It Could Happen Here Fighting Back Against the Surveillance State
21 snips
May 11, 2026 
Colonel Panic, maker of community counter-surveillance hardware and firmware, and Cooper Quintin, EFF technologist focused on surveillance and countermeasures, join to dissect modern spying. They cover license-plate readers, facial recognition misuse, stingrays and Ray Hunter detection, commercial location data and ad-driven tracking, and grassroots tools like WeSpy for mapping and detecting surveillance tech.
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Ray Hunter Reveals Stingrays Are Rarer Than Feared
- Ray Hunter detects cell‑site simulators by monitoring cellular control traffic from a mobile hotspot and comparing it to known stingray signatures.
- Cooper Quintin reports hundreds of Ray Hunter deployments but far fewer stingray detections than activists expected, and none conclusively at protests.
Economics And Law Reduced Routine Stingray Use
- Cost, complexity, and legal changes pushed police away from routine stingray use; Carpenter v. USA made historical CSLI warrant‑protected and many agencies treat stingrays similarly.
- Cooper explains MCCatcher contracts cost about a million and require technical skill, so agencies prefer cheaper, non‑warranted tools.
Commercial Ad Data Powers Police Location Surveillance
- Penlink and acquired tools (Tangles, Weblock) let investigators scrape social media and query near‑real‑time location databases built from advertising SDKs and apps.
- Cooper explains WebLock shows devices in an area (24‑hour delay) with demographic ad data and historical movement traces without a warrant.