Claude can now create and edit files (anthropic.com)
365 points by meetpateltech 8h ago 221 comments
I don't want AI agents controlling my laptop (sophiebits.com)
24 points by Bogdanp 1h ago 4 comments
Source code for the X recommendation algorithm (github.com)
222 points by mxstbr 7h ago 128 comments
ICE is using fake cell towers to spy on people's phones
420 coloneltcb 176 9/9/2025, 4:27:41 PM forbes.com ↗
https://github.com/EFForg/rayhunter/
Edit: Interesting also the collection of network security via gsmmap [2]
[0] https://gitweb.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyCell.git;a=summary
[1] https://github.com/srlabs/snoopsnitch [2] https://gsmmap.org/
Rayhunter – Rust tool to detect cell site simulators on an orbic mobile hotspot - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43283917 - March 2025 (23 comments)
Microsoft has billions of dollars in US intelligence-cloud contracts and should leap at a chance to get an edge in on those. They've done things like this before; they provided incredible (and illegal!) cooperation with the NSA back at the time of the Snowden Leaks[0].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-... ("Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages" (2013))
Isn't a git commit trail basically a Merkle tree of checksums? If any developer tried to do a pull or fetch they'd suddenly get a bunch of strange commit messages, wouldn't they?
Also: code signing is / can become a thing.
That Merkle tree prevents the naive case where the adversary tries to serve a version of a repo, to a client who already has an older version, differing in a part the client already has. (The part the client has local checksums for). They shouldn't do that. The git client tells the server what commits it doesn't have, so this is simple to check.
Code signing could be a safeguard if people did it, but here they don't so it's moot. I found no mention of a signing key in this repo's docs.
The checksum tree could be a useful audit if there were a transparency log somewhere that git tools automatically checked against, but there isn't so it's moot. We put full trust in Microsoft's versions.
Lots of things could be helpful, but here and now in front of us is a source tree fully in Microsoft's control, with no visible safeguards against Microsoft doing something evil to it. Just like countless others. It's the default state of trust today.
I think the point is they don't have complete control over it. Sure, they have complete control over the version that is on GitHub. But git is distributed, and the developers will have their own local copies. If Microsoft screwed with the checksums, and git checks them. The next developer pull or push would blow up.
If they're pushing or pulling to/from GitHub, then GitHub has a total MITM and is able to dynamically translate checksum trees in between devs' inconsistent views of the repo.
Git is a distributed vcs after all. Every checkout is its own complete git "hub".
Git may be designed as a distributed VCS; and it'd be a different situation if it were used that way in practice. For many projects, GitHub has a full MITM. They could even—forget about the checksums—bifurcate the views in between devs—accept commits from one dev, send over those commits with translated Merkle trees to another dev who has a corrupted history, and they'd never figure it out.
To that end, I started a project last month so that code signing can be done in multiple geographical locations at once: https://github.com/soatok/freeon
I wonder what their lawyers think of this.
https://bja.ojp.gov/program/it/privacy-civil-liberties/autho...
>At 8:58 a.m., just before the protest began, SAN began monitoring eight LTE bands present in the area and found no anomalous behavior. At 9:06 a.m., however, a burst of 57 IMSI-exposing commands was detected.
>Other bursts, present on four of the LTE frequency bands, appeared roughly every 10 minutes over the next hour, causing Marlin to issue numerous real-time alerts. A post-scan analysis confirmed the detection of 574 IMSI-exposing messages.
>It also flagged two “attach reject” messages, a type of cellular rejection sent when a cell phone tries to connect to a network. Attach rejects can occur for valid reasons, such as when a phone with an expired SIM card tries to connect to a network but such messages are rare on properly configured networks. IMSI catchers may use attach reject messages to block or downgrade connections and obtain an IMSI before it is encrypted. SAN observed the two suspicious messages at 9:55 a.m. and 10:04 a.m. at the height of the protest but did not encounter others before or after the demonstration ended.
>SAN conducted a follow-up scan during the same time period, the following day, when no protesters were present. Unlike the day prior, Marlin did not issue real-time alerts.
Could the regular mobile tower operators collect subscriber identities at will via their regular gear, with no stingray vans or warrants required, and save the information for later? That seems to be how it's done with the other subscriber location and communication contents that they collect.
I see those quite frequently, the bulk of them are phones trying to roam in a network they're not allowed to though, and some cause the cell is a bit overloaded, some cause the phone sends a wrong tracking area - not sure that's a phone bug or a common scenario where the phone retains an old tracking area, then it tries to connect to the same tracking area - then the phone discovers it's is now in a different tracking area, and after being rejected, it connects with the correct one.
> "A post-scan analysis confirmed the detection of 574 IMSI-exposing messages."
That's roughly 574 unique protestors, give or take.
Full-on autocratic tyranny—this is also what Putin's oligarchs did to Ukranians at the Maidan Protests, in Kyiv in 2014. Used IMSI-catchers to assemble lists of everyone present, and intimidate them.
https://slate.com/technology/2014/01/ukraine-texting-euromai... ("How Did Ukraine’s Government Text Threats to Kiev’s EuroMaidan Protesters?" (2014)).
I'd like to leave the question of why that's true as an exercise for the reader, but your comment makes it sound as if you have trouble with this concept, so let's be explicit - a state operating autocratically can, and often will, rubberstamp whatever it decides it wants to do.
Had a quick look for the numbers from FISA to give you an example of this. https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2013/06/fisa-co... says that they denied 11 requests for surveillance warrants out of 33,900 requests over 33 years of operation.
That's a pass rate of 99.07%!
So allow me to say - a warrant wouldn't have changed anything, they give them out like nothing.
In the article though, it does say: "ICE did not respond to requests for comment from SAN. It is not clear whether ICE or any other law enforcement agency obtained a warrant to use an IMSI catcher — commonly referred to as a “Stingray” — to conduct surveillance."
On the contrary, I don't think there's anything more relevant.
That such action can be legal speaks volumes about the state of what is legal and tolerated within the US. This, like pretty much everything about the current administration, is not explicitly about Trump, but something that has been cooking for at the very least the past two decades.
I think the parent poster is saying that the present of a warrant does not make the action not autocratic. And you are disagreeing with a different idea (that the presence of a warrant doesn't matter at all), by saying it does matter, but in the opposite way -- if a warrant is present that indicates the state is losing checks and balances.
That is, a high pass rate could also indicate that it is a well functioning system with few spurious requests and none that are lacking required information.
Does requiring a warrant guarantee best behavior? No. But it does provide a solid path for accountability and a path to codify better rules, when abused.
Point me to an article if I’m wrong, but I haven’t heard even a single credible rumor that these Stingrays aren’t being used for exactly what authorities say they are - trying to find particular individuals is a general area. Have you heard of whistleblower accounts or accidentally leaked details about large scale storage ordata mining of location data from Stingrays?
If your argument is simply that law enforcement agencies don’t have the right to conduct a dragnet when pursuing a fugitive murderer, as is the case here, you’re going to need something more persuasive than a rant against authoritarianism.
This broad dragnet nature of Stingray collection has always been why it's been a major privacy issue. Like doing a wiretap by tapping the whole neighbourhood and filtering phone calls for a certain address.
[1] Bush 2000, and less directly but far more dangerously, by making Trump unprosecutable in the run-up to 2024.
Maybe you missed it when you read the article?
[0] https://san.com/cc/exclusive-evidence-of-cell-phone-surveill...
If this government has not proven that they had one, you'd be mad to trust that they did.
There are no consequences to it for lying, or for not following the law, or not acting in good faith. It has a well-documented history of doing all three, and is headed by a convicted criminal.
They clearly don't care for legality, constitutionality, anything positive or good.
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Whoops, I hope no other country in conflict with the US gets this idea, that pool has expanded significantly lately!
I recall reading about the people who slammed planes into the World Trade Center towers. They were not hell bent on destroying buildings, they were hell bent on destroying society of the US, destroying buildings was just a stepping stone. And, sure seems like they succeeded.
But the US is not in decline because of whatever anyone from outside does. It's following the same cycle all Hegemons go through over 100-200 years. Whether its Greece, Babylon, Eygpt, Rome, Islamic Caliphates or all the later European powers. They all went through a similar a cycle - rise - dominate - decline. See Oswald Spengler - Rise and Fall of the West written 100 years ago.
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Then, just do whatever the hell you want all the name of protecting people from crime and protecting jobs.
What am I saying, that's completely ridiculous and could never happen in a "law and order" country like the US.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna206917
> Mexico’s security chief confirmed Tuesday that 17 family members of cartel leaders crossed into the U.S. last week as part of a deal between a son of the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Trump administration.
I don't know how Republicans continue to support this administration. Maybe they just don't know he's aiding criminals?
I mean, our president is a criminal himself. Repeatedly violating the law and the constitution while in office. At this point those supporting the regime must doing it out of either cowardice or malice
Allegedly. No convictions have come from any of the accusations as POTUS.
I'm not sure we'll ever see one since the supreme court is in his pocket and has already ruled that that the president is allowed to commit crimes as long as it was an "official act" as determined on a case by case basis by the court
> “It is evident that his family is going to the U.S. because of a negotiation or an offer that the Department of Justice is giving him,” Garcia Harfuch said.
Looks like they're getting protection in exchange for testimony against other cartels.
nah someone made all that up after the fact
https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/border-wall-paint-...
Citizens on the streets don't need to show their papers to ICE, but that's been worked around by yesterday's SCOTUS. Being brown at Home Depot is now sufficient cause to get arrested by ICE.
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Trust me, people thought you were some wild crazy freak.
See here's how it works, watch:
There's going to be concentration camps. The volume of deportation required demands it. There always needs to be two sides agreeing in a deportation, the sending and the receiving. If there's a bottleneck at the receiving or an incompetence in the sending then you warehouse. It's inherent to any logistics.
No that feeling you have that I'm crazy, that's what I'm talking about.
Anyways... See you in a year or so and I'll link back to this.
So it is with no degree of lightness that I say that I agree and this concerns me gravely.
You just don't want to realize that this has nothing to do with ethics anymore. It's about control and money.
Or, what absolves them from not being held accountable for not taking heed to these warnings, being passive?
Meanwhile, the left out there pointing at Obama's extrajudicial killings, Bush's whole post 9/11 fiasco, Clinton's "Superpredators" nonsense, etc. etc. and making tons of noise about how this was all going to end.
Turns out, the left was right, the Dems were wrong. But the Dems are still fighting to try and shut down the left. Look at how hard the Dem establishment hates Mamdani.
I’m curious to see where the Mamdani Experiment takes you all. His constituents are one group who are for certain no stranger to the armed presence reported elsewhere today. Under pretenses all too familiar.
John Yoo is probably the most influential lawyer of the 21st century.
People were screeching about this stuff then but they were brushed off by as "conspiracy weirdos" or "yeah they're probably doing it but who cares because it'd be unconstitutional" or "they won't use it on petty criminals" depending upon the exact year and political context you brought it up in.
Sounds like a real cool guy.
Wiretaps have always been a tool in law enforcement's hands, and if it's subject to a warrant, which the article goes on to say it was, I am completely fine with this. If the ability to tap phone conversations 75 years ago didn't cause us to descend into fascism, I don't automatically think this is scary.
Erosion of anyone’s rights is an erosion of everyone’s rights.
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wait, are you talking about this guy and the people they killed in Venezuela or ICE?
[0] https://www.ice.gov/detain/detainee-death-reporting
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-citizen-detained-ice...
This is based on a historical accounting of ~1 death a month in their direct care over the past 5 years, plus assuming at least as many due to other root causes. I expect that number to increase as they continue to expand operations and worsen protections for detainees.
Like license plate readers and facial recognition, you're out in the world without the expectation of privacy but I think for most people that feels different when a giant automated system is sucking everything up without recourse.
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This particular article was about using Stringray with a warrant. I'm sure that the government is abusing Stingray but it'd be nice to have evidence first.
"In a recently-unsealed search warrant reviewed by Forbes, ICE used such a cell-site simulator in an attempt to track down an individual in Orem, Utah. The suspect had been ordered to leave the U.S. in 2023, but is believed to still be in the country. Investigators learned last month that before going to Utah, he’d escaped prison in Venezuela where he was serving a sentence for murder, according to the warrant. He’s also suspected of being linked to gang activity in the country, investigators said.
When the government got the target’s number, they first got a warrant to get its location. However, the trace wasn’t precise–it only told law enforcement that the target was somewhere in an area covering about 30 blocks. That led them to asking a court for a Stingray-type device to get an accurate location.
The warrant was issued at the end of last month and it’s not yet known if the fugitive was found."
https://san.com/cc/exclusive-evidence-of-cell-phone-surveill...
[1] https://www.justsecurity.org/34449/investigating-surveillanc...
Your IMEI will never be send in clear over the network. Not even back in old 2G networks.
If the gov needs your data they can use standardized lawful interception interfaces. This interface offers all juicy data - not only voice, SMS and your phone number.
Only option is stay in airplane mode and use wifi.
You can't get the IMSIs passively anymore, but LTE doesn't make these attacks impossible, just less practical, especially for criminals that don't have warrants on their side.
No big need to dig down deep into the radio and protocol layer.
There are IMSI catchers - but they all require GSM. At least on Google Pixels you can turn off 2G with a switch. The phone even shows a message about its insecurity.
In Germany I'm running 100% on LTE/5GNR-only for many months now without having a single coverage gap.
looks like iPhones will need to enable Lockdown Mode to disable 2G, at least for iOS 17+ per https://ssd.eff.org/module/attending-protest
You can just jam everyone in the area and see who reconnects.
https://www.cise.ufl.edu/~butler/pubs/ndss25-tucker-marlin.p...
Ideally, this is something I could hack together in the next few days since ICE is prepping to invade my city.
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Not usually that I’m aware of as a single data point in any system but if there are other reasons to thing you’re trying to act surreptitiously you are going to be very close to the top of the list of people of interest.
There’s a lot to be said in 2025 for appearing uninteresting to anyone who might be watching.
Is this too extreme? How expansive are the queries theyre running on these identifiers? Are they running algos to detect burner phones based on the highly anomalous activity patterms described above?
It's becoming common practice for protesters to store their phones in faraday bags. I don't think "no phone" would stand out as much as you think it would.
You can remove the battery, put it in a Faraday cage and charge it turned off (or in another device/out of one). It can be on only when you need it.
Just turning the phone off and wrapping it tight in aluminum foil is almost certainly better.
They can and do have the ability to MITM traffic though. There is not anything to stop someone with the hardware from doing it and everyday that passes it seems the rules matter less and less.
Sounds like "no phone" is the winner
The entire modern game is very literally, don’t be interesting and don’t do weird shit that normal people wouldn’t do. It’s a needle in a haystack problem so don’t go and start creating a really weird signature of whatever it might be: behaviour, communication, RF emissions etc. The anomaly is the signature and has been for about 20 years now.
The fact that there are a lot of people there is actually the strength of it.
I’d probably think carefully about what you want to use it for and what I had on there though. I wouldn’t recommend bringing a device with a a bunch of incriminating evidence to an event like that.
I think a good threat model is just operate on the assumption that maybe someone stops you and asked to look at your phone. Go ahead and also assume that they will ask at the most inconvenient point in the day also. Act accordingly and I wouldn’t anticipate much in the way of trouble from having one.
Also, look at it through the eyes of the opposition, what are their goals here…
1. Fix the signal to noise ratio in a crowd
2. Identify people
3. Map out networks
And your goal is to not to be “invisible” (you can’t anyways) but to be uninteresting. They aren’t the same thing and the difference is important.
For the overwhelming majority of people I don’t think there is much yet to worry about in simply attending a protest (Assuming you’re a citizen and you act sensibly because otherwise that’s an entirely different threat model and you probably shouldn’t be there at the moment).
But I would leave you with this bit of advice also… they very much want you to think they are the all knowing, all seeing and ever present 50ft tall enemy. That isn’t true. There is also no shortage of people who really seem to get off on pretending things are more dangerous than they really are but that shit turns into paranoia real quickly and then people become terrified to do anything or you start making bad decisions. Fight both of those things when you run into them.
You can and should feel good about getting out in the streets at the moment, it’s not going to get easier the longer it goes on just be sensible.
Even the CIA had to stand up a whole new department years ago when the realised they even with all of their tradecraft and gadgets they couldn’t even move around London without the Brits knowing about it and had to totally change how they did business as a result. It’s not just an average protestor on the street problem at all.
I think a big part of the problem comes from this idea that you’re trying to be invisible and you keep running into all these new layers of problems all the damned time.
Maybe I’m using E2EE apps but the people I’m talking with take screenshots and run them through co-pilot or put them into their iCloud backups or a million other scenarios. It just feels like such an unwinnable game sometimes that you can very easily and convincingly get yourself to a place where you feel overwhelmed and you just freeze which is such a trap in and of itself.
I’d recommend keeping the illegal activity side of things extremely fucking low to non-existent personally and everything else will become much simpler as a result. It’s much easier to just not have evidence than trying to hide it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do things with a sense of purpose though. There are many ways to frustrate the opposition, to tie up their resources, to send them on wild goose chases, to wear down their morale that are all firmly in the legal category.
Here’s something [1] that’s was public almost 20 years ago at this point. Things have advanced a lot since then. I don’t think you quite understand just how much of a pipeline there was for this kind of technology that went almost directly from quite classified SIGINT stuff in the GWOT to casual LEO / domestic stuff.
I know the whole no phone thing sounds like a real high speed operator move but it’s very literally a signal they go looking for when trying to sift through large amounts of data.
[1] https://www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_re...
Btw, to help understand the technical challenges involved with this, the whole reason Tesla focused on vision-only for its self-driving was the difficulty of integrating sensor data from multiple sources, e.g. lidar + vision would be significantly more difficult to achieve. It’s not that this isn’t possible in theory - it’s just that there’s no evidence of anyone having done it for “lack of phone” detection, and that’s probably because it’s not really a requirement that’s in high demand.
They realised that technology had changed for them even that long ago that all it was doing was just making a really clear signal for the opposition as to who they were and that they were someone interesting.
I think the advice you have is very literally decades out of date.
If you have an hour or two to kill I’d recommend taking a look at this for a real no bullshit modern way of thinking about this problem space: https://youtu.be/0_04-lTu2wg?feature=shared
But the OP article is about a Stingray operation covering 30 blocks, and other discussion in this thread is about protests such as the anti-ICE protest which gathered cellphone info from the protestors. In those kinds of environments, if you don’t want to show up on surveillance, you’re much better off not carrying a phone.
Being more specific, this comment of yours is not supported by evidence:
> No phone actually stands out a lot in real life surveillance systems and will very quickly get you a bunch of additional attention because it’s so unusual.
But, if you’re getting your information from videos like the one you linked, I can see why you have these beliefs.
I have very good reasons to know what I’m talking about here but again, I’m not here to argue with you.
Perhaps if I read you my last comment in a voice lowered a few octaves like in that video, you’d believe me.
Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
However, my endeavor here is more focused on awareness and transparency for the masses than subterfuge for the individual.
If I am understanding correctly, I would need a mobile device?
Would this work using the phone as a hotspot? If so, then I guess my previous comment is moot.