The Electronic Frontier Foundation has come to the conclusion that someone may have used a cellphone surveillance system during the Democratic National Convention last summer, according to a new report from Wired. Evidence for that assertion comes from Cooper Quintin, a technical expert at the EFF, who spent time investigating whether police technology was used during the event. Wired worked together with EFF to analyze wireless signal data. What they found was evidence that someone may have used a cell site simulator to spy on the machines.
Cell site simulators are controversial police tools that can pick up wireless signals from the air and store them for later analysis. Cell site simulators basically attack Man-in-the-Middle style, convincing mobile devices that they are cell towers and that they should send their signals to them. These attacks can expose valuable personal information, such as location data, call metadata, and application traffic, providing a critical window into mobile activity. A popular brand of cell site simulators is Stingray.
Wired reporters went to the DNC last summer and used phones equipped with special software. That software was developed by EFF and was designed to read data anomalies related to devices. Wired describes their test this way:
WIRED attended protests across the city, events at the United Center (where the DNC took place), and social gatherings with activists, political figures and activists. We spent time walking around the march routes and organized protest sites before, during, and after these events.
In the process we captured Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular signals. We then analyze those signals for specific hardware identifiers and other suspicious signals that may indicate the presence of a cell site simulator.
After analyzing data from those devices, Quinton told Wired that it appears to indicate that someone may have been using a mobile location simulator in the area during the meeting. Wired writes that one of the things the reporters were carrying “was moved to the new tower.” That tower then “asked for the device’s IMSI (international mobile subscriber identity) and was immediately disconnected—a sequence that corresponds to the operation of a mobile site simulator.”
“This is very suspicious behavior that would be exhibited by typical towers,” Quintin told Wired, in an analysis. “This is not 100 percent absolute, but strong evidence suggesting the use of a cell site simulator. We don’t know who was responsible—whether it was the US government, foreign actors, or another organization.”
Gizmodo contacted the EFF for more information.
It is not known what would have motivated someone to use a surveillance system at the Democratic National Convention, although there was one obvious reason why the police wanted to monitor the area’s phones at the time. The meeting was marred by ongoing protests over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s attack on Gaza. During the protests, it is reported that more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, according to one UN estimate. Thousands of protesters gathered outside the DNC in Chicago. In some cases, protesters were arrested for breaking the wall outside the meeting place.