The Cat-and-Mouse Game of Digital Surveillance
Scrolling through tech news this morning, I came across something that made me both hopeful and deeply frustrated at the same time. Google’s rolling out a new feature in Android 16 that can detect fake cell towers - those sneaky “stingray” devices that law enforcement and other actors use to intercept your phone communications. On one hand, it’s brilliant that our phones might finally warn us when we’re being spied on. On the other hand, the fact that we need this protection at all says everything about the surveillance state we’re living in.
The technical details are fascinating from a developer’s perspective. Google’s been gradually building these protections over several Android versions - disabling 2G connections in Android 12, blocking null ciphers in Android 14, and now in Android 16, actually warning users when their phone connects to a suspicious network. It’s a proper cat-and-mouse game between privacy advocates and surveillance technology, and for once, it feels like the good guys might be getting ahead.
But here’s what really gets under my skin: one commenter pointed out that this feature will likely be “shot down by the US government” or that authorities will simply get authentic identifiers from carriers to hide their stingrays. That cynical take rings depressingly true. We’ve seen it before with features like call recording being mysteriously disabled in certain regions, ostensibly for “legal reasons” but often seeming more about maintaining surveillance capabilities.
The irony isn’t lost on me that Google - a company that’s built an empire on data collection - is now warning us about other entities trying to spy on us. Someone quipped that Google just wants governments buying that information from them rather than collecting it themselves, and honestly, that’s probably not far from the truth. It’s surveillance capitalism all the way down.
Living here in Australia, we’re not immune to these concerns either. Remember the metadata retention laws that came in a few years back? Our government basically mandated that telcos keep records of who we call, when, and where we are when we do it. They promised it would only be used for serious crimes, but we all know how scope creep works with surveillance powers.
What really bothers me is how normalised this has all become. Young people growing up today just accept that their every digital move is tracked, catalogued, and potentially monitored. My teenage daughter uses her phone for everything - messaging friends, banking, navigation, entertainment - and she’s basically carrying around a surveillance device that could be compromised by anyone with the right equipment and a van parked nearby.
The technical requirements for these new protections also highlight another frustrating reality: they need new hardware, specifically modems that support version 3.0 of Android’s IRadio HAL. So even if you’ve got a recent phone, you’re probably out of luck unless you’re planning to upgrade to something like the upcoming Pixel 10. It’s planned obsolescence with a privacy twist - want protection from surveillance? Better buy a new phone.
Still, I’m genuinely excited about this development. The fact that Android is even attempting to detect and warn about stingray devices represents a significant shift in how tech companies are thinking about user privacy versus government surveillance. It’s a small victory in a much larger battle, but it’s progress nonetheless.
The real test will be whether these features actually make it to users intact, or whether they’ll be quietly disabled or neutered by the time they reach our pockets. Given the track record of privacy features being mysteriously unavailable in certain jurisdictions, I’m cautiously optimistic but prepared for disappointment.
For now, I’m just grateful that someone’s fighting this fight. Even if it’s an imperfect solution from a company with its own surveillance business model, it’s better than nothing. And who knows? Maybe this will inspire other manufacturers to follow suit, or push regulators to actually take digital privacy seriously instead of just paying lip service to it.
The surveillance state isn’t going anywhere, but at least our phones might start telling us when we’re in its crosshairs.