Update: I wrote this originally from my phone and apparently some of the links were broken. All links have been corrected.
My wife recently showed me the following article concerning the rise of fake cell phone towers around the United States.
http://www.moneytalksnews.com/2014/09/11/your-calls-and-texts-could-be-intercepted-by-fake-cell-towers/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dori
There are numerous stories about this floating around the net. Despite last year’s stories concerning the NSA, in much more inclined to believe this is not s U.S. government sanctioned surveillance.
For starters there are laws that expressly prohibit this. While the military has certain capabilities and probably tests them, they do so on enclosed networks like the one at Ft. Irwin’s NTC box, or the box at Ft. Polk.
In fact one could build their own fake tower for as little as $1500 in 2010, meaning it could be even cheaper today. In fact this was reported by Forbes earlier this month. http://www.forbes.com/sites/davelewis/2014/09/03/rogue-cell-towers-could-be-intercepting-your-call/ The technology was demonstrated at a defense conference in Las Vegas, we’ve known about it for a while.
The question we should be asking is not is the government setting these towers up, but who has to gain from doing so. As it is, the government has much to lose from setting up these towers. To begin with, there are the laws that expressly prohibit it from spying on our own citizens. Then we have the massive wave of distrust caused by such actions. As it is, we are still suffering the aftermath of last year’s NSA scandal. It is hard to believe anybody in the Federal Government would have such awful judgment as to do something so overtly illegal in comparison to the legal actions that got the NSA in hot water only a year ago.
Next consider that many of these towers have been discovered near military bases. Why would they be there who has anything to gain by spying on our military?
Well for starters: the Chinese, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Al Queda, and ISIL. And that’s just the short list. Even staunch allies like Israel and Great Britain could gain valuable information by spying on us. In short just about everybody.
See despite what Soldiers are told concerning loose lips and deployments they typically still tell their loved ones little details like where they going and when. These loved ones will often text or call other tell other relatives the same information. Quite frankly there are no secrets. Scanning calls around a post can snag all sorts all sorts of information concerning troop movements and upcoming deployments.
The fact is this is a very cheap means of espionage. Meaning that it could be anybody. But the locations and apparent coordination at least indicates a structured attack by one of our enemies.
If I had to place an educated guess I would assume it is the work of ISIL or one of its cousins. Though China and Russia would not be too much of a stretch either.
We know there are sleeper cells within the United States. We especially know terror groups like ISIL have been recruiting from within the states for a while, in fact at least three killed terrorists are from Minnesota. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/minneapolis-has-become-recruiting-ground-for-islamic-extremists/
We know there are sleeper cells within the United States. We especially know terror groups like ISIL have been recruiting from within the states for a while, in fact at least three killed terrorists are from Minnesota. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/minneapolis-has-become-recruiting-ground-for-islamic-extremists/
Could this be the work of our own government? Maybe, but the fact that the FCC is launching an investigation on the matter seems to indicate contrary to this conspiracy. The much more likely scenario is the enemy is here and meticulously preparing for a prolonged campaign against us.
Let us not be war weary but rather engaged in the defense of freedom, vigilant in our daily encounters and guarded in our dealings.
