PORTLAND, Ore. — Law enforcement officials may have deployed a secretive cellphone surveillance technology last weekend at Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. The site was the focus of highly publicized protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
On-site analysis of cellular signals by Straight Arrow News found evidence suggesting that a cell-site simulator, commonly referred to as a Stingray or IMSI-catcher, was likely used to collect identifying information from cellphones near the protest site.
Researchers found that under normal conditions, an average of about 3% of messages sent by legitimate cell towers contain requests for phones’ unique identifiers. SAN’s analysis found that up to 18% of observed cellular connections in the vicinity of the ICE building contained those requests. Law enforcement agencies may use the data collected by a cell-site simulator to identify individual protesters and track their movements…