Investigation uncovers two sophisticated telecom surveillance campaigns

I was training to be a 911 dispatcher a while ago. When they told us about getting someone’s location from the cell company outside of what was available automatically from e911 or whatever— which required them to be on the phone with you, so not useful if you get a text saying they just drove off a cliff in the middle of nowhere, or something— you had to sign an affidavit testifying that there were exigent circumstances, fax it to them, and then wait, sometimes for hours, until their legal department approved it. And you always risked being dragged to court if you made the wrong call. That’s the price of privacy, and the potential for abuse is rife, so it makes sense.

Yet these jackholes can just snag it whenever because, ya know, profit. That is obviously insane. Our corporate culture has driven our society insane with normalized greed. The unholy alliance of tech and marketing is largely to blame.

One of the biggest lies about the surveillance state is that it'll be professional.

NSA employees have used multi-billion dollar American surveillance assets to spy on women they're infatuated with. There's even a cute term for it, LOVEINT.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/loveint-nsa-letter-disclo...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nsa-staff-used-spy-tools-spouses-...

    In another instance, a foreign woman who was employed by the U.S. government suspected that her lover, an NSA civilian employee, was listening to her phone calls. She shared her suspicion with another government employee, who reported it. An investigation found the man abused NSA databases from 1998 to 2003 to snoop on nine phone numbers of foreign women and twice collected communications of an American, according to the inspector general's report.

People aren't able to imagine the ramifications of pervasive surveillance because there never has been such pervasive surveillance in human history. And humans are terrible at predicting how this is going to change things. Especially, with LLMs in the mix.

Unless a very strict line is maintained for privacy across the board; the world that's coming will be many, many custom, tailor-made hells co-existing as tumors off of the back of state and corporate surveillance infrastructure.

Yeah, a friend of mine was tracked by a stalker ex boyfriend who worked at a Telco.

It was irritatingly difficult to avoid because it seemed he could look up her SIM card by name and then get her location no matter what (new SIM, new phone)

Anyone who reports this kind of thing to the police just sounds irrational and crazy and gets ignored.

This is just par for the course in Russia. Government has telcos track people, and that data ends up available on the black market for anyone to purchase, for a fairly modest fee. The government has been recently trying (with uncertain degree of success) to crack down on the latter, as this was frequently used by the opposition journalists and investigators to uncover the details of the government's own nefarious plots.

The data is cross-referenced with other telcos, other SIM cards, Wi-Fi hotspots (anonymous public hotspots are outlawed), street cams, and many other databases, so it's basically impossible to avoid being tracked.

Probably inevitable to become the norm everywhere in the world.

> Gary Miller, one of the researchers who investigated these attacks, told TechCrunch that some clues point to an “Israeli-based commercial geo-intelligence provider with specialized telecom capabilities,” but did not name the surveillance provider. Several Israeli companies are known to offer similar services, such as Circles (later acquired by spyware maker NSO Group), Cognyte, and Rayzone.

Help our security if you can!—

“Contact Us

Do you have more information about surveillance vendors that exploit cellphone networks? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email[]”

In my country 95% of people don't mind Meta tracking their location with WhatsApp, so I think the days of people caring about tracking are long gone!

I am the exception and believe in privacy, and I've not used a Meta app since I tested Facebook/WhatsApp back in 2010 and soon uninstalled them as I don't want a digital portfolio to be developed on me for advertisers. Same with Google, they can whistle for my personal information, but they won't get it!

I'm sure surveillance companies have an even easier time buying data from Meta/WhatsApp so that's even more worrying as people use different ISPs so 95% of people won't be traced by any one ISP, but Meta and Google have the location information of anyone gullible enough to use their services.

> ... Israeli-based commercial geo-intelligence provider with specialized telecom capabilities ...

why are they good at these kind of things - security, hacks, surveillance, 0-days?

I get a 404 when I try and view the CitizenLab report:

https://citizenlab.ca/research/uncovering-global-telecom-exp...

Of course they are what could go wrong?

I was reading news this morning about Lebanese journalist killed in airstrike. I was thinking very likely she was tracked wherever she was taking shelter. These kind of surveillance probably helps track such people on large scale and we most of the time meh at such reports and think what have I to loose. But it is affecting everyone now, not some ambigious high profile targets, they are the people amongst us.

They do have the death penalty now in Israel. So it might get interesting for those bosses

Everyone does it, they just got caught.

I like I live in country where SIMs can be bought without any verification.

Cops and agencies trying to change this, (buuhuuu someone bought anonymous SIMs in bulk and sold them on darknet)

Surprisingly, there was major public pushback, pretty unlucky for cops.

Why is the citizen lab report URL suddenly a 404?

I’m shocked, shocked I say!

Oh would you look at that: “Israeli-based commercial geo-intelligence provider with specialized telecom capabilities.”

Make no mistake, the people of Gaza and Lebanon are being used as guinea pigs for highly invasive surveillance technology that could easily be pointed at any of us if we step out of line.

And yes I said people of Gaza, not tellhullists as they’re referred to in Zion.

Color me shocked

jesus christ!