I’ve heard from people that these are some kind of special cameras, possibly with AI, that can completely scan your phone that is, the files on your phone, your contacts and so on, I don’t know for sure. It’s possible that even if your phone is turned off, it won’t help. It’s scary for me.
Maybe it’s my paranoia, but if I remember correctly, 5 years ago I didn’t even know that it was possible to spy on people via Wi-Fi and thought that AI wouldn’t come soon, but in reality, the reality turned out to be much scarier. Holy crap.
I’ve read a few articles, but they’re aimed at reducing the risk so that people don’t panic, it looks like they’re just trying to give small hints; perhaps you know more?
You need better news sources
They’re not completely wrong. It’s just not Flock.
Police have had Stingrays for well over a decade now, which are basically man-in-the-middle attacks. They mimic a real cell tower, so your phone connects to it like a normal cell tower. Then the police have full access to all transmissions your phone makes to that tower. That doesn’t give them access to things like your contacts that are stored encrypted locally, but it does give them access to your text messages in transit (if not E2EE encrypted), your voice data during transmission (so any phone calls you make they can listen in and record), and any other metadata in transmission.