Droning Cell Phone Calls
Noah Shachtman is going to convince me to give up my cell phone. Today he notes an AP story reporting that Palestinians believe Israel’s spy drones are jamming cell phone lines and then using them to take out targets.
Palestinians say they know when an Israeli drone is in the air: Cell phones stop working, TV reception falters and they can hear a distant buzzing. They also know what’s likely to come next — a devastating explosion on the ground.
Palestinians say Israel’s pilotless planes have been a major weapon in its latest offensive in Gaza, which has killed nearly 120 people since last week.
[snip]
Wary Gaza militants using binoculars are on constant lookout for drones. When one is sighted overhead, the militants report via walkie-talkie to their comrades, warning them to turn off their cell phones and remove the batteries for fear the Israeli technology will trace their whereabouts.
The AP goes on to note that the US has used such Predator drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well–though the AP doesn’t explicitly say these drones triggered using cell phone signals.
In January, a missile fired from a Predator killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a top al-Qaida commander, in Pakistan’s lawless tribal region of north Waziristan. Coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have launched a number of missile strikes from drones against Taliban and al-Qaida militants hiding on the Pakistani side of the border, but the U.S. military has never confirmed them.
This report follows on one from last week, in which the Taliban demanded cell phone operators in Afghanistan turn off cell signal for 10 hours a day–or they’d take the towers out.
Taliban militants threatened Monday to blow up telecom towers across Afghanistan if mobile phone companies do not switch off their signals for 10 hours starting at dusk.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujaheed said the U.S. and other foreign troops in the country are using mobile phone signals to track down the insurgents and launch attacks against them.
Since that time, the Taliban have taken out at least two cell towers (h/t oscar).
Two mobile phone antennas were destroyed in southern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday, after Taliban militants threatened to bring down such masts, alleging they are used to locate hideouts.
A first mast was destroyed in the southern province of Kandahar on Friday, four days after the Taliban warned they would attack the technology because it was being used at night to pinpoint rebel bases.
In the new attacks, armed rebels scaled a mast just outside Kandahar city overnight and destroyed equipment, local police officer Ghulam Hazrat said.
"I’m sure it was the work of the Taliban," he told AFP, adding that guards at the facility had escaped unhurt.
Another antenna was destroyed in the neighbouring Helmand province’s Sangin district, a local official told AFP under condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to media.
It looks like insurgents are going to begin to destroy what little infrastructure exists in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s tribal areas, Iraq, and Gaza to prevent this from happening. It sure highlights the degree to which telecom infrastructure is the front line of George Bush’s global war.
Is this what is meant by bombing them back to the stone age?
Bob in HI
Or encouraging them to bomb themselves back to the stone age, yeah.
Though I should say–the most recent article on the Taliban makes it sound like they’re destroying the towers differently than the Iraqi insurgents have been (where they just take out the tower). The article doesn’t say HOW they’re destroying them, just that it involves someone climbing the tower, which presumably means the tower remains intact.
AP today – “With only 10 months left in his term and Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed over renewed violence, President George W. Bush said Tuesday there is “plenty of time” to get a Mideast peace deal before he leaves.”
I don’t think he understands that he and Condi are part of the problem, not the solution.
So, anyone with a cellphone in Gaza or Afganistan or Iraq are targets? I take it the occupation and invading hordes do not use cellphones.
I presume the cell phones to be targeted are identified by the US? After all, with all our furrign ta furrign monitoring, shouldn’t we be picking up “chatter” that upsets the Israelis?
Well, if you have enemies who are willing and able to assassinate you and you carry around a device that constantly broadcasts its location and unique identity, is it any wonder that it is used against you? I’m not saying it’s moral, but it certainly shouldn’t be a big surprise.
Agree. Not a surprise.
Though, in the long run, it may mean this whole FISA battle is for naught. If the cell phone towers go out everywhere the terrahists are, there won’t be much interesting to listen in on.
If you have a newish cell phone and a contract that requires registering your name with the service provider, and the phone’s on (and possibly off if the battery’s connected), its location (and yours) can be determined to within about three meters or ten feet. (I think the govt acknowledges accuracy to within only ten meters or thirty-three feet.) Those nifty little GSP devices can track your movements, too, not just static location.
A simple grenade, among the smallest of such devices, has a lethal-zone of about five unobstructed meters. So cell phone targeting can be quite effective, even when an intelligence agency is not listening in.
A good article I ran across when I first joined a Repeal the Patriot Act group five years ago
OT – c-span radio – good program on FISA/PAA Wendy ? (counsel for House Intel Committee) (Wainstein – Mr. “we can stop and frisk any American any time we want with no Probable Cause, so who cares what we intercept and surveill”) have had their spiel, Kate Martin (she’s so good and actually remembers the 4th Amendment) finishing up now – then they will go to Baker(who has now been drafted by Verizon to be on their counsel staff).
Wainstein has pretty much made it clear – they have a big problem with “agent of Foreign Power” concept and want to be able to surveill anyone, anytime, without having to mee the huge ol burdent of “probable cause to believe” they are an agent of a Foreign power or in contact with an agent of a foreign power.
I thought that was the issue all along, and he pretty much spells that out. WHile the President “sells” the issue as “if al-Qaeda is calling” Wainstein makes it clear that it’s a matter of “if anyone outside of the US is calling, even a US citizen NOT an Agent of a Foreign Power but outside of the US is calling other US citizens, NOT agents of Foreign Powers, IN the US.” So your child who’s visiting in Spain – all their calls.
Ken wainstein can sell snow to Eskimos (this is not a diss to Alaskan Native Americans).
So, this FISA bill is probably a done deal.
And the odds of the current Supreme Court overturning such give-away legislation on Constitutional grounds is what, would you say?
Odds are rather high that professional targets, such as Mr. bin Laden, and their physically immediate entourage, no longer carry cell phones. Certainly not ones identifiably theirs. With a modest staff, alternate communications techniques are readily available.
Cell phone targeting, while effective, pretty targets low-hanging fruit. Of course, as our troops know too well, they are also useful for completing any circuit, which can activate other user unfriendly devices nearby.
But the bread and butter use in the US is still domestic spying on civilians against whom there is no reasonable suspicion, which violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. Something we should remind our Congress Critters about daily. Like Neville Chamberlain, our darling “representatives” are about to give away essential rights that belong to someone else. Like Chamberlain’s negotiating partner, the administration is intent on taking and keeping them. Just to protect us, you understand.
OT – Baker up now, he also makes the point that we are talking about ALL foreign persons now.
He makes the point that there had been a consensus that US citizen surveillance should have a warrant, no matter where the citizen is (he needs to talk to Wainstein and Senate intel) and that there was a consensus that people in the US should have a warrant (again, he needs to talk to Wainstein and Senate intel).
Foreign to foreign – verbal wire communications. Never needed warrant and still doesn’t need warrant.
AHHAH He does say that there is a reading of FISA that might indicate that – that foreign to foreign email or foreign to unknown email is the issue. Again, that’s what I thought based on the FISA language.
He says that when you intercept, you get it before the recipient, so you don’t know until the recipient gets it whether it was foreign or not, and even where the recipient is when they access, or where a cell phone is, can vary now.
FISA, Exec 12333, TSP – were the three options available after 9/11.
Baker also says specifically that PAA is much broader than TSP was – bc PAA allows anyone pretty much to be surveilled with no warrant. Not agents of foreign power or those who there is probable cause to believe are in contact with agents of foreign powers – –
– – but pretty much anyone who is foreign or who is a US citizen but on foreign soil.
Mary,
If you’re still here …
How far off am I with this? (The Dan Lungren I’m referring to is my Congressman)
GPS has its limits, such as caves.
Now asking for input from counsel for Senate Intel committee who happens to be in the audience.
She’s pretty revealing. Wainstein had yammered on about how overwhelmingly and bipartisan the Senate legislation passed. She says that this is a mischaracterization and that all the Dems and some of the REpubs who voted for the bill in committee all thought it needed improvements and would be improved with amendments.
She also says that the immunity opposition isn’t so much about getting the carriers, as that those who oppose are concerned that the administration will never have liability.
Among other observations:
1. 911 calls were the public reason given for mandating that GPS devices be included in newly manufactured cell phones. It was really for “national security” reasons. The cell phone “parc” was turned over, so that most devices are new and therefore “GPS compliant”, via a series of government instigated high-pressure marketing incentives.
2. The information blurb notes limits on GPS devices applicable to personal use. Publicly stated device and use “limitations” would not apply to the US government.
Yes, military grade GPS is not available to civilians, I just recently learned.
My observation is that the stated limits of GPS devices installed on newly manufactured mobile phones understates their capabilities. The device “limitations” that may inhibit accurately locating your teen at midnite on Friday do not necessarily match the accuracy the device is capable of producing for an intelligence agency. One of the many ways in which big telecoms are in bed with the administration.
More OT – Question – Scope and Duration: How can Congress do anyting with immunity without knowing scope and duration and affidavits in Qwest litigation indicate that the program started before 9/11.
(MOderator – How can Congress legislate in that area at all – the Title I area? Who in Congress has been given what information?)
Wendy ? – Says that Senate had information and access to documents on program (
Says only in late Jan that House Intel and part of House Judiciary committee given access, and only now that full House Judiciary committee given access to documents.
**No one is answering why they should believe the documents and information given to them, based on so much disinformation.
Wainstein – not amnesty – immunity. Really important to him not to assume violations. Says that Both House and Senate committees now have had full access to infomration, so that’s how they can give immunity. Wainstein indicates that after years to purge and propagate the document trail they want, DOJ has been able to make the committees happy and that the purpose of committees is so that Congress as a whole doesn’t have to worry itself with whether it knows about the program. Ignorance for the bulk of Congress is a good thing.
He goes back to the audience member/atty for the Senate Intel committee and mumbo jumbos her points about the bill needing to be improved and says, wah wah, we didn’t get everything we wanted either. And besides, there is this HUGE depth of understanding among Congressional Committees, at least some of them. At least some of them on certain individual topics. Although none of them on all of it, bc it is too complex for Members of Congress to understand.
Kate Martin on the What Does Congress KNow issue – says that it would be pretty helpful to discuss what do AMERICANS know too. Says we have a President who claimed secret powers to spy on Americans and keep American info intercepted and we don’t know anything about why FISA court said no to the Admin or its legal reasoning this spring, and there is no Nat Sec reason to keep the legal reasoning of Admin and FISC secret from American public.
She’s so good.
Kate Martin – trial lawyers have nothing at stake unless there is a Really Good Case against the telecoms that a Federal Court would uphold and that a three member Ct of Appeals would uphold, etc. She says that while she thinks they did violate the law, she thinks any lawsuit would be tremendously uphill AND that the Gov is sayign they didn’t break the law, so isn’t the discussion bizarre.
Q: Modernization needed bc of email – foreign to foreign email is within the scope of FISA if US switch even if you know it if foreign to foreign.
Wire and radio – asking Wainstein if it isn’t true that those things are not subject to FISA and never have been. Wainstein admits that it is only an email issue.
Q: FISA was supposed to be a BRIGHT LINE – and there was a STATUTORY RESPONSIBLITY for the telecoms to say NO, why not bifurcate the issues of liability for old possible violations that may have impacted US citizens – – why must the Admin sensationalize to add immunity on to the going forward portions of foreign to foreign aspects of the legislative changes and why shouldn’t Congress be allowed to take its time on reveiw of what has happened in the past and see what is the appropriate response to handling that – esp since House committees have only received info in late Jan and some only last week/this week?
Wainstein, oh well, we’ve talked about immunity for a long time, no big deal that no one has seen the info until now. And also says, golly, we don’t want’ to have to just “compel” telecoms, we want to be pals with them. If they have this huge (and he forgets to add OLD) set of lawsuits hanging over them, they will be less likely to be comfy being our partners in the future and will be more risk averse (even though the future stuff DOES HAVE IMMUNITY) so we have to be able to induce a more zenlike state in the telecom lawyers’ minds by releasing them from the negative vibes of worry about old lawsuits.
Something like that at least.
Compel
16 – Luckily, I’m not an Eskimo. *g* I have deal with a lot of horse traders, though, and they’d snort in his general direction.
Sounds like it is a done deal in many ways, sounds like the staffers (the one with the House on the panel and the one with the Senate from the audience) aren’t all that happy about it, while Wainstein is being a smug snot.
Some of what I suspected did get made more concrete (you wish the damn committee hearings were as worthwhile as this ABA luncheon) No, the FISC ruling didn’t involve verbal communications – Baker and Wainstein, without flat out referring to the FISC ruling, pretty much admitted by reference over and over that email was the “technology” problem and that since the carve out wasn’t there for email that exists for spoken, (Baker – might be an interpretation of FISA; Wainstein – some approaches might put constraints on our intelligence gatherers for email that had NEVER BEEN INTENDED by FISA)the FISC was telling them they had to get a warrant. Of course, for the types of things that they mentioned — taking a laptop from a captured terrorist and going through his email list – I can’t imagine there is that big an issue. Baker did also make some points that I think he might have wanted to expand upon re: content capture and data (or EW’s meta data) capture and referencing a bit to pen register type data.
Another big issue is what I thought on the agent of foreign power aspect. Whatever they are doing, it is a program that is not based on picking up calls of those who they have probable cause to believe are agents of foreign powers or in contact with agents of foreign powers (and, for that matter, it’s not necessarily a program where they can weed out US persons, be they citizens on US soil or otherwise, before they intercept and capture.
While Wainstein yapped about how it was “never intended” for FISA to govern ANY ‘foreign to foreign’ he sidestepped all the US citizen issues and also the facts that Martin and Baker came back to on FISA not authorizing all foreign intercepts for good reasons including abuses known to the Church committee after its investigations. Also, Wainstein never even tried to explain how there would be a national security intel need or exception for intercepting outside the agent of foreign power category (and that language, btw, comes for the Sup Ct in the Keith case and the court did NOT say ALL foreign persons) and he never dealt with the lack of teeth for minimization or what is happening with and will happen with US citizen info — what John Bolton and the RNC and Rove don’t already have that is.
My last OT on this – sorry. The question no one asked and that is very central is: how does anyone on any of the Congressional committees know they have received truthful and accurate information with respect to the information actually given to them?
Because, we already know that members of DOJ have lied to and misled Congress already, under oath; we know that they have particpated directly and by omission in the conduct of crimes; and that, as those who signed off on and solicited the programs, they have a vested interest in only showing Congress information that reflects well on themeselves.
We also know that, with all kinds of legislation pending, in part what Congress is doing with immunity is making it OK for DOJ and the telecoms to have lied to the Courts. Talk about overstepping separation of powers.
Mary — thanks for the OT summary on the FISA discussion, much appreciated.
And we have a winner! Come on down and collect your prize! Exactly. And exactly what I have been saying for a long, long time. In the first place, culling and cherry picking information, documents and legal arguments, to present only what is helpful to them, is the hallmark of the Bush Administration. When have they NOT done that? Secondly, if you read their statements made around the time they first made their disclosure to the Senate Intel Committee, it is quite clear that they refused to state that they had made a full and complete disclosure. Obviously, they did not. Before Congress acts, they should have either a sworn statement, or sworn testimony, that at a minimum, the respective Intel Committees and/or Gang of Eight have been provided full and complete disclosure of all legal opinions, agreements with telco and other providers, FISC documents and rulings and all other pertinent information. The Bushies are gaming this the way they do everything else; how can Congress not assume this and act accordingly in light of the history?
This Congressional “debate” has become a farce; the Dems are really demanding nothing from this administration and getting less. Forgive me if I conclude from that that this Democratic leadership is going out of its way to avoid the very inquiry that should be tops on its list.
Presumably, they are doing so in order to argue that they acted “in good faith” but were “fooled” by that nasty Bush, rather than that they agree with these extra-constitutional domestic surveillance powers, which their new Democratic president surely won’t abuse.
This has become a farce. The public has been put into the position of being the youngest sailor on board, terrified and bent over a barrel while two old salts argue over who gets to explain to him what two years before the mast really means.
Probably this Wyndee: “Wyndee R. Parker, general counsel of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.”
Somewhat more OnTopic, probably predator technology is different from gps, but gps helps; p3c’s have been vacuuming cell calls since 1990s; that onboard capability is what caused WClinton such agitation when one craft made emergency landing in area China controlled; China complained it knew of us activity, flying outside coastal waters but at altitude sufficient to have line of sight reception onshore. China argument was planes were over territory in sense that the sphere of influence extends 100s of miles offshore. There had been online information on a military website for several years following the incident, until shortly following the nyc TowersDebaclein 2001, but it was erased from that website; until then, the site contianed photos of the airplane after it was shipped back to Seattle for reverse detective work to see how many consoles the crew had no time to destroy during descent. Likely the techonolgies are miniaturized in predator.
Are you talking about the Orion that that Chinese pilot crashed into back in 2001?
Actually, what seems to be happening in Gaza at least is radio frequency jamming. That’s how the Israelis disabled the U.S.S. Liberty according to accounts of survivors of that incident in 1967. The jamming was followed by swift destruction of all antennae mounted on the ancient victory hull frigate. It has an incapacitating effect. I think the cell phone locator capability is probably exaggerated.
In this specific case, I suspect you are correct. Using cell locators wouldn’t interfere with TV reception. The Israelis seem more interested in disrupting any potential reaction. Of course, the suspicion that they can locate their enemy serves their purpose quite well.
Yes, in Pratchett’s diskworld, it’s called headology.
Back on topic – this Salon piece: “Killing ‘Bubba’ From the Skies” from 2-15 ties in with the American aspects.
While there are some impressive capabilities, the profligate use is pretty disturbing. And the fact that they remove the killing, even further – giving it that 24esque “hollywood” setting, isn’t all that reassuring either.
How comfortable would you be with that going on in America? Especially with the track record for getting things right that the Bush Admin brings to the table. Obama better be careful about that traditional dress thing.
26 – Bush has the “one man, one vote” part down.
Related to topic on the Palestinian front, this month’s Vanity Fair has a pretty eye popping piece about Rice and Bush and Abrams and Gaza and merry little plots for civil war.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake……contra-20/
This Predator cattle’s business has been going on for far too long. This practice was graphically portrayed in the 2005 movie, Syriana. It’s the frozen limit in air warfare. Pretty soon even national DJs will be able to bomb their competitors from the safety of their family values room in the basement.
32 – OOPS! Sorry – I didn’t scroll back first.
31 – bmaz, that is what is making me nuts. For one thing, if they’ve been briefed, by now they absolutely know for a fact that the public representations of Hayden and Bush about a “targeted” program that only involves situations where “al-Qaeda is calling” is nonsense. Utter claptrap. And yet, nothing prevented them from saying it and no one has ever corrected what they said.
They know that they are talking to people who have vested interests. They have NOT asked to speak with either Lamberth or Kollar-Kotelly in closed sessions to discuss the classified info shared with them and the way the program was being run. They haven’t had the kind of under oath closed sessions with Hayden, Wainstein, online analsysts at NSA, telecom frontline guys actually handling the program, etc. and they haven’t turned an IG or anyone with any kind of authority loose to get all the info they need.
33 – Poor you. I wouldn’t say you are off at all.
Yes, to @36, that was the incident.
Spying Fight about Emails, Not Phone Calls, DOJ Reveals, writes Threat Level’s Ryan Singel.