SEATTLE - Your cell phone calls may not be as private as you think.
A pair of University of Washington researchers have developed a device that can detect when a cell signal may be connected to a simulated cell phone tower.
They call it SeaGlass and its intent is to expose Mobile Subscriber Identity catchers, often called stingrays, which can be used by law enforcement, hackers and criminals.
Those simulated cell phone towers, mimic real cell towers, but are capable of recording a cell phone's location, eavesdropping on phone calls and can send spam or inject malware into phones.
“These devices are so powerful, that they are going to be taken advantage of by someone,” said Ian Smith, co-creator of SeaGlass and research scientist at the University of Washington. “It could be foreign actors or criminals and other things. Public disclosure documents say law enforcement uses them too.”
The American Civil Liberties union has claimed the devices are used with very little judicial oversight, and can collect information on people not involved in a search warrant or police investigation.
To provide some transparency and accountability, Smith and fellow researcher and doctoral student Peter Ney developed SeaGlass. The device looks for anomalies in the signals emitting cell sites that would suggest the cell site is not legitimate.