Research: Ubiquitous Surveillance: Telecoms Networks and the Ecosystem of Tech and State Crime

Namir Shabibi · Independent Investigative Journalist, UK

Advances in telecoms networks, and the installation of more masts, has meant that networks are becoming more accurate active and passive surveillance tools. Around these developments, the past decade has seen the growth of tech companies exploiting sensitive telecoms (cell site) data, offering the predictive identification of criminal suspects, border and migration monitoring, and tracking of suspects, among others. Yet there is no ‘opt out’ from this form of ‘ubiquitous technical surveillance’. This research draws on journalistic investigations by the author into the role of telecoms companies in the ecosystem of tech and state crime. It argues that what was once an authoritarian’s dream has become our everyday reality, with life or death implications in global majority countries.

Abstract

In recent years, human rights groups have dedicated the bulk of their resources around phone surveillance towards a niche area, spyware use, despite its application being extremely rare. Yet many of spyware’s purposes can be achieved without use of costly malware, using telecoms network (or cell site) surveillance and ‘lawful interception’. As a consequence, the human rights community have developed a blind spot towards ‘ubiquitous technical intelligence’, and its dangers, and life-or-death implications in the majority world.

Combining his recent investigations with new research, the author will explain the vulnerability of sensitive telecoms (cell site) data to a growing range of surveillance practices, enabled by largely-unscrutinised tech companies integrating with ‘ubiquitous data collectors’. Practices range from the pre-crime modelling of subscribers, to the predictive identification of suspects and tracking of dissidents, with marginalised regions, vulnerable migrants and border populations subjected to blanket, geo-fenced surveillance. There is no ‘lockdown mode’ and no ‘opt-out’ from “near-perfect surveillance” of telecoms networks, as the US Supreme Court judged.

Borrowing the concept of ‘ubiquitous technical surveillance’, this research will survey developments in telecoms network surveillance, both bulk, predictive and targeted, noting the historic transference of military-intelligence tech to everyday policing. As telecoms networks progress, with 6g on the horizon, and the number of masts increase, the telecoms surveillance web intensifies year-on-year. Relying on field research by the author, this report also points to specific uses of that data by tactical police units and paramilitary state forces, including death squads. It argues that the networks and tech – once imagined in nightmares – are now our everyday reality; the authoritarian state’s dream-come-true.