Mastodawn

No, you shouldn't get too excited about the "everybody gets a Stingray detector" news.

For clicks, most articles are burying the lede:

The problem, however, is that no current phones can do this. To unmask fake cell towers, Android phones need to have version 3.0 of Google's IRadio hardware abstraction layer, which has to be supported at the modem level. [Wired]

But you don't have to wait! For US ~$20, you can build your own today. Check out @micahflee's excellent writeup here:

https://micahflee.com/hunting-street-level-cell-phone-surveillance-with-rayhunter/

All you need is three things:

An Orbic RC400L (mobile hotspot, ~$13 used)

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=ORBIC+RC400L

A cheap SIM card (doesn't actually need to be activated, just inserted, $3), such as

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08H5SM9M9

EFF's Rayhunter firmware (free)

https://github.com/EFForg/rayhunter

Hunting street-level cell phone surveillance with Rayhunter

Things are scary in the US right now. ICE is disappearing students for protesting genocide and kidnapping innocent people off the streets to enslave in El Salvador. All over the country, people are taking to the streets every week to protest oligarchy, and fascist counter-protesters are starting to show up

micahflee