http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/security-experts-weigh-in-on-mystery-cell-phone-towers/
Theres been an uproar this week following a Popular Science report that revealed the existence of more than a dozen cell phone-type towers across the United States for which no owner could be located or operator identified.
Business Insider reported the towers appear to be connecting to nearby phones, bypassing their encryption, and either tapping calls or reading texts.
The report said the fake communication towers are undetectable for most telephone users, but a new and pricey product, called a cryptophone, confirmed a number of bogus cell phone towers.
As for those who own and run the towers? Les Goldsmith, an expert in phone technology, said it just isnt known.
What we find suspicious is that a lot of these interceptors are right on top of U.S. military bases. So we begin to wonder are some of them U.S. government interceptors? Or are some of them Chinese interceptors? he asked in a Popular Science interview. Whose interceptor is it? Who are they, thats listening to calls around military bases? Is it just the U.S. military, or are they foreign governments doing it? The point is: we dont really know whose they are.
Whatever the source, America has an increasing privacy problem, according to experts in the field.
The [National Security Agency] revelations of the past year show that we have no privacy, said John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization.
Whitehead is also the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State.
All of our records and communications are being monitored, tracked, uploaded and stored, he said.
Cheryl Chumley, author of Police State USA: How Orwells Nightmare is Becoming our Reality, agreed.
Law enforcement is seeming to suggest that these phony towers are the brainchild of hackers and data thieves and that means cell phone users around the nation need to realize their so-called private conversations are vulnerable, she said.
Privacy as we know it in America is dead. Drone technology is blossoming, the federal governments already been tapping into private social media messaging, all in the name of security, the private sector is latching on to emerging technology that puts the likes of audio and video recording devices in store mannequins, and now comes a new and unknown entity thats listening in on cell phone conversations.
Whitehead said the government intelligence agency would have to know about these towers and their existence, and they have not alerted the public.
If these are private interests, it could very well be tied into a government intelligence agencys programs, he said. For example, it has been revealed that the NSA is working openly with Google, and Amazon just built a multi-million dollar intelligence cloud to be shared by all 17 intelligence agencies.
Whitehead added, What we once called privacy has clearly been extinguished, and once the drones blanket the skies beginning in 2015, even those who thought they could get off the grid will no longer be able to do so.
Chumley said its crucial for Americans to understand that putting the technology genie back in the bottle just isnt going to happen.
The best course of action is assume all phone conversations, all social media messaging, and computerized correspondences are being tapped and hacked because the truth is, they very well could be, she said.
Radio talk-show host Katherine Albrecht, whose Spychips website tracks privacy invasions, told WND she differs from Whitehead and Chumley.
Its very important to watch for such developments, she said.
Is our government doing this? Or is a rogue government doing this to eavesdrop on sensitive communications? she asked.
She said while neither is good, the idea that a foreign power, such as China or ISIS, setting up communications monitoring locations across the United States is scary.
However, it just confirms her opinion, she said, that if there is an opening for exploiting computer software, it will happen.
This is not the time to thrown in the towel, she said. This is time to roll up the sleeves.
Shes also been a key promoter of StartMail encrypted email and encrypted search functions on the Web.
According to Business Insider, there were 17 fake cell phone towers found across the U.S.
VentureBeat reported they dont likely belong to the NSA, because that agency can tap all it wants without the need for bogus towers.
BI reported ComputerWorld revealed the fake towers knock the performance of a 4G phone down to that of a 2G, giving away their operations.
The Popular Science report focused on the specialized security telephones now becoming available. As part of that, it revealed that one of the phones had detected interceptors across the U.S., in Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles, Dallas, several points in Nevada and Arizona, Chicago, Ohio and other eastern points.
In the report, Goldsmith said: Interceptor use in the U.S. is much higher than people had anticipated. One of our customers took a road trip from Florida to North Carolina and he found eight different interceptors on that trip. We even found one at South Point Casino in Las Vegas.
The report said the towers are radio-equipped computers with software that can use arcane cellular network protocols and defeat the onboard encryption. Whether your phone uses Android or iOS, it also has a second operating system that runs on a part of the phone called a baseband processor. The baseband processor functions as a communications middleman between the phones main O.S. and the cell towers. And because chip manufacturers jealously guard details about the baseband O.S., it has been too challenging a target for garden-variety hackers.
But the report said for governments, such interception is simple.
BI reported: Whenever he wants to test out his companys ultra-secure smart phone against an interceptor, Goldsmith drives past a certain government facility in the Nevada desert. (To avoid the attention of the gun-toting counter-intelligence agents in black SUVs who patrol the surrounding roads, he wont identify the facility to Popular Science). He knows that someone at the facility is running an interceptor
A new report from CBS in Chicago said there actually were 19 such eavesdropping devices across the country, including at least one in Chicago.
