Ok, I would normally take news like this with a grain of salt, but this came from Popular Science. They usually are not much on the "conspiracy bandwagon". While they might speculate on some things, they normal do not print something that may be outright wrong. I am concerned about this as I see no good purpose. I really wonder who owns them and what their purpose is. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mysterious-fake-cellphone-towers-intercepting-162645809.html
I certainly hope that our cell phones don't give admin rights to our phone to what ever tower we connect too and that things are not digitally encrypted
One doesn't need a fake tower. http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...can-crack-wifi-networks-snoop-on-cell-phones/ On top of cracking wifi networks, the upgraded WASP now also performs a new trick: impersonating the GSM cell phone towers used by AT&T and T-Mobile to trick phones into connecting to the plane’s antenna rather than their carrier, allowing the drone to record conversations and text messages on a32 gigabytes of storage. A 4G T-mobile card routes the communications through voice-over-Internet or traditional phone connections to avoid dropping the call. “Ideally, the target won’t even know he’s being spied on,” says Tassey. Always remember, once on the public airwaves, you are susceptible.
NSA doesn't need towers, they can go straight to the service providers. The PopSci article suggests either the US Military or possibly Chinese based on their proximity to military bases. http://www.popsci.com/article/techn...-cell-towers-could-be-intercepting-your-calls
Why have the interceptor is my question. If it was about spying on phone calls, then there would be other ways to do that instead. But if it's just to make your wifi slower, why have that?
The company that spooked the world Over the past ten years or so, Chinese telecoms firms such as Huawei and ZTE, another telecoms-equipment provider, have expanded from their vast home market to become global players. This is a worry not just for the rich-world incumbents under threat but also for those responsible for the integrity of critical infrastructure such as phone systems. They fear that the companies’ networking gear and software could be used by China’s spooks to eavesdrop on sensitive communications, or that it might contain “kill switches” which would allow China to disable the systems involved in the event of a conflict. “I think it’s ridiculous to allow a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to have access to a network,” says Dmitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike, a web-security outfit.
Why not have more than one method? maybe the fake towers came online before the drones? Drones can't be "on station" 24/7 everywhere.
Does the U.S. government have any definitive information as to who could be the responsible party for erecting those towers? And if so or even if not, what are they planning to do about them? Tear them down or just leave them there?
I'm not the one eavesdropping. That being said, erecting a tower is not small task, for a structure of that size it does stand out, and people will notice it, a drone can be deployed at night where no one can see it. Each method has their pluses and/or minuses.
That would make clever sense. Try to pick up conversations on personal cell phones or even work cell phones.
The 'who owns them' question is pretty much the key....I would bet the NSA as part of their illegal data collecting but if that is the case we will never know.
NSA data mining? The NSA collects huge amounts of data about all of us, yet the Russian Government warned the US Government about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and they couldn't stop him from blowing up the Boston Marathon. When ever I talk on my Cell Phone or send an eMail, I always make sure I stick in an FU Obama.
