Matt Edmondson, at federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security for the last 21 years, got a call for help last year. A friend working in another part of government—he won’t say which one—was worried that someone might have been tailing them when they were meeting a confidential informant who had links to a terrorist organization. If they were being followed, their source’s cover may have been blown. “It was literally a matter of life and death,” Edmondson says.
“If you’re trying to tell whether you’re being followed, there are surveillance detection routes,” Edmondson says. If you’re driving, you can change lanes on a freeway, perform a U-turn, or change your route. Each can help determine whether a car is following you. But it didn’t feel like enough, Edmondson says. “He had those skills, but he was just looking for an electronic supplement,” Edmondson explains. “He was worried about the safety of the confidential informant.”
After not finding any existing tools that could help, Edmondson, a hacker and digital forensics expert, decided to build his own anti-tracking tool. The Raspberry Pi-powered system, which can be carried around or sit in a car, scans for nearby devices and alerts you if the same phone is detected multiple times within the past 20 minutes. In theory it can alert you if a car is tailing you. Edmondson built the system using parts that cost around $200 in total, and will present the research project at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week. He’s also open-sourced its underlying code.
The anti-tracking tool is made up of a Raspberry Pi, wireless signal detectors, and a battery pack.
Photographer: Matt Edmondson
In recent years there’s been an explosion in the number of ways people can be tracked by domestic abusers, stalkers, or those in the murky world of government-backed espionage. Tracking can either be software- or hardware-based. Stalkerware and spyware that can be installed directly on people’s phones can give attackers access to all your location data, messages, photos, videos, and more, while physical trackers—such as Apple’s AirTags—have been used to track where people are in real time . (In response to criticism, Apple has added some anti-tracking tools to AirTags.)
A quick search online reveals plenty of tracking tools, which are easy to buy. “There’s so much out there to spy on people, and so little to help people who are wondering whether they’re being spied on,” Edmondson says.
The homemade system works by scanning for wireless devices around it and then checking its logs to see whether they were also present within the past 20 minutes. It was designed to be used while people are on the move rather than sitting in, say, a coffee shop, where it would pick up too many false readings.
The anti-tracking tool, which can sit inside a shoebox-sized case, is made up of a few components. A Raspberry Pi 3 runs its software, a Wi-Fi card looks for nearby devices, a small waterproof case protects it, and a portable charger powers the system. A touchscreen shows the alerts the device produces. Each alert may be a sign that you are being tailed.
Trapped in a never-ending cycle of back pain and locked in a compensation battle with a government department that had placed her under surveillance, Jacqui Lambie lost hope completely.
She wrote her sons a farewell letter each and tried to take her own life.
Key points:
Senator Lambie joined the Army as an 18-year-old and was eventually medically discharged after a back injury
The discharge began a six-year battle with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs for compensation
Senator Lambie has been a vocal critic of the department during her political career and a key campaigner for the establishment of the royal commission
“There was no point. There was nothing left of me after that. I had no fight left in me,” the independent senator told a Hobart hearing of the Royal Commission into Defense and Veteran Suicide.
But instead of ending her life, she said the suicide attempt played a role in restarting it, with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs finally giving her the intense psychological care she needed.
It began a slow journey of rehabilitation, and a desire to do what she could to make the lives of veterans better, that eventually led to her being elected to Federal Parliament in 2014.
“I made a deal with God: if you’d just give me a second chance at life, I’d fight like hell for the veterans because I could understand what was going on and they weren’t getting a fair deal,” she said.
“From where I was to where I am today I’m very grateful that God has given me a second chance at life and that I have somehow been able to swing that around.”
Army ‘a life-saver’
Senator Lambie joined the Army as an 18-year-old in 1989.
Frequently in trouble, her family was supportive of her enlistment.
Jacqui Lambie was 18 when she joined the Army.(Facebook: Jacqui Lambie)
“I was seen to be around a bad group of people at that point of time who were bad influences, so for me, it was probably a life-saver that I had the opportunity to serve my country,” she said.
She told the commission she initially thrived in the environment, but it was not long before she was thrown into a curveball.
Without the knowledge of her or her superiors, she was pregnant, with the Army pushing to end her military career before it even really began.
“What they wanted me to do was discharge immediately and get going, but I did not want to discharge because I didn’t want to end up back in public housing with a child,” she said.
With the help of a lawyer, the Army relented, and Senator Lambie completed her basic training.
Her career almost ended again eight years later when she was charged following an incident.
“Quite frankly, after I got charged for basically assault, I should have been thrown out of the military and they did not do that for me,” she said.
“They gave me a second chance and I will always be very, very grateful for having that second chance.”
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Jacqui Lambie in tears while thanking her sons, who ‘paid a heavy price’ while she deteriorated.
‘I just couldn’t take it anymore’
She was sent on a compassionate posting to Devonport, in Tasmania’s north-west.
It was while she was based there, but on an infantry training course in Puckapunyal, that she suffered the first of what was to become a debilitating back injury.
“When I went to get out of bed, I could not get out of bed, I could not move,” she said.
Jacqui Lambie (left) pictured during her military service.(Facebook: Jacqui Lambie)
It started a two-year cycle of physiotherapy, painkillers and hiding her pain.
Two days before she was set to fly out to East Timor on deployment, her back gave in.
“For me that was it, I just couldn’t take it anymore,” she said.
“I just ended up flat on the floor and then that was pretty much the end for me once that happened.”
She was medically downgraded and sent to specialists for a solution, but her back would not recover.
Eventually, she was medically discharged in 2000.
Senator Jacqui Lambie hoped the commission would lead to lasting change for veterans.(Supplied: Royal Commission into Defense and Veteran Suicide)
The discharge began a six-year battle with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs for compensation, as well as debilitating pain and depression.
“The pain itself was completely out of control and it set into a pattern that once that set in, I had just about given up,” she said.
She told the commission that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs initially deemed her not unfit enough to receive an allowance on top of her disability pension.
Government surveillance from bush behind her house
She engaged a lawyer after being defeated by the process and initially had a series of small victories before a visit to a shopping center changed her life.
Senator Lambie was spotted carrying two shopping bags walking out of a two-dollar shop.
She told the commission the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services decided to put her under surveillance after suspicions she was faking her injuries.
Representatives from the rehabilitation service filmed from a bush near her back fence “with a camera lens coming over that fence”, watching her friends and children, she said.
They captured footage of Senator Lambie over several weeks, taking footage of her getting changed, and also interviewed people who knew her.
“There was an occasion where we were getting changed [inside her home] and I had my girlfriends there, we must have been trying on tops — they did film that,” she said.
“I found that terribly intrusive and quite frankly there was no reason to do that video surveillance.”
That resentment over the surveillance led to Senator Lambie failing to show up to a series of meetings with Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and the cancellation of her benefits.
The fight for compensation eventually ended in 2006 after the department accepted Senator Lambie was entitled to compensation.
She accessed medical treatment and her back injury slowly improved, allowing her to work in the office of Tasmanian Labor Senator Nick Sherry.
Senator Lambie urged veterans to come forward and share their story.(ABC News: Luke Bowden )
Life ‘spiraled out of control’
But she told the commission a setback proved devastating.
“Life completely and utterly spiraled out of control because I went back to pre-days where there was just so much pain and by then I’d lost all hope,” she said.
Senator Lambie said her mental health deteriorated to the point where she tried to take her own life.
“I found it difficult to be able to give a reason… to have reason to continue to live, even for the sake of my sons because I believed I was doing them more damage than good,” she said.
Senator Lambie finally received the psychological help she needed and started to rebuild her life, but said her “10 years of hell” took a huge toll on her family, especially her youngest son.
“He has really struggled during his life and… the reason that is because of what he had to go through with me,” she said.
Senator Lambie has been a vocal critic of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs during her political career, and a key campaigner for the establishment of the royal commission.
She paid tribute to the “peacemakers and peacekeepers” who helped make the commission happen, and hoped it would lead to lasting change for veterans.
“If you do not come forward now and tell your stories, even if you do not want to do it for yourselves, do it for your mates because there is nothing else if we do not fix it this time,” she said.
“I’m asking you to find the courage, whether you are serving, or whether you are not, you need to come forward because this is it.”
