Ice Bought Vehicles Equipped with Fake Cell Towers to Spy on Phones
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ICE purchased vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones, sparking concerns about privacy and surveillance, with commenters debating the extent of the surveillance and potential countermeasures.
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IMSI catchers/stingrays have been common practice in local law enforcement for decades, haven't they? How is this different?
> Some cell-site simulators can also intercept regular calls, text messages, and internet traffic.
In what decade was this true, other than text messages? I don't think it is very easy even for an IMSI catcher/stingray to eavesdrop on calls over LTE, for example.
They're doing this over the objection of state and local authorities, and despite the fact that their actions have been repeatedly ruled illegal by the courts.
"I think they're being employed in a shitty and potentially illegal manner outside their remit" is a perfectly arguable take that doesn't require tinfoil-hattery.
ICE is simply enforcing federal immigration laws.
“From January to June, the average number of detainees per day in ICE custody rose 43 percent, to more than 57,000. But since July, when the [OBBA] funding was approved, the detainee population has increased only about 5 percent, to roughly 60,000, the latest statistics show.
The stream of social-media clips showing masked federal agents kicking down doors, raiding Home Depot parking lots, and pulling people from their car have kept up the appearance of an ever-expanding campaign. ICE’s own data show that the agency’s buildup stalled over the summer” [1].
Meanwhile, with first-year deportations around 400,000 [2], they stand to match what Obama did in 2012 [3], despite spending $40 to 70bn, or 10 to 15x, more [4][5].
Instead of enforcing our immigration laws, ICE is involved in domestic policing, partisan intimidation and the illegal detention of American citizens.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/ice-imm...
[2] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/23/new-milestone-over-2-mil...
[3] https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20200109/110349/HHRG...
[4] https://www.ice.gov/factsheets/budget2012 $5.8bn, FY2012, $8.2bn CPI adjusted to ‘25
[5] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-budget-big-beautiful-b... $45 to 75 billion under OBBBA
Easy to inflate deportations when you catch the same fish and the river is flowing.
Much slower when you dam off the river and have to dig the remaining catfish out of the mud.
“U.S. Border Patrol agents recorded nearly 238,000 apprehensions of migrants crossing the southern border illegally in fiscal year 2025” [1]. For 2012 to 2015, the chart shows about 360k, 420k, 480k and 330k, respectively.
So ICE is spending $330 to 580 thousand dollars per additional Southwest border encounter in 2025 versus 2012. ($250 to 440 thousand if we average Obama’s second-term numbers.)
These numbers 10x even San Francisco’s circa 2016 homeless-industrial profligacy [2]. Unless ICE is a ball of wormy corruption, they’re clearly not focused on immigration enforcement.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/10/icymi-illegal-cr...
[2] https://www.hoover.org/research/despite-spending-11-billion-...
Crossings are lower overall due to securing of the border.
If it is, it's being pursued corruptly and incompetently.
From the top of the thread, ICE is spending boatloads more money to deport just about as many people as Obama did with a tenth of the budget [1]. Cross-border encounters are within 100,000, so the difference is not explained by recividism.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506994
Simply put, Americans gave Republicans a popular mandate to reduce illegal immigration.
Much of this was economic: illegal immigrants dilute the labour force. Some, particularly among Latin Americans, rose from perceived injustice: it’s frustrating to go through the American immigration process only to see someone who skipped it live a similar life. Some, e.g. those focused on crime, were just racists.
If ICE were simply enforcing the law, I don’t think there would be a national outcry. The problem is they aren’t. All while blowing the military budget of Saudi Arabia [1][2] to accomplish what Obama did with a tenth as much.
[1] https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/saudi-arabia-increases-d...
[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-budget-big-beautiful-b...
Then why are the farmers complaining about it? https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-farm-groups-want-trump-s...
Trump's win wasn't even close to being a mandate. Also, people (now) hate his enforcement policies.
> illegal immigrants dilute the labour force
ICE is not simply going after illegal immigrants for one thing. Also, immigrants support the economy. They do jobs Americans won't for one thing. But I'd love to see data on the amount of labor force dilution immigrants are doing. We should really one looking at the ownership class sitting on trillions of dollars of wealth and not sharing.
> perceived injustice
Exactly. We should have solidarity, not be pulling up the drawbridge behind us. But the current arrangement suits Capital just fine.
> If ICE were simply enforcing the law, I don’t think there would be a national outcry. The problem is they aren’t.
Agree. They're doing fascism.
The Republicans abandoned the economic debate, and shifted focus to social issues. This is what caught the Democrats, including myself, off guard. Rather than stealing our jobs, the immigrants were accused of stealing our cats.
Framing it as an economic issue in hindsight seems like a polite way of "steelmanning" the voting base, but I'm not sure it's really justifiable.
Not all of Federal law supersedes state law. The Tenth Amendment clarifies:
> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
If it's not given to the federal government to regulate, the federal government can't regulate it.
It does. That doesn’t mean federal agents supersede state law.
California restricted civil arrests at its courts [1]. The Congress can pass a law superseding this. What ICE can’t unilaterally do, legally, is ignore it. They have, the same as they’ve ignored federal court orders.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
ICE ran a 5AM motorcade through my mountain town, compete with helicopter escort. We’re in a red state, though, and border a red farm state, so I understand they were actually told to knock it off.
> "Wannabe paramilitary", final offer
The only part of a definition [1] that ICE might fail is in whether they’re professionally designated to act as a secret police. If by wannabe you’re saying ICE intends to be and act like a paramilitary, you’ve effectively conceded the point.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitary
Genuine curiosity, what did the motorcade look like? Gov plates or personal vehicles? Was the helicopter ICE or local police keeping an eye on things?
(I never said what you’re falsely quoting.)
An armed civilian organisation that wants to be—and behaves like—the military has satisfied the most important (and usually difficult to prove) requirement of paramilitarism. The only remaining question, if we’ve established intent, is capability. They obviously have the manpower, budget and equipment to constitute a martial force.
TL; DR If ICE is a “wannabe paramilitary,” they’re a paramilitary. If you’re giving that up you’re giving away the game.
> Gov plates or personal vehicles?
Civilian. (The relevant bit for whether a group is a paramilitary.)
I’d note that whether ICE is a paramilitary is a red herring. Paramilitaries are fine. Militias as paramilitaries.
The problem is ICE is acting as a secret state police.
> local police keeping an eye on things?
Not state or local.
What's the acceptable notation for paraphrasing? I typically use > for quotes.
Agreed, most of this is an unnecessary argument over terminology when I was simply calling them Temu Stasi.
We'll see about the secret police thing, for now they seem to be just about getting their deportation bounties.
No clue :P. But I think quotation marks should be saved for actual quotations, particularly in a threaded context. (Air quotes absolutely muddy the waters.)
[1] https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-...
What's the proportion of US citizens arrested compared to actual illegal immigrants?
If I'm a US citizen and I get swept up in an immigration raid, my lawyer calls my wife who brings my US passport and I'm released. A pain in the ass, but not a violation of my civil rights. Now if I get beat up by ICE, or they file a false claim for resisting, then sure, we've got grounds for a case that my rights were violated. But constitutional rights are not a blanket "I can never be arrested if I think I'm innocent"
They simply got a warrant retroactively after they already did it. Released without charge, but they just invented some paperwork afterwards that an anonymous dog had alerted (judge signed it about 12 hours after I was 'not' arrested). No mention on the PC paperwork who the dog was or who the handler was, as far as I know they didn't exist.
So yeah that's nice in theory but in practice they can simply jail you without recording an arrest, then retroactively invent PC. When I ran a federal background check it came up with no arrests, despite the fact I was imprisoned.
The whole point is people are being arrested and deported without probable cause, or based on their race, and deported without real due process.
There is no chance for these people to call their lawyer or wife, in fact ICE can't even tell you where some of these people are being detained.
Understand what is happening here.
In general, particularly in the past, yes. Currently, a statistically significant number of ICE agents are acting outside the colour of law, in some cases with possibly treasonous intent.
What actions are you referring to and what is the treasonous intent? They seem to just be self-selected xenophobes trying to chase bonus money.
By definition, the supreme courts decisions are the law, unless the legally prescribed measures to overrule them are taken.
The Supreme Court suddenly deciding that the constitution does not matter does not make their decision law, it erodes trust in that institution and removes their mandate to execute the law. Said supreme court has decided to throw away all trust in favor of giving unchecked and clearly illegal power to the executive, overriding Congress's very clear authority as delegated by the constitution.
Many of the actions taken by this Supreme Court are illegitimate and are things that will need to be reckoned with assuming that the presidency changes hands in 2028. As well as the actions by ICE and this presidency in general.
Now, the legitimacy of the CONSTITUTION is based on what we, collectively, agree on, however
SCOTUS has been relied on far too much as a method of legitimation of extra-constitutional powers. People know they are lying bastard, but because the court-gods have used their holy powers to interpret the constitution as magically meaning stuff like intrastate commerce is actually interstate commerce and sawn off shotguns aren't actually protected 'arms' then many gullible zealots will actually believe that.
The Constitution vests "the judicial Power of the United States" in "one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish" [1].
That isn't the same as "ultimate authority to interpret the law." In practice, SCOTUS does usually have this power, due to Marbury and other precedent. In practice, too, it can be bullied, e.g. by FDR and potentially right now.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-3/
https://cis.org/Report/Plenary-Power-Should-Judges-Control-U...
If you want it changed, you have 100 ways to advocate for that without declaring one of the greatest American institutions we have as "illegitimate". It's an extreme view, but certainly common in shrinking hyper-left-wing online spaces.
You won't always get your way. That's Democracy.
Who are you responding to? I don't see that anywhere in this thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenary_power https://cis.org/Report/Plenary-Power-Should-Judges-Control-U...
The deportations to Ecuador despite a court order not to. Detaining an American and refusing him a lawyer [1]. Ignoring state law (where not superseded by federal law).
[1] https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-...
Detentions: I've read a handful of stories of citizens being detained in the dragnet operations, then released. We'll see if they have successful civil rights suits. Depending on the scale, this could disprove the contention that ICE is largely acting within the law. Since this isn't a haphazard operation, they probably have some reason to believe their detention powers cover this.
My understanding is a lot of them get deported before their cases have run course. That, in turn, robs them of standing.
> Depending on the scale, this could disprove the contention that ICE is largely acting within the law
I agree that everything being said here is allegation. That said, if we're waiting for unappealable judiical findings, that's could take us into the 2030s.
How about detaining US citizens without warrants for days at a time and then releasing with no charges? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/09/george-...
I'd love to be wrong because it means the judciary has a chance to shut this down but I fear outside of a few civil rights suits this will have to be remedied at the ballot box.
A lot of things are legal and still wrong based on our core principles as a country. Its our duty to oppose them.
But a lot of this won't change without "active, provocative, non-violent" resistance as Gandhi would say.
If I'm in a crowd in the presence of a number of other law breakers, why would I think that I couldn't ever be temporarily detained? I mean, yes, it shouldn't be indefinite and there shouldn't be a high bar to clear to prove actual innocence, but we have process for this. I can be arrested without much provocation at all. I then have to be charged, I have the opportunity to enter a plea, get bail, and then I get a trial. All of that can (and does) happen to people who are legitimately innocent.
Without probable cause? The Fourth Amendment.
> shouldn't be a high bar to clear to prove actual innocence
I see that you are comfortable with a presumption of guilt so long as the burden of proof of actual innocence isn’t too rigorous, but that’s exactly backwards.
Missing a court date once multiple years ago, failing to navigate a complex process, and even intentionally over staying a tourist visa does not warrant the loss of humanity, due process, basic rights, dignity, and humanity
Most Americans support the idea of deporting people who break our immigration laws, thusly cutting in line while millions of others patiently wait.
This really doesn't have to be an emotional issue. Very few Americans support actual open borders. We can't feed, house or provide medical care to the entire world. That is why there is a process.
Were you this vocal when Obama deported millions, or is this just more "I hate Trump" hot air?
Obama prioritized deportation of people convicted of serious crimes and recent arrivals after they got their day in court. He did not call Mexicans rapists. The admin did not arrest US citizens. Being arrested by the feds even if you did not break the law is a much worse ordeal.
> Most Americans support the idea of deporting people who break our immigration laws, thusly cutting in line while millions of others patiently wait.
The line for legal citizenship does not move faster if you deport more people.
> This really doesn't have to be an emotional issue. Very few Americans support actual open borders. We can't feed, house or provide medical care to the entire world. That is why there is a process.
When masked men come out of a van and kidnap you off the streets in broad daylight, tell me if it's an emotional issue or not.
> Were you this vocal when Obama deported millions, or is this just more "I hate Trump" hot air?
Were you always a fascist sympathizer or did Trump stoke those feelings in you?
> This really doesn't have to be an emotional issue.
I think you're misreading the OP and/or ignoring recent news. OP's contention is that the way it's being executed deserves an emotional response -- everything from ignoring judges to send people to El Salvadoran mega-prisons, to roaming streets in masks with creditable allegations about racial profiling. [0]
I'd like to know more about your claim about feeding, housing, and providing care to the whole world.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/us/politics/supreme-court...
Okay, but dragging citizens out of their homes without a warrant (https://www.commondreams.org/news/ice-raid-chicago-apartment) sure is.
Obama’s deportations were mostly border patrol apprehending and pushing people back across the border, not ICE being super efficient at rounding up people in the interior of the country.
A good primer on immigration enforcement before and during the Obama admin:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deporta...
The US constitution applies to all persons (people) inside of the USA regardless of citizenship. The amendment says PERSON, not CITIZEN.
Therefore it should not matter at all how that person got here, they are due the same rights and process as __anyone__ else on American soil. That is the 14th amendment of the constitution, further backed by multiple ultra-important and historical supreme court precedents that rights apply to ALL 'people' and not just 'citizens'.
Deportation is not a punishment and is entirely avoidable in 99% of cases: don't overstay or enter illegally.
Oops a citizen, don’t look so brown next time. Catch and release.
That’s such a great point. Deportation is supposed to be incredibly violent because it’s a punishment. I’m jotting that one down since it’s certainly not written in any laws. I don’t wanna forget.
More relevant to ICE, is the 5th Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from doing that.
This means they can’t prove if they are here legally or not.
Furthermore, the administration wants to end birthright citizenship, which they will no doubt aim to make retroactive. Not being able to prove citizenship or status means (according to you) that you have no rights. anybody born here or otherwise will subject to this process and unable to prove their citizenship.
And again, the treatment these people are receiving is absolutely heinous, especially considering that they’ve not been charged with or found guilty of a violent crime.
I’m not sure about specific rules around who can appeal to the Supreme Court, nor am I sure why such an appeal has been mentioned… but once people on American soil lose basic rights we all do. All it takes is being ACCUSED of the right non-violent crime and then you have absolutely zero rights and are treated like an animal.
We should be better than this even if the law doesn’t say we have to be (which it does). If folks are here illegally and subject to deportation, prove it. Don’t hide them in the system and deprive them of representation.
I’m not sure what an undocumented (or documented but missing some arbitrary checkbox) person did to you but I can assure you it doesn’t mean that person or others should be subjected to this treatment in a civilized society.
Questions of due process, as due process is a federal Constitutional guarantee, are controversies arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and, as such, are within the judicial power defined in Article III of the Constitution.
Follow the law. I'm not asking for more process than the law specifies, but ICE has to actually follow the law. If they won't, then they no longer have legal authority to do what they're doing, and they're just another gang.
To the parent poster's point, the obligation of the citizen in a democracy (at least in theory) is to try to align those.
To rudely open a dictionary:
"As a general rule" - phrase of general - in most cases.
Agents of the state are supposed to be acting within the law IN ALL CASES.
The SS & SA were operating entirely within the law, if you ignore the times where they weren't.
The rhetorical trick of my reply being that it forces you to either address to the meat of the subject, or leave the statement uncontested.
But congratulations, conceding the argument rather than ousting yourself as a fascist was the better choice.
Stingrays are somewhat it common practice. But they force every device to attach to look for the one they want. And its reasonable to feel queasy about that for any number of reasons.
They will get all the data. Not only voice, data and SMS/RCS.
All modern smartphones (like Pixels) allow you to switch off 2G. They even warn if you want to activate it.
They may not want to leave a paper trail.
“To obtain a [legal] wiretap order, law enforcement must demonstrate probable cause to a judge” [1]. Given ICE has been arresting Americans, they probably aren’t bothering with cause. Legal intercepts also require “minimization procedures to limit the interception of conversations unrelated to the investigation,” which ICE may not want to do. And perhaps most importantly, “violations of 18 U.S.C. § 2511 are considered federal felonies,” with those convicted facing criminal penalties and being subject to civil liability.
I hate to make this analogy, but it’s akin to the Gestapo’s NBH obsession. They knew they were acting illegally, and didn’t want to leave the evidence that would convict them.
[1] https://legalclarity.org/what-is-wiretapping-and-when-is-it-...
It used to be possible to just set up an analog receiver and you could listen to nearby cell phone calls.
If evidence of the wiretap never needs to be entered into the official record, did it really exist in the first place?
The article doesn't actually mention what ICE is actually using the cell site simulators for. It's possible that they're only collecting IMSIs and not text/voice traffic, which might still be wiretapping, but it'd be more difficult to argue in front of a judge.
This makes sense, considering the regime is hiring Jan 6th insurrectionists like Jared Wise. Legality has gone out the window.
The anti-2G security measure is pretty much exclusive to a few high-end phones as far as I can tell. iPhones can enable it with lockdown mode (which also disables things like JIT and can make websites and app run slower), Google has added a toggle, and I think a few other manufacturers have it too, but you need support in the modem firmware to actually do anything with it.
Even then, 3G and 4G can also leak identifiers if you can fake being a base station. The identifiers are not as easy to obtain as on 2G, but there's a reason 5G added a masking feature to LTE. Especially combined with access to an SS7 capable line, you can pretty much replicate all of the 2G hacks with cellular tech at least up to 4G, maybe even newer than that.
Cellular firmware protection mechanisms seem to be targeting 2G exploitation so far. It'd be extremely unpractical (and probably impossible) to enforce some kind of "5G NR only" mode, but without such a mode you're going to be at risk of Stingray-like devices.
I've got it on my phone which I think is mid-market at best: moto g stylus 5g - 2023. Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. ~ $250 in 2023.
Technically yes but there are back-room agreements to bypass this. I used to have warrants on my desk to set up call tracing in the 90's and eventually I was told to not require them any more and just leave test system and modems enabled logging disabled so agents could set up their own call tracing. The people I worked for had no skin in the game as they were all from the EU. I would be very surprised if this was no longer a thing. If anything I would expect it to be much simpler and more stream-lined by now, probably some HTTPS API end-point and some app on their phone.
In fairness to the agents some things are time sensitive like kidnappings / abductions. Provided logging is not disabled I think it is fine they have real time access if someone actually audits the logs and matches them up to incidents much like license plate queries by cops are supposed to be audited.
In case folks hadn't been paying attention, probable cause isn't even worth their trouble when arresting someone these days.
> “DHS law enforcement uses ‘reasonable suspicion’ to make arrests,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Associated Press
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-admin-race-baiting-lawsuit-wo...
Probably for the same reason they're wearing masks
https://github.com/EFForg/rayhunter
which pairs nicely with a
https://www.amazon.com/Orbic-Verizon-Hotspot-Connect-Enabled...
https://cellguard.seemoo.de/
It works on iOS devices without any extra hardware, even on non jailbroken devices, by analyzing baseband debug logs exported by the OS.
https://support.apple.com/en-in/104978#:~:text=If%20Find%20M...
Still lots of devices that have physical SIM cards and would be senseless if the device couldn’t be tracked if the SIM was removed.
I figured it worked more like an AirTag and pinged nearby devices.
That means trump is spending 17x the farm bailout on ICE. That's insanity.
That $10 bil is coming out of our pockets.
Alternatively: Security & privacy > Advanced Protection > Device protection. That does other stuff too though
I'm not aware of a way to do this on iPhones...
I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that many of these attacks work by performing 2G downgrading.
A quick search suggests Lockdown mode might do it, which is corroborated by their support docs. It also does a bunch of other things that will probably degrade most users' experience, for what it's worth. https://support.apple.com/en-us/105120
> Wireless connectivity: Your device won't automatically join non-secure Wi-Fi networks and will disconnect from a non-secure Wi-Fi network when you turn on Lockdown Mode. 2G and 3G cellular support is turned off for iPhone and iPad.
(Instructions to enable it are on the linked page.)
But also WTF Apple... I appreciate that this mode exists but each of those things should be allowed to be toggled independently. People need more fine grained experience.
For things that I think will affect people more than the wireless connectivity
I swear... Apple really does not want to make privacy and security convenient for users. It's as if (...) they want to provide the tools to say they have the best security but then make the UX so poor that no one will end up using them (and then they can justify not developing more because "nobody uses them")- Message attachments are blocked because Apple has not figured out to serialize and deserialize attachments without buffer overflows. Look at how many zero days are due to message attachments. It's pretty clownish tbh.
- FaceTime is blocked because Apple has not figured out how to prevent an incoming FaceTime call from silently spying on you, which has already happened a couple times.
Government interception of your cell connection falls into a similar category of threat, so it's bundled together.
I have no doubt that the problems you guys solve are incredibly complex. There is no question about that.
But does bundling really make sense? I'm not sure why being subject to a 2G downgrade attack is relevant to my threat model including message attachments or FaceTime.
For example, going to a concert, protest, or any large gathering greatly increases my chance of being subject to a 2G downgrade attack but I'm unconvinced it increases my chances of multimedia or FaceTime based attacks.
These fall together in an high enough level but doesn't all security issues? A step down in abstraction and I don't think these are linked.
But you're the expert here. I'll trust you over me, but would like to better understand what I'm missing. This is Hacker News. We can expect everyone here to be familiar with programming and basic security here. So get technical with me
Lockdown mode is intended to protect against sophisticated actors, the kind who will buy 0days for six or seven figures, roll it into a new version of their product and sell it to governments.
Lockdown mode blocks the riskiest parts of the platform. For example, iMessage no longer automatically unfurls links, because anyone can send you a message and potentially send an exploit that your phone happily triggers without you doing anything.
You don't get to pick a la carte because Apple wants the feature to be effective and simple to enable.
There's also the codec problem. Apple doesn't trust itself to write secure codecs for message attachments, realtime codecs are at least as suspect. Codecs are tricky, and many vendors mess them up, so I'm not picking on Apple.
That's pretty much against the Apple ethos, you're supposed to either use the things like everyone else does, or find something else. I guess that's the great and bad part about Apple. Signed, iPhone user.
That would appear to cut 4G too though which is not great
You'll actually have these experiences in congested cities. Ever go to a concert and realize you don't actually have cell service? That's because the tower is fully occupied. Unfortunately phones might not report this to you and might not report the downgrade. Making Android and Apple complacent...
https://www.eseye.com/resources/blogs/2g-3g-network-status-u...
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/the-3g-shutdown-how-will-it-aff...
I'm running LTE-only with zero problems for 2 years now without a single coverage gap. Even in the rural parts.
East to west, Texas is larger than most European nations. Meaning it has rural areas larger than some European nations.
Whilst there probably are other complaints to add to build the explanation, scale isn't one. The US does have vast and empty spaces.
Why not?
Europe seems to be about 10 million km2 in land size, and the USA 9 million km2. Are you trying to say that because Europe has bigger land size, it's hard for Europeans to imagine individual states' sizes?
That one desert, of many, is about 190,000 miles in size. That's half the size of the whole of France.
Are you really saying covering that, with 100% coverage, with no dead spots at all, is a reasonable task to undertake?
FWiW the state I grew up in is 3x the area of Texas with cattle stations larger than those tiny Texas ranches.
~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur5EQ1NZN6A
If you want to challenge the myth of coverage in Europe forget about size comparisons and look to some of the hard walking trails in remote areas; Via Dinarica Kosovo is known for it's beauty and harsh terrain, not for it's cell reception.
Elsewhere in the Balkans, Romania, et al you'll find blind spots.
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