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Big Brother is tracking you! Part Two: by Dr David Maddison Our article last month was about all the ways that companies or individuals can track you, both in your online activities and as you move around in real life, using your smartphone or another wireless device. This second part concentrates on the ways that governments monitor their citizens’ activities. Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/9wXvgLMDetA H ere are just a few examples of government surveillance of citizens. Since we “don’t know what we don’t know”, chances are there is a lot more going on behind the scenes. This sort of monitoring can benefit society if used to fight crime or help to fight pandemics, but that relies on proper oversight. Retention of metadata Under Australian law, records of all telephone calls and internet access (although supposedly not recordings of the audio or specific website access) must be kept by telcos and ISPs for a minimum of two years. Text messages are also included, although it’s not clear if the content is also recorded. The following metadata is retained, according to the website at siliconchip. com.au/link/abaf • Your name, address, and billing information • Your phone number or email address, and the phone number or email of the person you’re communicating with • The time, date and duration of a communication 12 Silicon Chip • Your IP address • The location of the communication equipment you use; for example, the closest mobile tower • The type of communication; phone call, text, or email • The amount of data uploaded and downloaded Almost any government department is allowed to access this information. According to the latest available information (2016), 60 departments were included; there are probably many more now. For the 2016 list, see the ABC article at siliconchip.com.au/ link/abag This seems to be a data-mining exercise, collecting data for its own sake, because criminal law enforcement agencies already had access to such data with appropriate warrants. No need for this massive data collection exercise was ever demonstrated. It seems that the main reason that website traffic and browser history was excluded was the vast amount of storage required to do so. During discussions about the new laws, one ISP (iiNet) said that this would require 1000 terabytes per day of storage. Australia’s electronics magazine As much as various politicians and government agencies might want it, recording all phone calls would take considerably more storage. Weeping Angel Weeping Angel is a method devised by the US CIA and British intelligence to listen in on the microphones of smart TVs. It was described in the WikiLeaks “Vault 7” release of March 2017. The logo used for documents under Vault 7: https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ siliconchip.com.au Fig.12: Malte Spitz’s recorded call data as seen at the interactive website siliconchip.com.au/link/abam You can explore the data at that site in various ways. It was collected over ten years ago and seems relatively tame compared to what is collected by both government and big tech firms today. The exploit created a ‘fake off’ mode to make it look like the TV was off, even though the microphone was listening. You can view part of the Weeping Angel user manual and notes at siliconchip.com.au/link/abah It only works with specific models of Samsung TVs. When it was brought to Samsung’s attention, they said they were urgently looking into it. It also required physical access to the TV and the insertion of a USB drive to ‘update’ the TV software/firmware. Also see the video titled “Smart TVs have a surveillance problem” at https:// youtu.be/KxjnjiVF8JE Apps and uses Bluetooth Low Energy to find other contacts within 10m. Several countries use GAEN. Australia does not, instead adopting Singapore’s open-source BlueTrace protocol (https://bluetrace.io/). Australia’s implementation is called COVIDSafe. It is designed to detect contacts that have been within 1.5m of the App user for 15 minutes or more. It is unclear why this App cost $8 million to develop, costs at least $75,000 per month to maintain and has had little use despite 7 million downloads. See siliconchip.com.au/ link/abaj Mass surveillance Electricity usage monitoring While you might not be surprised to hear of massive surveillance in the People’s Republic of China, are you aware that more than 691,000 CCTV cameras operate in London alone? According to US News, nine of the ten most surveilled cities in the world are in China (calculated as most cameras per head of population), but London comes in at number three. See siliconchip.com.au/link/abai Some people grow illegal drugs in suburban houses. The grow lights use a lot of electricity, so they usually bypass the electrical meters to avoid paying the large bills and avoid suspicion. Electricity companies can detect line voltage drops via smart meters around suspect properties, thus revealing the presence of a possible “crop house”. Contact tracing Authorities in Australia regularly monitor sewage to track drug use in various locations. They also look for DNA fragments corresponding to COVID-19 outbreaks. There is no reason they couldn’t or don’t look for other types of DNA either, including that of individuals. In Australia, drug use is monitored Both Apple and Google Android have contact tracing ‘infrastructure’ (the “Exposure Notification Interface” application programming interface [API]) built into the operating systems. This is known as Google/Apple Exposure Notification or GAEN. This API is used by contact tracing siliconchip.com.au by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Organisation under the auspices of the National Wastewater Monitoring program. Around 56% of the population is subject to such monitoring. It is not just restricted to illegal drugs; nicotine and alcohol are included as well. You can read their public reports at siliconchip.com.au/link/abak Location tracking Telcos or governments can determine the location of a mobile phone owner even if the phone is not in use, since a powered-on mobile phone is constantly communicating with nearby towers. At the very least, they will know the phone’s approximate location. Certain technologies allow for more precise triangulation. Sewage monitoring Australia’s electronics magazine The COVIDSafe app is used by the Australian Government for contact tracing. It is based on the Singaporean-developed open source BlueTrace protocol. December 2021  13 4G and 5G telephony can use advanced beamforming so that rather than a mobile tower transmitting omni-directionally, a pencil-like beam is directed to your specific phone. This gives more precise location data than tower triangulation alone. WiFi can also be used to determine the device’s location, as discussed last month. The data collected is used by the government and others. Malte Spitz sued a German phone company about location data his phone company kept on him (see Fig.12). He gave a TED Talk on the subject in 2012, which you can watch at siliconchip. com.au/link/abal Mobile phone data analytics Governments are known to use mobile phone data and analytics for the following pandemic-related purposes: 1. COVID-19 contact tracing with Apps (as mentioned above) 2. Using mobile phone location data Fig.13: movement data provided by Vodafone to the government before and after COVID-19 restrictions and published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 05/04/2020. to monitor individual compliance with movement restrictions 3. Using data analytics to understand the general movements of people during a lockdown 4. Hot spot mapping to analyse the movement of COVID-19 positive people See articles on these subjects in Australia at siliconchip.com.au/link/ aban (Sydney Morning Herald) and siliconchip.com.au/link/abao (AusDroid). The second article is about Vodafone handing over anonymised mobile phone movement data to the Australian government – see Fig.13. Sale of surveillance tools to Australian government According to the 2015 ABC news The fourteen eyes Fourteen Eyes refers to an agreement between the governments of 14 countries: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA, the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The intelligence services of these countries collaborate and share information. The concern over this is that it’s often illegal for an intelligence agency to spy on the citizens of their own countries, as they exist mainly to prevent the operation of spies from overseas, and there is concern that they could abuse their powers otherwise. However, there’s little stopping the intelligence agency of country A from spying on the citizens of country B, then passing their findings on to the government of country A. In fact, there is growing evidence of this sort of activity, especially since the 2013 NSA leaks (see https://w.wiki/3xsV). This is the main reason why we suggest in the article that if you’re looking for secure online services, you look for those hosted outside of this group of countries. Of course, that’s no guarantee that nobody is spying on their services, but it does improve your chances that if someone is spying on the service, they are not passing that information back to members of our own government. Note that in no way does a desire for privacy imply any wrongdoing or intent of wrongdoing any more than does putting an old fashioned letter into an envelope (in most countries). Five Eyes (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) Nine Eyes (France, Netherlands Denmark, Norway) Fourteen Eyes (Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Spain) 14 Silicon Chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au article at siliconchip.com.au/link/ abap several companies have tried to sell various spyware and tools to the Australian government. One example is the tool RCS or Remote Control System, it can “siphon off data and listen in on communications before they are encrypted”, and is made by an Italian company called Hacking Team. “Once a computer or mobile phone is infected the tool can read emails, switch on the microphone or camera on the device, identify passwords and record Skype calls”. For more information on RCS, see https://w. wiki/3xtV ECHELON When discussing privacy, the subject of ECHELON comes up frequently. It is a surveillance program operated by Australia, Canada, NZ, the UK and the USA (collectively known as Five Eyes). Its existence is well documented. In 2001, The Guardian reported that ECHELON is “a global network of electronic spy stations that can eavesdrop on telephones, faxes (now obsolete) and computers. It can even track bank accounts. This information is stored in Echelon [sic] computers, which can keep millions of records on individuals. Officially, however, Echelon doesn’t exist.” Theoretically, it is used for military and diplomatic intelligence and not against innocent persons, but there have been claims of abuse. Fig.14: the discontinued L3Harris Technologies StingRay II for interception of mobile phone communications. Source: www.engadget.com/2016-01-28california-secretly-listened-to-cellphone-calls-from-the-air.html ECHELON is said to use voiceto-text technology so keywords and context can easily be automatically determined. Presumably, this is common practice for interceptions done by other government agencies. That is pretty standard technology today. IMSI catchers IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) catchers are devices used by various law enforcement agencies (and conceivably criminals) that act as a fake mobile phone tower or “cell site simulator”. Thus, surveillance can be undertaken without cooperation from phone companies and with or (potentially illegally) without warrants. They use what is known as a ‘man-in-the-middle’ attack, where a phone user thinks they are connecting to an official, secure mobile phone tower or site, but they are actually connecting to an IMSI Catcher device. The device performs all the normal functions of a phone tower, but with the added “feature” of data collection. StingRay (see Figs.14 & 15) was a particular brand of IMSI catcher made by the US company now known as L3Harris Technologies. However, they discontinued sales and support of StingRay in June 2020. See the videos titled “The Stingray: How Law Enforcement Can Track Your Every Move” at https://youtu. be/wzSgLpNrr2E and “How Stingray technology works” at https://youtu.be/ HyONknZ_x_g Fig.15: a page from the manual of a nowobsolete StingRay, released online. You can find copies of the manual if you search for it. siliconchip.com.au Australia’s electronics magazine December 2021  15 L3Harris also made products such as Kingfish (a hand-carried version of StingRay), Harpoon (a device to enhance the capability of the StingRay), Amberjack, Arrowhead and Hailstorm. Apparently, a popular replacement for the L3Harris StingRay is the Octasic Nyxcell V800 PBU/F800 TAU. Many US Government departments have online contract bids to acquire this device (no picture is freely available). Other manufacturers of IMSI catcher devices include: • Ability Computers and Software Industries (Atos) • Boeing subsidiary Digital Receiver Technology’s ‘DRT’ devices (hence another name for these devices, “dirt boxes”) • Datong (Seven Technologies Group) • Gamma Group • Martone Radio Technology • Meganet Corporation • Octasic • PKI Electronic Intelligence • Rayzone • Rohde & Schwarz • Septier Communication These devices have been in use for decades. Information that they can collect includes: • A phone’s location • The IMSI or ESN (electronic serial number, a 32-bit number embedded in a wireless phone and also printed on it) and other identification details • Call metadata, such as who is being called and the duration • The content of voice calls and text messages • Websites visited They can also be configured to divert calls and text messages, edit text messages and spoof the identity of the origin of text messages and voice calls. These devices can also collect all phone IDs in a geofenced area. There is a PDF report about the extensive use or overuse of IMSI catchers in Canada and abroad: siliconchip. com.au/link/abaq In that report, some of the uses for these devices are quoted as follows: • Confirming the presence of a device in a target’s home before a search • Identifying an individual responsible for sending harassing text messages • Locating a stolen mobile device as a precursor to searching homes in the vicinity • Locating specific individuals by driving around a city until a known IMSI is found • Mounted on aeroplanes to allow the United States Marshall Service to sweep entire cities for a specific mobile device • To monitor all devices within range of a prison to determine whether prisoners are using mobile phones • Reportedly at political protests to identify devices of individuals attending • To monitor activity in the offices of an independent Irish police oversight body Operation Ironside, arresting criminals & Australia’s lack of privacy laws The story of Operation Ironside is a good illustration of how government surveillance can prevent crime and also how poor Australia’s privacy laws (and civil liberties in general) are compared to other democratic countries. The story begins in 2018 when an informant for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) developed smartphone software called AN0M which supposedly provided anonymous, encrypted communications. It was quickly adopted by various criminal operations (see https://w.wiki/3xsU for more details). The informant supplied communications data to the FBI, who then shared it with the Australian Federal Police. This led to almost 300 arrests in Australia and over 800 worldwide. Many of the charges had to do with the importation and distribution of banned drugs, although apparently at least one murder plot was uncovered by the operation. The interesting part is that, despite there being many AN0M users in the USA, no arrests were made there as much of the ‘overheard’ messages would not be admissible in court as evidence, as that would require warrants to be issued approving the eavesdropping. For those warrants to be issued, there would have to be a valid reason to suspect the surveilled individuals were involved in criminal activity. It appears that Australian authorities do not have to operate under such strict rules. According to the ABC article at siliconchip.com.au/link/abb4, this is because Australia’s privacy laws are amongst the weakest of any democracy. As stated in that article, “… innocent parties’ data could be obtained, stored and used in ways that they would never have foreseen”. If there is just one lesson to take away from Operation Ironside, it’s that you can’t trust unknown third parties to uphold your privacy. If an App or service claims to be anonymous or encrypted, absent laws ensuring those things being true, you should assume they aren’t. And even if such laws do exist, those services could operate overseas, outside those jurisdictions. So you clearly need to know whom to trust. In fact, based on the information recently revealed by the Australian Federal Government at siliconchip. com.au/link/abb5, the Australian government will have even more power to monitor online activity. The various logos used in Operation Ironside (also known as Operation Trojan Shield), from leftto-right you have: ANOM’s app logo (AN0M or ANØM), the AFP’s logo for the operation and the FBI’s logo for the operation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANOM 16 Silicon Chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au See also the comprehensive video titled “Catching IMSI Catchers” at https://youtu.be/eivHO1OzF5E In that video, it is stated that for US$1400, it is possible to build your own IMSI catcher, and while this is documented publicly, we don’t suggest you do as it is certainly illegal. However, it is clear that criminals could make their own IMSI capture devices. Further details on IMSI catchers can be found on the EFF’s website: siliconchip.com.au/link/abb6 Tower “dumps” As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald at siliconchip.com.au/link/ abas, Australian authorities use tower “dumps” to track criminals. A tower dump provides the “identity, activity and location of any phone that connects to targeted cell towers over a set span of time”. Old-fashioned listening at the exchange The Author recalls how the introduction of GSM (2G) to Australia in 1993 was delayed by about a year because the exchange equipment had to be modified to ensure authorities could intercept any conversation at will. This is despite the same exchange equipment being accepted in other countries, which therefore introduced GSM earlier. There is a contemporary article in the Australian Financial Review on this, at siliconchip.com.au/link/ab3d No doubt, this capability still exists and likely has been enhanced now. as the Australian Taxation Office or Australian Electoral Commission, according to www.passports.gov.au/ protecting-your-privacy but presumably any other agency that wants them can get them, including foreign governments in some cases. License and passport photos Finding patterns in aerial or satellite imagery Governments routinely digitise drivers’ licences and passport photos and put them in databases so, like it or not, your picture is in a national database. That means that you can be automatically recognised and tracked by camera systems with access to that database. Australian governments employ extensive facial recognition systems within a National Facial Biometric Matching Capability. Services include the Face Verification Service (FVS), the Face Identification Service (FIS), the National Driver Licence Facial Recognition Solution (NDLFRS) and “Other Face Matching Services may be added over time”. For more information on this, see the Australian government (OAIC) website at siliconchip.com.au/link/ abat Australian passport photos can also be shared among other agencies such Terrapattern was a project of The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry with the purpose of matching patterns in satellite images. An image such as a tennis court is selected, then all similar-looking tennis courts from the satellite imagery database are found. The software uses a Deep Convolutional Neural Net (DCNN) to assist with image recognition. We are unaware of this project still being active. See Fig.16 and the video titled “Terrapattern (Overview & Demo)” at https://youtu.be/VHv5W7Ei80s An example of use for financial or state-based intelligence is finding and examining all images of oil storage tanks. As the oil level changes, so does the floating roof of the tank. By examining the shadows cast, it is possible to determine the oil levels of tanks in a particular region, which could influSC ence the price. Fig.16: a Terrapattern search of objects in satellite imagery that look like oil tanks to determine oil level from shadows. This is a screengrab from the YouTube video at https://youtu.be/VHv5W7Ei80s siliconchip.com.au Australia’s electronics magazine December 2021  17