Re:Mysterious Phony Cell Towers Could Be Intercepting Your C...
by schoen on Monday September 01, 2014 @10:20PM
(#8255520)
Slate reported last year that IMSI catchers or similar technologies were "in the hands of the feds since about 1995 [...] widely deployed since the mid '90s".
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/15/stingray_...
Wikipedia does suggest it was "first commercialized" from 2003, but that doesn't mean that the technology wasn't around even earlier. (Ross Anderson has referred to interference from governments in the security design of GSM, and the possibility of fake towers could well have been one of several things those responsible for the interference had in mind.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker