7 months ago

404 Media has a fairly hard paywall, though Archive Today occasionally works.

Email concerns to mods at hn@ycombinator.com. They can reverse autokills or help find alternative links.

ChrisArchitect2• 7 months ago

ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46534581

ChrisArchitect2• 7 months ago

https://archive.ph/HYbBG

runjake• 7 months ago

The book Means of Control by Byron Tau goes deep into this realm. I thought I knew all the methods and sources and this book opened my eyes to even more goings on.

https://www.amazon.com/Means-Control-Alliance-Government-Sur...

mmmlinux2• 7 months ago

Why isn't any one independently using this same information to track ICE officers? I'm sure they all carry phones.

cdrnsf4• 7 months ago

There have been isolated cases of protestors using Grindr and other location-based apps to highlight ERO agents in enforcement areas.

Shalomboy• 7 months ago

Well first off, it is very expensive. Vendors that supply to DHS and DOD have to be selective about who they sell their services to as well. Citizen-developed services to track ICE are routinely shut down by Apple and Google.

mmmlinux2• 7 months ago

So make a real website and not an App.

duxup• 7 months ago

They can monitor you but according to this administration you can't even record ICE's activities legally.

https://reason.com/2026/01/08/you-have-the-right-to-record-i...

Rules for thee and not for me...

cheald• 7 months ago

I suppose I'm showing my age here, but Stingrays/IMSI-catchers have been around and in use for decades by both federal and local governments, and the problem of mass surveillance is not particularly an ICE problem. In my lifetime, the level of surveillance of the population has increased so dramatically that I'm not sure that younger people actually understand what it was like to live in a world where your every move wasn't monitored, recorded, and archived.

Privacy advocates have been fighting this battle for decades, but they have been utterly defeated because, by and large, people don't and can't be made to care about privacy until they learn the hard way (and when it's too late) why it's so important.

DarkByte• 6 months ago

"can track phones without a warrant and follow their owners home or to their employer" sounds strangely like what was reported to be happening to Palestinians in Gaza. Penlink is in Israel. I think there is a good chance this tech was developed and used in the ongoing genocide against Palestinians and is now being resold to law enforcement here.

ICE's Tool to Monitor Phones in Neighborhoods

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