From 4 miles in the air (so high you can't see the drone), works while the drone is "circling" (so far more accurate due to transit and length of sniffing), is intentionally used for "fingerprinting" entire cities (who belongs here? what devices moved? where did they go?) without any suspicion of individual wrongdoing, and unlike google, IT DOESN'T JUST TARGET WAPs.
Think about it. They ingest every handset, every wifi device, every BSSID, ESSID, even MACs ARPing over the air. For entire cities.
Now think ten years ahead, when solar-powered persistent drones can stay up over a city 24/7, constantly circling, sniffing, and relaying the movements of UUIDs from place to place around the world. Drones fly just as well in US airspace as Yemeni airspace.
This is what Snowden warned us about. "Papers, please" is out of date: they're no longer asking.
Or stand near anyone conspiring to blow anything up, or buy a used phone from someone conspiring to blow anything up... did you even read the article? 283+ civilian casualties to date, with more collateral damage than any other form of interdiction we've tried so far.
You must have missed the 'fix' part of 'find, fix, & finish'. They have real-time video feeds of the targets right up until pushing the button (aka 'finishing').
And, yes, I say it is generally not a good idea not to associate with terrorists or go into a room with them and throw your SIM card into a pile to be mixed. And, if you suddenly find out that your phone number has changed for no explicable reason, it's probably best to ditch the SIM card and buy a new one.
You must have missed (or willfully ignore) the part where it says this mode of interdiction has more civilian casualties than any other we have tried. So just maybe it isn't the best way to deal with the threat at hand.
- "The [SHENANIGANS] operation – previously undisclosed – utilizes a pod on aircraft that vacuums up massive amounts of data from any wireless routers, computers, smart phones or other electronic devices that are within range."
- "The operator describes how, from almost four miles in the air, he searched for communications devices"
- "VICTORYDANCE, he adds, “mapped the Wi-Fi fingerprint of nearly every major town in Yemen.”
This is something we didn't even know is possible: drones are cataloguing the MAC addresses, BSSIDs, ESSIDs (unique identifiers for things like your iPhone and the wireless adapter on your PC, laptop, or tablet) of people's personal electronics, at the scale of cities, from so high up in the air you can't even see the drone, and they're creating "fingerprints" from it. That means what devices "belong" in what city.
They don't suspect these people of any wrongdoing or criminal activity - how could they? They're monitoring entire cities. This is exactly what Snowden warned us about: the untargeted mass surveillance of entire populations.
The next time you hear about domestic drones for police and "homeland security," remember this article.
Sorry, we did know that was possible. It's well reported and obviously possible. Search even for amateur cantenna ranges and you'll see how far you can easily pull an SSID from (hint: many kilometres).
If the above was news to you, then get more worried: Google catalogues SSIDs versus GPS from hundreds of millions (billions?) of client android devices. Even ones that aren't logged in. This is why geolocation is fast with android devices. Unsure, but it's quite likely that Apple does the same.
From 4 miles in the air (so high you can't see the drone), works while the drone is "circling" (so far more accurate due to transit and length of sniffing), is intentionally used for "fingerprinting" entire cities (who belongs here? what devices moved? where did they go?) without any suspicion of individual wrongdoing, and unlike google, IT DOESN'T JUST TARGET WAPs.
Think about it. They ingest every handset, every wifi device, every BSSID, ESSID, even MACs ARPing over the air. For entire cities.
Now think ten years ahead, when solar-powered persistent drones can stay up over a city 24/7, constantly circling, sniffing, and relaying the movements of UUIDs from place to place around the world. Drones fly just as well in US airspace as Yemeni airspace.
This is what Snowden warned us about. "Papers, please" is out of date: they're no longer asking.