Keep Out

The secret cell tower snooping devices have been all over the news lately. A lot of customers want to know how they can stop this, the ACLU wants to know how the government is going to handle this situation, and carriers are doing their best to let everyone know who requests information from their towers and when. T-Mobile has been quietly upgrading their network to make it more difficult for surveillance equipment to eavesdrop on calls and texts, according to the Washington Post. “The upgrade involves switching to a new encryption standard, called A5/3, that is harder to crack than older forms of encryption,” Ashkan Soltani and Craig Timberg of the Washington Post explained. “Testing by The Washington Post has found T-Mobile networks using A5/3 in New York, Washington and Boulder, Colorado, instead of the older A5/1 that long has been standard for second-generation (2G) GSM networks in the United States. More advanced technologies, such as 3G and 4G, already use stronger encryption.” T-Mobile didn’t explain the extent of the network upgrades, but said in a statement, “T-Mobile is continuously implementing advanced security technologies in accordance with worldwide recognized and trusted standards.”