Favorite At EFF we spend a lot of time thinking about Street Level Surveillance technologies—the technologies used by police and other authorities to spy on you while you are going about your everyday life—such as automated license plate readers, facial recognition, surveillance camera networks, and cell-site simulators (CSS). Rayhunter is a new open source tool…
Favorite We haven’t seen the end of invasive geofence warrants just yet, despite Google’s big announcement late last year that it was fundamentally changing how it collects location data. Today, EFF is filing an amicus brief in the Minnesota Supreme Court in State v. Contreras-Sanchez, involving a warrant that directed Google to turn over an…
Favorite Dozens of policing agencies are currently using cell-site simulators (CSS) by Jacobs Technology and its Engineering Integration Group (EIG), according to newly-available documents on how that company provides CSS capabilities to local law enforcement. A proposal document from Jacobs Technology, provided to the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) and first spotted by the Boston Institute…
Favorite EFF’s Threat Lab is dedicated to deep-dive investigations that examine technology-enforced power imbalances in society. In 2022 we’ve sharpened our knives and honed our skills in an effort to bring down the stalkerware industry, taken aim at invasive surveillance by police, raised red flags around the security and privacy of daycare apps, developed new…
Favorite The scourge of stalkerware—malicious apps used by perpetrators of domestic violence to secretly spy on their victims—is not going unchallenged or unaddressed. Antivirus makers are increasingly adding stalkerware to the list of apps their products detect on devices; victim support groups help people figure out whether their devices are infected and how to remove…
Favorite The ease with which bad actors can find a worldwide market for malicious apps that spy on people’s digital devices is at the center of an Australian Federal Police case against a man who, starting at the age of 15, wrote a stalkerware application and sold it to 14,500 people in 128 countries. Australian…
Favorite Last year Google quietly pushed a new feature to its Android operating system allowing users to optionally disable 2G at the modem level in their phones. This is a fantastic feature that will provide some protection from cell site simulators, an invasive police surveillance technology employed throughout the country. We applaud Google for implementing…
Favorite Security researchers have been talking about the vulnerabilities in 2G for years. 2G technology, which at one point underpinned the entire cellular communications network, is widely known to be vulnerable to eavesdropping and spoofing. But even though its insecurities are well-known and it has quickly become archaic, many people still rely on it as…
Favorite Special thanks to legal intern Gillian Vernick, who was lead author of this post. The Vallejo Police Department was warned: by rushing to purchase a cell-site simulator without first crafting a use policy, the agency side-stepped its legal duty to transparency. Now, Oakland Privacy has filed a first-of-its-kind suit to ensure the public has…
Favorite As uprisings over police brutality and institutionalized racism have swept over the country, many people are facing the full might of law enforcement weaponry and surveillance for the first time. Whenever protesters, cell phones, and police are in the same place, protesters should worry about cell phone surveillance. Often, security practitioners or other protesters…
