Hacker News Reader

Comment by morpheuskafka | Hacker News Reader

Here's something I've never understood about these: as devices that transmit on FCC-licensed bands, wouldn't each use of these require specific permission from the FCC? Especially for state level law enforcement and state courts, they wouldn't have the authority to authorize this without the federal government saying it's OK.

View on HN

That's a question shared by several US senators [0]. Ron Wyden sent a similar letter in 2018, which received a response from an assistant attorney general, not the FCC [1].

[0]: https://www.eff.org/files/2016/10/06/senate_letter_to_fcc_on...

[1]: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-355228A2.pdf

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/fcc-created-stingray-p...

> The FCC's involvement in cell site simulators began years ago when it first approved commercial sales to law enforcement. Documents disclosed under FOIA show that the company that sells Stingrays had local police departments lobby the FCC close to ten years ago for approval.

Last I looked at this the FCC had issued an exception to the normal rules against intentional interference. The resulting license is based on the idea that the devices will only be used under emergency conditions. Presumably the operators of the devices are having lots of emergencies.

I think the problem here is that the federal law against intentional interference is quite definite. So this is the best loophole that the FCC could come up with.

I dont think they need to xmit beyond the baitphone making standard connections.

Also there are apps for scanning and tracking celltower stength and mass-logging GPS data. I think that data could be the input to their detector... don't need a trunk full of HW.

Would anyone who downvoted this please explain why they think this system needs any special permission from the FCC? Afaict, it's simply monitoring the interactions of its bait phone with towers.

The discussion is about FCC approval for the police to set up a rogue cell site, not FCC approval for this research project.

Probably downvoting your comment about not needing a trunk full of hardware.

“ These sensors have advantages over phones because they can contain specialized cellular scanning equipment and external antennas for farther reception ranges. While phone apps can see limited information on the tower currently connected to, our sensors scan the spectrum to measure hundreds of channels at a time and dozens of broadcast properties.”

So there is an advantage over using a regular cell phone and an app.

Yes, there are (eg. wigle.net, mostly based around wifi, but also scans cell towers), but the data is very noisy, since every phone is different and everyone wears it differently (if you wear it higher, in a shirt pocket, you'll get higher signal levels than if you carry it in a pants pocket, or in your hand, or if you have an old iphone, if you're holding it in your left hand instead of the right).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com