RayHunter: Detect Suspicious Cell Activity #shorts

Our Take

Rayhunter is one of the more exciting developments in grassroots counter-surveillance: an open-source project from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that turns a cheap Orbic mobile hotspot into a detector for IMSI catchers — the fake cell towers cops and sometimes shady actors use to vacuum up phone identifiers and location data. This video, from STS Technologies LLC, gives a quick look at the tool and points viewers toward a pre-flashed version sold through STS Collective.

We're glad to see more people getting their hands on tools like this. Cell-site simulators are a cousin of the license plate reader networks we track every day at DeFlock — different tech, same goal: quietly logging where you are and who you talk to without a warrant or public oversight. The more ordinary people who understand how to detect these tools, the harder it gets for agencies to deploy them in secret.

One caution: Rayhunter is free and open source straight from the EFF's GitHub, so you can flash it yourself on a $20-ish Orbic device if you're comfortable with a little tinkering — no need to pay a markup unless you want the convenience. Either way, tools like this are part of the same fight we're waging against Flock cameras and ALPR dragnets. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and hit take action for ways to push back.