Drive with On-Board Wi-Fi? It’s Allowing The FBI To Spy On Your Vehicle

By B.N. Frank

There is government, independent, military, and industry-funded research that indicates exposure to Bluetooth, cell phone and wireless “Wi-Fi” radiation is biologically harmful (see 1, 2, 3). In fact, earlier this week, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) asked that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to update its “woefully outdated” radiation exposure guidelines (see 1, 2).

Even if you’re not worried about health risks – it might bother you to know that the FBI can spy on your car via your on-board Wi-Fi.

From Forbes:

The FBI Is Locating Cars By Spying On Their WiFi

The FBI is using a controversial technology traditionally used to locate smartphones as a car tracking surveillance tool that spies on vehicles’ on-board WiFi.

Known as a Stingray or a cell-site simulator, the tool masquerades as a cell tower in order to force all devices in a given area to connect into it. Agents can then pick the number they’re interested in and locate the device. Normally that would be a mobile phone, but a search warrant application discovered by Forbes shows it can also be used to find vehicles, as long as they have onboard Wi-Fi. That’s because car Wi-Fi systems act like a phone, in that they reach out to mobile networks to get their data. So it makes sense that police would use it to find a car, though this appears to be the first case on record of it happening.

The application to use the Stingray was filed by the FBI in Wisconsin in May, as it sought to locate a vehicle – a Dodge Durango Hellcat – it believed was being used by a man indicted for drug dealing and firearms possession crimes.

The FBI had already been given permission to use other kinds of surveillance to locate another vehicle, a “black Jeep,” associated with the suspect, according to the warrant application. Again, they were surveillance techniques traditionally used to track cellphones, the first being a pen register, which gets data from a cellphone provider to monitor connections made by the device to other phones or electronic devices. The second was a so-called “ping warrant,” which shows the locations of cell towers used by a device. That gave them the location of a car dealership, where they learned the suspect had traded in the Jeep for the Dodge, the FBI wrote in its application.

After that, the FBI decided to use the cell-site simulator. Towards the end of the warrant application, a federal agent explained why, noting that cars like the Dodge were “frequently equipped with cellular modems inside their vehicles. These cellular modems are assigned a unique cellular identifier and generate historical and prospective records similar to a traditional cellular phone.”

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Got pets? Exposure to radiation can affect them too.

Happy Trails!