Israeli spyware vans infiltrate American streets and your phones

isaacfrond 129 points 40 comments July 21, 2026
cybernews.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (9 comments)

mikestew

It’s those $4.5MM Chevy Tahoes discussed earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48969582

1970-01-01

>Cognyte sells a lot of snake oil – for instance, the company claims to have created software that predicts where crime is likely to occur in the future. So they claim to implement machine learning which is snake oil?

roenxi

As I follow the stats, somewhere between 20-40% of the US public seems to be open to the idea that Israel is a genocidal ethnostate. I have a low opinion of the US State on the best of days but it actually seems quite remarkable that they would be buying from them given where public opinion seems to be at. The US public is tolerant of a lot of things but the political cost-benefits surely can't make sense for that.

128byte

Incase the article gets disappeared: https://nonogra.ph/us-police-now-armed-with-israeli-spy-vans...

paytonjjones

Title is misleading. The vans are manufactured by an Israeli company and bought by US government entities, not vans affiliated with the nation state of Israel.

ChrisArchitect

Title is: US police now armed with Israeli spy vans simulating mobile phone towers add in Israeli-made for a bit more clarity

zzzeek

wow that is a really misleading headline. I thought this was the Israeli government spying on US soil.

ChrisArchitect

Related tech discussion last October: ICE is using fake cell towers to spy on people's phones https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45184368

Georgelemental

You can partially protect yourself from these attacks by disabling 2G on your device. This won't prevent location tracking, but will stop the attacker from intercepting calls or texts. - Android: https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/cellular-s... - iOS: you must turn on Lockdown Mode https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120

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