$9.99 a month "identity masking", lets you run your android device in stealth mode. (I'm being sarcastic of course).

One of my SDR projects was to boot a GSM base station if my burglar alarm went off and store copies of every IMEI it can see in the cloud. Seems like it would be a better lead to hand investigators than a fuzzy security camera shot.

It's a great idea but is it legal to operate a personal Stingray?

Yes! Well let me be a bit more clear. The FCC has a process for, and indicated they would likely approve, a special temporary operating license for such a device given that it would only operate for a short time (during the break-in) and not interfere with the thieve's or neighbor's cell phones as it would respond with no compatible roaming network. Also it wouldn't do any sort of interception or monitoring other than the tower ping.

It would also need permission from the licensed spectrum holder, that could be harder to get.

But yes, completely legit with the right paperwork.

Wow, I'm a bit surprised by that. Thank you for answering.

I was a little as well, I happened to be at an SDR conference and one of the attendees was a lawyer working with the FCC on licensing issues[1]. I gave him my use case and he said that if it was constrained the way I said it would be, then if it came through their office they would likely approve it.

[1] The FCC has been pretty engaged in understanding the impacts of SDRs because of their potential for abuse (as one attendee called it, "The Drones of spectrum." As an amateur (AI6ZR) and someone in industry I've been helping as an SME to explain some of this stuff to their less technical staff.

And investigators probably would not care — consider how many identity theft cases have the ID thief on camera (in my case, at a hardware store opening up a line of credit in sight of store cameras, and later using a cloned card at an ATM machine, surely in view of an ATM camera.)...yet despite thousands stolen in ID theft cases, there is hardly ever any action taken.

My thought would be they could track the phone of the person, who would probably still have it on them, and using that and a fuzzy security camera image have enough evidence to arrest them at least.

The whole "jailbreaking the phone" business gets suddenly a completely new meaning...

I feel like, as soon as you enabled this feature, your phone would start broadcasting more.

I suppose we can sorta thank the FEC for their crazy broadcast device requirements when it comes to suspecting whether airplane mode actually stops a device from dialing home.

I can see the mental gymnastics now:

"Criminals deserve just as much privacy and safety as anyone else. If the government violates the criminal's rights to solve, prevent, or preempt crimes, even more crimes have occurred (privacy violations, killing of the criminal, etc.)

There should be explicit modes for phones and browsers available to criminals that allow them to safely commit crimes without risk of their rights being infringed upon."

I know you were being facetious, but a mode somewhere in between "track me" (data enabled) and "remove my phone from the network" (airplane mode) would be nice.

Maybe "for the next hour, don't do the normal location-tracking/biometrics monitoring/reporting". I get that Google has no incentive to make that feature but maybe Apple does?

Basically every normal adult commits at least misdemeanors daily (in the sense that a bored cop could stick you with one and an aggressive prosecutor could nail you for it if you didn't get a decent lawyer) crimes all the time.

Trying to make a black and white distinction between criminals and everyone else is futile.

>Basically every normal adult commits at least misdemeanors daily

This. Drive 5mph over the limit? That's a crime. Buy some stuff off craigslist? I hope you paid sales tax on that, buddy.

Well, who defines what a crime is? The problem starts there, I'd say.

That sounds plausible in the UK

They can't call it that. But they can call it... Incognito. Plus then you can just tell the cops: "i was watching xhamster all night.. see my phone was in porn mode (you know incognito is called porn mode)"