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 "Papers, please" is out of date: they're no longer asking.
- "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.
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.