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Comment by scott77 | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly enough, during last trip to London, my phone (Nexus 5 running Cyanogenmod 12.1) was able to somehow detect something fishy and warned me several times "Network may be monitored by an unknown 3rd party". Among others, I've seen this warning two times out of two when passing by Cheapside/St Martin's corner - next to the St Paul's Cathedral.

At the time I just dismissed this as some tinfoil hat developer adding some nonsensical warnings to the firmware, but in retrospect, after reading this article - this matches perfectly, chances are - phone was indeed detecting Stingrays. Still no idea how it managed to do it.

EDIT: I had no data/IP connection of any kind at and around the time of seeing this, so this is clearly unrelated to TLS interception.

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Is it completely legal to warn users of suspicious network activity like this? If for example Apple built detection into iOS and gave all users a warning that could do a lot for raising awareness and maybe some support for change. "The network you are using is likely being surveilled. Your identity, online activity, and phone calls may be monitored by government or criminal equipment"

Can you stifle free speech when it's informed by public information and not knowledge of secret activities? That is, if all it's doing is flagging signals it's antenna receives, is it even possible for that to be illegal?

Also, how do laws treat waves in public (radio, light) - do they get the same "privacy" treatment as people (that is, no expectation of if in public)?

Edit: actually since joining/browsing an open WIFI network can be considered criminal...

> Also, how do laws treat waves in public (radio, light) - do they get the same "privacy" treatment as people (that is, no expectation of if in public)?

I believe this area is legally fuzzy but courts have determined that police cannot drive around with say, a thermal imager and observe en-mass people in their homes. One could argue that it's just thermal radiation you are viewing from public space.

Frequently on my town's facebook page, somebody will post "speed trap near the elementary school, better slow down there", and people jump all over the poster about helping people get away with speeding.

It seems to me that if you really want people to slow down near the elementary school (as opposed to just issuing tickets and collecting fines), this is EXACTLY what you want to have happen. If you put a cop there, and people warn others of it so they all slow down... mission accomplished!

By analogy, if you've got a target very valuable to the enemy (maybe a stadium for a high-profile sporting event), having phones alert users that they're being monitored might help to ensure that nobody tries anything during the event.

With that in mind, maybe the government should seek to warn us that we're being monitored, even if/when we aren't in reality. Just to keep us on our toes.

To be really effective, it would be seem specific and personal: text messages that say things like "We can see you. We know what you're up to." Stuff like that.

There's apps that can read Qualcomm debugging to detect GSM encryption has changed like SnoopSnitch maybe CM has their own built in version but last I heard their kernel removed many proprietary drivers needed for the Nexus 5 to access Qualcomm DIAG.

Could this be caused by the phone surveillance that's set up in One New Change? There are (small) notices at the entrances to One New Change that inform you of phone tracking equipment there.

If they're informing you of it, I'd assume it's more likely to be passive WiFi tracking. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8752580

WiFi was turned off completely on the phone, also message itself was a native UI dialog, not something on a webpage.

I'm not getting these warning on my Nexus 4 running the default Android build. The only time I see them is when I use my own VPN connection.

Do you think it might get triggered on your phone by the presence of the anti-porn filter that UK mobile provider have? For instance, when trying to access "adult" website (I use quotes as sometimes, even non porno website gets filtered out) you end up on your mobile provider page blocking you from the actual website your looking for.

Some details regarding the message here: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/61750/android-ki...

This is not the message I've seen. There was nothing about TLS, trusted CA installation, emails, apps, or websites.

I wish I've taken a screenshot of it!

The message you quoted appears in the left-hand screenshot [1] showing notifications, not the one on the right containing a dialog box.

[1] http://i.stack.imgur.com/7nCMFm.png

In the US, most mobile traffic is proxied, and filtering/rate limiting is implemented there.

No exotic measures are required to do this.

Stingrays operate at the gsm layer, not the IP layer. Evidently their MITM is pretty easy to observe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stingray

Check your certificates. I saw this when I installed a Fiddler root certificate.

Check certificates, some app added its own certificate.

I installed my own certificate on Android and it warns me about it each time after it boots. It's quite annoying, because there doesn't seem to be a way to disable it (without modifying /system) and I trust my own certificate much more than any other the phone comes with.

Own signed certs do this.

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