Secret surveillance detected in Oslo | Hacker News Reader

Secret surveillance detected in Oslo

aftenposten.no

305 pointsdraugadrotten105 comments

Makes me wonder about the future of democracy.

If tiny Norway, which imposes no real threat to any other country, including it's mighty neighbor, Russia, is a target for intelligence services, then every country is a target.

Norway has little strategic importance and little influence on the world economy or world peace. Sure, they have lots of oil but its undisputed Norwegian and they sell it willingly. Sure, they are NATO members and at present the NATO secretary general is Norwegian, and they do participate in NATO actions in the Middle East. But their own military is modest, barely capable of defending Norway if it came down to it. And Norway has little say over the other NATO countries.

I think the NATO secretary general, Stoltenberg, said it best himself when he described the Norwegian democracy as a fax democracy where Norwegian officials sit at a fax machine waiting for the latest directive from Brussels (Norway is not an EU member but part of the European Economic Area and must adopt most EU rules in order to keep their access to the Euroean single market).

Anyone thinking that Norway has any real powers or impose a threat to anyone in the next 5-10 decades is delusional.

So why and to whom is it vital to spy on these fax politicians whose international influence barely exceeds that of an American senator or governor or a member of a German Landtag?

We need to destroy their logic about "collecting everything, because they might need it in 100 years" first. They do it because it's so cheap, because they can, and because nobody is really standing up to them. However, if we allowed the government to do anything it wants "just because it can", thousands of our current laws wouldn't exist.

I don't remember if it was Clapper or Alexander but one of them basically said the whole Snowden thing will blow-over, and they won't have to change a thing. From what we've seen already that seems to be the case. The watered down USA Freedom Act was killed, and they even made their collection powers stronger with that recent Intelligence Authorization Act.

Can you believe that? Not even 2 years after the worldwide Snowden scandal, and they shamelessly push for even more spying powers. These people know nothing can touch them or stop them. And that speaks volumes about the state of our current democracies, when the will of the people, who are supposed to control their governments, and are the ones paying their budgets, have no say in the government's decisions.

I highly recommend everyone watch this whole video here. It's an eye opener about many things, and I think he may be right about the root cause of the problem (vote transparency in Congress, which causes politicians to be bought, intimidated, and so on for their vote, just like it would happen with normal citizens's vote if it weren't anonymous):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY

It's from the video where I learned about this new research that basically says:

> The flat line for most Americans shows that no matter how popular a law was, Congress was about equally likely to pass it. Contrast that with the line for wealthy Americans, whose opinions substantially affect how likely a bill is to pass.

http://bulletin.represent.us/u-s-oligarchy-explain-research

That last piece of research is interesting but has multiple interpretations, because they can't prove causation.

Slightly silly example: maybe Congress only passes really good bills. Wealthy Americans are smarter than other Americans, so they're more likely to support good ideas. Now it looks as if wealthy Americans' support "causes" the good bills to pass. That's not a hugely credible interpretation, but there are likely to be many similar alternatives.

I agree with your worries about democracy and freedom, but it's important to be realistic about the limitations of social science research.

When you combine that data with signals such as approval of Congress being under 10 percent, I think it enforces the idea that "people are not listened to" by Congress, and Congress mostly passes laws that aren't to the benefit of the public.

None of that negates the original poster. Nothing says that the public actually knows what benefits it. In fact, the founders tried to avoid direct democracy for that reason, hence the Electoral College: you vote for someone to make good decisions for you. Given the short-sightedness of American culture (maybe just people in general), I am not convinced that the public makes good decisions. How many members of the public are going to vote to remove entitlements that benefit them, even if it is not in the best interests of the public at large?

Mind you, I am not convinced that Congress makes good decisions, but if the public does not approve of Congress, it does not provide any information on the quality of Congress' decisions. Just their popularity.

> Norway has little strategic importance

If only that were true. While we Norwegians tend to have well inflated egos, the word "strategic" implies powers like Russia, China and the US. And all those jolly World War III scenarios (nuclear and otherwise).

Main keyword is long coast, harbours operational throughout all of winter.

Not sure if got this right but you might be agreeing. "little" means hardly any, whereas "a little" some

That could be. I might be victim to my inflated Norwegian ego, even as I called it out in the comment above :-)

Might also have something to do with the fact that I'm currently reading Clancy's "Red Storm Rising" (which is all kinds of scary with the various current global crisis and tensions...).

The OP was implying that Norway wasn't of any strategic importance.

This is both wrong (Oil and partial control of North Sea) and irrelevant.

For example, bugging is often done over commercial concerns. That has little to do with strategic factors and instead is more related to money.

"Main keyword is long coast, harbours operational throughout all of winter."

Hit the nail on the head. The Norwegian fjords, due to their nature, would likely be one of the hiding places for a NATO fleet in a Soviet/Russian battle. Basically they would make the fleet, carriers or subs very hard to find by the one of the biggest threats posed by the Russians, the anti ship missiles launched by aircraft like the Bear. It would also make the Soviet/Russian attack submarines have to work a lot harder and become more exposed - esp to any anti-submarine warfare craft which might UK-Iceland-Norway triangle to operate from.

By hiding in the fjords, NATO could still strike using conventional aircraft, cruise missiles or nuclear forces - while the Russian aircraft would have to be much more exposed in order to get a radar picture of where the NATO fleet would be hiding.

The Norway coast also offers a wide open flank that NATO can use for attacking any Soviet/Russian nuclear missile submarines and/or attack subs which might try to sneak out over SOSUS into the Atlantic. It essentially has the effect of controlling any movement from the Baltic, Norweigan or Barents Sea - essentially the areas from which some of the most important Russian ports are. A combined fleet/marine assault on a Russian port would also be an option. NATO would also want to deny it to the Russians as it offers a close route to attacking the UK and arguably the Russians see it as an exposed flank.

Can you still hide large ships these days with all those steel birds high up in orbit?

Good question. I assume you're referring to satellites? First: they don't cover the whole globe - in fact their passses aren't that hard to figure out. In his book "See no evil", former cia operative Baer indicates that the Kurds were adept at moving and attacking "invisibily" with quite large forces during the gulf 1 conflict. One of the reasons he left the service was that Langely didn believe his reports on the ground: claiming the satellites hadn't seen anything: he must be wrong. (This was when the focus was on gadgets and not HUMINT, afaik CIA have gone back to using more human sources again, having been made fools of by Al Qaida etc).

Second: we don't know much about what anti-satellite weapons the various powers command.

Edit: also submarines can't be detected from space

Norway is one of the larger producers of natural gas (6th) and oil (14th). As such they have quite some influence on European economy. Not that that makes this right.

... and because they are so rich they don't want to join the EU (and support the poorer states).

No, they don't want to join EU, twice by public election, to keep their sovereignty. However, through the EOES agreement, establish through political back-doors against the will of the people, they are in effect part of EU, but without the same rights. And due to, are paying billions each year to EU. Norway is also one of the largest contributor in Europe of economic help to poor countries world wide.

Perhaps trying out this attack on such an insignificant place was the whole point.

There are at least three reasons Norway would be interesting.

1) The soon to be trillion dollar sovereign fund, in a country of only 5.x million people. If you're going to be a hyper rich, very small nation, there will always be someone envious or potentially willing to threaten you - at least if we're considering history. The sovereign fund can move markets, seeing as it's one of the largest single pots of managed money on earth. Norway is also starting to get into the US oil market, with interest in the bakken; that will inherently draw the attention of US national security interests.

2) Natural gas and oil. These are understood, and are of meaningful strategic importance to Europe.

3) Large coastline, close to Russia. Norway has more land than Poland, and nearly as much as Germany. With only 5 million people, in Europe, that's a big deal.

Let's consider the case of a country of equal geographic size, with a large coastline, on the other side of the world: Vietnam.

Vietnam has 90 million people. So they have 18 times as many people as Norway, with an economy 1/3 the size of Norway. Has Vietnam been of interest to its neighbors and foreign powers in the past century? Big time. If a country like Vietnam can be so interesting, just imagine how interesting Norway is.

If this were 1933, and Norway had 5 million people, sitting on all that oil and natural gas, with a trillion dollar sovereign fund, they'd be a prime target. I think it's extremely naive to think history is over, when it comes to that sort of behavior, even though it's hard to imagine it coming from anywhere but Russia today (in Europe).

> I think it's extremely naive to think history is over, when it comes to that sort of behavior, even though it's hard to imagine it coming from anywhere but Russia today (in Europe).

War isn't necessary when you can effectively control the government through other means (gaining sensitive intel on, blackmailing, threatening members).

Spot on. Many other reasons as well. There are powers that want to see Norway join the EU and adopt the euro. Norway is selling a lot of services (oil and gas related, software, electronic government, finance) to other countries. A run away global warming may turn it into a very important piece of land.

They do have a boatload of cash leveraged in any number of stocks worldwide.

I think people are too easily influenced by the breathless writing here. IMSI catchers are not extraordinarily complicated and have been around for a long time. They are easier than ever to set up with affordable hardware like the USRP and software implementations of base stations like OpenBSC emerging.

If tiny Norway, which imposes no real threat to any other country, including it's mighty neighbor, Russia, is a target for intelligence services, then every country is a target.

Y'know, I've been more surprised at how surprised everyone else is. Maybe I put too much faith in James Bond and the whole spy cliché, but the reaction to the Wikileaks revelations surprised me because I'd assumed governments were doing those things to each other and their citizens anyway. I mean.. they were in the movies! ;-) (I'm not suggesting being blazé to it is a good thing, of course.)

The reaction was that way because people are untrained in how diplomacy actually works. "Diplomatic action", to most people, is a matter of two heads of state going into a room and emerging with big smiles and a handshake.

The fact that diplomats even communicate with each other at all is a revelation in and of itself to them.

> So why and to whom is it vital to spy on these fax politicians whose international influence barely exceeds that of an American senator or governor or a member of a German Landtag?

Here's your answer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers...

Add the greek wiretapping scandal (2005) in the long list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%...

"Norway has little strategic importance"

That wasn't the case during WW2 or the Cold War and Russia still gets a bit touchy about NATO exercises in Norway - Norway is on the northern flank of any large scale conflict in Europe and can dominate the sea lanes from Russian naval bases in the far north and on the Baltic to the Atlantic.

Edit: 45 Commando Royal Marines, based in Arbroath in Scotland, were tasked with assisting with the defence of Norway for a lot of the Cold War and they still do a lot of training there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45_Commando

"That wasn't the case during WW2..."

Not sure how well this is known, but every year, Oslo sends a giant Christmas Tree to London to be lit up in Trafalgar Square. This started in 1947 and is a gesture of gratitude from Norway for British support during the Second World War.

I think a few places in the UK get Norwegian trees - not just London, we have one here in Edinburgh (and very beautiful it is too!):

http://www.norway.org.uk/norwayandcountry/News/Norwegian-Chr...

Edit: Not far from the tree on the Mound there is the Norwegian Memorial which is a large boulder carried from Norway that has the inscription:

During the war years 1940-45 the Norwegian brigade and other army units were raised and trained in Scotland where we found hospitality, friendship and hope during dark years of exile. In grateful memory of our friends and allies on these isles.

[I went to University here in Edinburgh with a lot of Norwegians - so I have a distinct fondness for Norway and Norwegians].

The United States at least seems to think Norway is important econoff to have an active intelligence force on the ground. In 2010 it was revealed that the US Embassy had a special unit of 15-20 persons to do surveillance in Norway [0].

However as I understand it this "Surveillance Detection Unit" did not spy against the Norwegian state, but against more asymmetrical threats like islamists and other that feared could act on their own against the US. They did however operate in the same area (downtown Oslo).

1: http://www.newsinenglish.no/2010/11/08/still-no-answers-from...

Actually the CIA has an office in downtown Oslo, operating under the cover of Radio Bravo. Very well known in the Scandinavian security circles.

The future of democracy? Democracy has actually survived spying and strengthened thanks to the misadventures of spy agencies through out its history.

Any country that sits on lots of oil is a target.

lots of oil and (I think) the world's largest sovereign wealth fund (ie. if they decide to invest in X they can do so big enough to move the needle)

Something to know about Norway:

Norway is Europe's largest oil producer, the world's third-largest natural gas exporter, and an important supplier of both oil and natural gas to other European countries.

Norway is the largest oil producer and exporter in Western Europe.

Norway is the world's third-largest exporter of natural gas after Russia and Qatar, and, as of 2012, Norway was the sixth-largest dry natural gas producer.

(from http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=no)

Its oil production counters Russian leverage on Europe. Its borders peak into the top of Russia and its coastline provides observation of the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea.

In any conflict involving Russia (currently the only nuclear equipped nation invading/annexing its neighbours) it will be very strategic.

Unless you include Israel occupying the West Bank.

I don't understand, does Israel export a ton of natural gas or oil from the West Bank? I was unaware that Israel, or that part of the Middle East in general had much in the way of oil or gas. Have they made massive discoveries there?

He referred to "[Russia being] currently the only nuclear equipped nation invading/annexing its neighbours", i.e. Israel is another such country.

(Btw, for the record, there are significant gas reserves in that part of the world and the government recently pushed for expansion in the sector. Nothing to do with this conversation, but I thought I'd mention it.)

Ahh, I thought he was referring to the majority of the comment, not just the last line.

That's interesting, reading up on it a bit more, it seems to be similar to the US oil/gas boom in that it's all in shale oil. I had heard the quote that starts out this article: http://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/07/02/israels-saud... and it stayed with me.

Which is a very funny statement, if you take into account the dozens of countries the US has invaded in the last few decades.

How many has the US annexed? None.

Well Russia hasn't annexed any whole countries either :)

Plus it's military is killing way less people, doesn't mass deploy depleted uranium weapons (as far as I know), isn't made of lunatic "Christian Knights", etc.

Security folk are well aware that low value government agencies are targetted by spies, not for the information they hold, but for possible conduits to higher value agencies (the government is all connected after all).

I think you are right and wrong - right that Norway in itself uninteresting, but wrong that it doesn't present a valuable target for spies. Like you said they are hooked into the EU - what better way to get insight into the machinations of the EU than a government that is probably awash with chatter about sensitive EU matters, but that erects little defences against spying thinking noone could be interested in little old Norway.

I wouldn't be surprised if those cell towers included ones that were run by the US and Russia (maybe China too).

Is the quite from before or after he left for NATO?

Because his party has been a strong proponent of Norway becoming a full EU member...

Spying on a country to country level is good for international relations. It's a hacked version of transparency. Since the countries of the world won't really agree to be transparency, intelligence is the next best thing.

The unknown causes fear and conflict. Much of the cold war was driven by deep mistrust of the other side. Spying eases tension by leaking the plans of each side. If the Russians know what the US military is doing, it doesn't have to be fearful. If the US knows what Russia is doing, it doesn't have to be fearful.

So now, if the US knows Putin isn't going to push for a full out invasion of Ukraine, the US won't escalate the crisis.

If Obama knows Iran's government feels the pain from sanctions, he can have a real conversation about nuclear development.

Iraq, one of the biggest international disasters since the Berlin Wall fell, was caused by shitty intelligence and fear of the unknown. Saddam really dismantled his WMD program, bu the US, based on fear, assumed he was hiding it.

This is totally different than a surveillance state over the individuals.

"Iraq, one of the biggest international disasters since the Berlin Wall fell, was caused by shitty intelligence and fear of the unknown. Saddam really dismantled his WMD program, bu the US, based on fear, assumed he was hiding it."

No, not according to what Wesley Clark, former US general who almost started WW3 in Yugoslavia, says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyEJ6Aja-UQ

Interesting perspective (intelligence services as another form of back channel communication). "Forced transparency".

The problem is when the spying relatio is not balanced. One country having so much info of another, which is blind.

Hey we're not tiny. It takes probably about 30 hours to drive from the south to the north. Compare that to any other European country.

The article written in proper English by the same daily newspaper:

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Secret-surveillance-...

The Google translation can be somewhat misleading, as explained in the other comments here.

This is a short version of the story. The full version in available only in Norwegian.

That is of course written there: "The full story in Norwegian: Stortinget og statsministeren overvåkes" ( http://mm.aftenposten.no/stortinget-og-statsministeren-overv... )

The English speaking readers are still better informed about the basics when reading the real English article. Google Translate translated Norvegian "National Security Authority" (or "National Security Institution)" (NSM, Nasjonal Sikkerhetsmyndighet) as "National Security Agency" which is very misleading. That is, it's Norwegian "Nasjonal Sikkerhetsmyndighet" (NSM) who says that the spying devices don't belong to them. US NSA hasn't said anything.

Once you read the English version, the Norwegian version can give you a better idea about the scale of the operation (if it's only one entity behind all the devices): the number of the snooping devices and of the points where suspicious traffic was detected seems to be quite big! The content is also nicely presented, all with the videos and the interactive maps (which sadly aren't translated by Google Translate).

Thanks, we changed it from http://mm.aftenposten.no/stortinget-og-statsministeren-overv....

Interesting but in Norwegian. Google translate for those who haven't picked up Norwegian yet: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=y&prev...

The (shorter) article carefully written and edited in English is here:

"Secret surveillance detected in Oslo"

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Secret-surveillance-...

"After being alerted by Aftenposten the Norwegian National Security Authority (NSM) started their own investigation. On Friday they confirmed that they had found traces of «something».

- We have found something. All the data are not ready yet, but we have also found signals from IMSI-catchers in Oslo, says Hans Christian Pretorius, department head in NSM."

"found something"? Seems a little vague to me.

I hope they have a couple of hundred boots on the ground, going build to building to hunt thus devises down. I don't see why the Norwegian state should not react in the same way the Swedes dos each time they detect a foreign submarine in their fjords: to hunt for it with an overwhelming force.

There's a logic behind the vagueness, see my other comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8745217

But I see you're from Norway, please keep us updated with the info only available in Norwegian! Thanks.

Brings up a concern there are no authenticity check in the mobile networks. Who signs the authenticity of cell towers? This should be like SSL with certificates so your phone should only communicate with towers that are certified secure. Hackers have been able todo this for years through GNU radio and FPGA. But this should be a foreign state.

And if there are fake towers around the Norwegian parliament. Who, which hackers and what malware is potentially inside the computers of the cell phone operators of Norway? I would target them if I wanted to really listen in to cell phone communication across the country.

Are there any projects or methods on how to locate fake base stations? I know that the blackphone is able to do that, but is there more on the technical side of e.g. triangulating the location and track them down?

I think you meant the German-made Cryptophone 500, not Blackphone.

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/cryptophone-firewall-identifies...

I recently discovered an IMSI-catcher app on the F-droid market for Android. It's called Android IMSI-Catcher Detector and you can easily find it in the Security category if you filter by it in the app. For some reason, I can't browse for it on the site.

The project is in alpha stage and seems to be this one here:

https://github.com/SecUpwN/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector

There's also this paper on making IMSI-catcher detectors:

https://www.sba-research.org/wp-content/uploads/publications...

I hope to see more people working on this, though. In fact, I wish Google, Apple and Microsoft would add protections against IMSI-catchers by default in their mobile operating systems. After all it's already a known privacy issue affecting millions [1], and it seems not just in US either. They can't continue to pretend it doesn't exist anymore.

[1] - http://www.wired.com/2014/11/feds-motherfng-stingrays-mother...

There's another article (also in Norwegian): http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Slik-oppdaget-Aftenp...

They spotted the (presence of) IMSI-catchers with a GSMK Cryptophone, apparently. I actually come to HN just now, to see if their product had been shredded, I mean carefully analysed, here earlier ;-)

Thanks for the collection of further literature.

I whish the network associations weren't undermined by the big five and wouldn't weaken their encryption standards to allow this.

Also, there are some phones that you can see diagnostics from the baseband:

https://github.com/2b-as/xgoldmon

"xgoldmon is a small tool to convert the messages output by the USB logging mode of phones with Intel/Infineon XGold baseband processor back to the GSM/UMTS radio messages sent over the air so you can watch them in e.g. Wireshark in realtime."

The idea here being that if you can see diag from these phones you can watch for suspicious things like zero length SMS and so on ...

My bet is that it's the Police Security Service that's behind it.

After all, they have been behind the vast majority of illegal political surveillance in Norway after the war, and they were very dismissive when asked about trying to identify who were behind it (claiming it'd be difficult and pointless; so either they're unwilling to even try to do their job and/or are incompetent, or they know more than they let on).

Spying by foreign powers have certainly happened in Norway, but the Police Security Service (or technically its "predecessor", the Police Surveillance Service) was found to have carried out extensive illegal surveillance of left wing politicians for the better part of half a century in the mid 90's at a level that no known foreign plot have gotten anywhere close to.

If not the Police Security Service, I'd bet on the US with the tacit approval of the Police Security Service.

Take this with a grain of salt, but I think there was a comment in one of the (Norwegian) video repirts on this that the Norwegian secret services got a heads up from the journalists, and was allowed to remove their equipment before they logged the data that is presented in map form on the Aftenposten web site. Implication being that the quarter surrounding the parliament is under surveillance (not surprising, possibly of questionable legality in Norway - but there might be directive somewhere allowing it (public or secret)) - and that there are "unknown" parties surveilling the area (my guess would be US, Russia and/or Israel).

There's also a possible angle here re:Ukraine. There's a big push to paint Rusdia as dangerous (again) - yhis could be a Russian op, a false flag op, a NATO op to dilvulge a Russian op through alternate channels for better propaganda value...

It'll be interesting to see what the investigation by Norwegian intelligence services (choose to) reveal.

If you get a heads up from journalists that they are going to be looking, and you have a bunch of illegal monitoring going on, I for one would be very careful about doing anything, in case said journalists had been competent enough to do a pass before giving me a heads up, and use before/after scans to determine the extent of my own surveillance capabilities.

It certainly possible it is foreign agencies - the US has been known to carry out questionable surveillance in Norway before - but the history of Norwegian intelligence makes me far more worried about them. Norwegian intelligence were illegally bugging the homes of people I knew into the 90's, and harassed them by having agents walk up to them on the streets to make fun of them for conversations they'd had with their families.

You could of course say that publishing documentation of your (possibly illegal) activities was considered disseminating classified information, and revealing it would be considered spying for a foreign power...

Could this be financial espionage? I would imagine that the Norwegian politicians have privileged information about oil production volume in the country that some traders out there could benefit from knowing. This is all just a theory. I don't think governments are the only suspects in this type of spying.

The big question for Norway, as they say, is "who is behind it?". The big question for all of us is how commonplace this is. It seems like it's easy enough to do, and law enforcement etc. don't seem to be looking for it actively/publicly.

Speaking from another European country, for the ruling politicians it's a sensitive topic as there's a reasonable chance that some country, also a NATO member (the biggest one being you know who) is also a bit behind this. They certainly don't want to "risk the good relations" with the gorilla in the room, as confirmed in the events from the last year. On another side, supporting surveillance not done by the country itself is typically unconstitutional and punishable.

Of course, there are also countries outside of NATO capable of orchestrating such an activity. In that case the chances increase that we'll soon hear much more.

Finally, with the greatest probability, the different devices can belong to many different entities, both "allies" and "foes" so it can be tricky, but doable, to talk about only some of them. That's why they've officially just "found something" at the moment.

The translated article says that the "police, Police Security Service and the National Security Agency" have the authority to use these types of devices. It seems very reasonable to me that they may do so around government areas.

Did I miss something?

When the national secuity agency was told they started their own investigation on the following day, it may not say much but they had the opportunity to admit ownership and they didn't, which points in the directon of illegal activities.

These organizations were interviewed, and had the opportunity to remove their installations prior to the scanning. Also, according to PST, the installations they use are portable, fits in a suitcase, and such it would not make sense for them to go after the fake base stations..

Note that when they talk about the "National Security Authority" (which only Google translated "agency") they actually write in the article "Nasjonal Sikkerhetsmyndighet" (NSM) which is the Norway's security authority: https://www.nsm.stat.no/ and not the US' NSA. So what we know is:

"No Norwegian authority contacted by (the daily newspaper) Aftenposten said that this equipment belongs to them. Aftenposten has no reason to believe that the Norwegian authorities are behind the transmitters."

The (shorter) article in English as written by Aftenposten:

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Secret-surveillance-...

GSM is so broken.

Did this happen because of GSM? In that case it's a bit ironic, as big parts of GSM is invented by Norway.

Norway invented everything from the Groupe Spécial Mobile group? Citation needed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torleiv_Maseng

Did I say everything?

> Another SINTEF-originated project is the radio technology behind GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). Digital GSM (or 2G), replaced the old 1G analogue networks.

http://theforeigner.no/pages/news/ways-norway-changed-the-wo...

> In February 1987, eight systems from five different countries – Germany, France, Sweden, Finland and Norway – were in the running for creating the new standard. Some competitors were backed by major companies, such as Bosch, Philips, Mobira (Nokia) and Ericsson. Eight cars were outfitted with equipment from each candidate system.*

> The systems would be driven around Paris and the system’s transmission capacity and ability to continuously correct errors would be measured in the city’s narrow, windy streets. The system that transmitted the most data with the fewest errors would win. At first, the international press did not think the Norwegian GSM contribution was likely to win. In September 1986, the journal Communications Systems Worldwide wrote:“Since ELAB is attached to a Technical institute and has no manufacturing capability, it would appear to have little chance of success.” However, when the test was finished, the conclusion was clear: The Norwegian system was best.

http://www.ntnu.no/gemini/2005-01e/gsm.htm

> All that was left was for a little known University based outfit from Norway to trundle around Paris with their lash-up of a narrow band TDMA system. The large industries hardly gave it a second thought. Then even bigger shock waves of seismic proportions emanated out of Paris. The Norwegian lash-up of a narrow band TDMA system from Trondheim University had outperformed the SEL wide band system from a star studded industrial consortium.

http://www.gsmhistory.com/chapter/chapter-10-the-technology-...

People might find this a bit interesting too:

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Sources-We-were-pres...

Is CDMA better?

tl;dr translation, multiple IMSI catchere in Oslo, Norway near goverment buildings, lots of suspecious data traffic from phone, all of unknown origin.

TL;DR Cryptophone infomercial

I don't know who downmodded you -- at least half of the coverage (in Norwegian) reads like a planted story. That doesn't mean the story doesn't have merit, though.

There's an additional nice quote: "Måten dette overvåkingsutstyret opererer på, tyder på at det er svært avanserte systemer med en prislapp på mellom 500.000 kroner og to millioner kroner. Dette er utstyr som ikke er tillatt solgt til privatpersoner i NATO-land."

"The way in which this monitoring equipment [the IMSI-catchers] operate, indicate that it is highly sophisticated, with a price tag from 500K NOK to 2M NOK [67K USD - 272K USD]. This is equipment that is illegal to sell to private citizens in NATO countries." (my translation, emphasis).

On the other hand, we have eg:

http://openbts.blogspot.no/2009/04/some-comments-on-imsi-cat...

Pertinent quote, at the end: "the most common way to build an IMSI-catcher comes directly from the R&S patent itself and is based entirely on off-the-shelf commercial equipment. Nearly any BTS or BTS simulator can be used as the basis of an IMSI-catcher.".

So yeah, typical "security industry" big words. Sure this stuff is illegal (if for nothing else, for operating in a regulated radio frequency band). Sure it's pretty sophisticated. I'm sure you'd have to pay through the nose if you bought it MILSPEC and off-the-shelf. But it's not like it's a fission device. Which is what the "illegal to sell to private citizens in NATO countries" sort of underhandedly implies.

This setup should be able to do IMSI catching (total hardware cost $750): http://hackaday.com/2014/07/05/a-gsm-base-station-with-softw...

I can't understand that somebody can see how many "catchers" were detected there and not be surprised unless he's actually working in that "industry."

The value of the article is much higher than in mentioning a security product: we see how widespread these devices are. Don't forget, almost every phone is vulnerable on that level -- the operator's actions aren't protected by the phone's main operating system.

The reason we even heard about some of these IMSI-catchers, like here in Norway or in that cryptophone firewall article, which mentions they discovered multiple across US, is because the guys behind Cryptophone used their product to look for them. That's what it does, and it's probably quite unique in the industry right. And yes, they go to the press to tell them about it, and then tell them how the product works to detect them.

I don't really see this as an infomercial no more than all the thousands of the initial articles on touchscreen phones talked about the iPhone in them, since the iPhone was the first real touchscreen phone, and then all the other phones had to be compared to it.

I don't see a whole lot of press predating this article:

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405311190419460457...

( "'Stingray' Phone Tracker Fuels Constitutional Clash" is the headline if you need to bounce it through Google)

The information there came from a court case and the Stingray patent (they publish an image of one). It's useful and interesting to be able to look for them, but it seems that the US legal system also played a part in disclosing the practice of using them.

I don't know. Does for example this stuff work? (It's unclear how far they've gotten on their TODO-list):

https://github.com/SecUpwN/Android-IMSI-Catcher-Detector

I also seem to recall some talk from the people behind Cyanogen about detecting "strange" tower behaviour? Can't find the link right now, though -- so I might be misremembering that one.

It's not just the makers of the cryptophone, but also these security companies that employ "former mil.intelligence" people that get some great product placement here. I don't fault the companies for manipulating the press (they're former spies after all...) - but the jornalism doesn't impress. Don't get me wrong: the story is news worthy. I'm not saying it shouldn't be published. But, come on, a single google search on IMSI-catchers reveal plenty of follow up sources on how hard it is to make one...

Note that last weekend it was PIs (staffed by "former police and intelligence personell") that got a free front page ad for investigating Christmas parties (and doing "counter surveillance")...

Hm, reminds me of the Athens affair[1].

[1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair

So 60% it's the russians and 40% it's the US?

Don't forget Israel, they are known for very active spying operations against European countries. In neighboring Denmark it was found that Mossad had been wiretapping the parliamentary overseer for years.

More probably more different actors, everybody with its own interests. It's like you would for the first time learn about the tracking cookies in the web pages: you'd see a lot of them, ask "who's behind it," only later to recognize different interested parties using the same technology, some having more, some less presence.

But, wow, a lot of stations are there.

With some fringe chances it's OPEC or BP or some other oil related interest.

would you not have to do some 3g/4g jamming for this to actually work?

No. A GSM phone will camp to the strongest signal, so your base station just needs to be slightly higher powered (or closer) than the legitimate base stations.

So you are saying that a phone will drop down from umts or lte to gsm if the gsm signal is the strongest? i know it will resort to gsm as a backup, but i thought this happened only if 3g/4g was altogether unavailable?

interesting bit in the translation seems to be

> If these are criminals, foreign intelligence or other behind, is unknown.

It's ironic that criminals and governments can't be distinguished, after all the time they've spent fighting against terrorists.

Notably they've left out "Norwegian intelligence", though I guess after the revelations in the 90's that might be included in "criminals".

(They were found to have spent decades carrying out illegal partisan political surveillance)

My bet is on the chinese, making sure the peace price is delivered to the "right" people.

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