Tele-Source
Future cell phone infrastructure
Tele-source is the most basic cellular network which allows people to connect to the network and receive SMS messages. The network is designed to be deployed during disaster situations when traditional cellular networks have been disabled and will allow first responders to send information and updates to anyone connected to the network.
After Hurricane Sandy, thousands of people were without cell phone reception. How is this possible? The infrastructure which is so fundamental to our society was wiped out in an evening. This event brought to light the importance of communication and the need for having a network which can be deployed quickly to help first responders better provide aid to those in need.
Tele-source uses a transceiver, a device which can send and receive radio waves, and computer software to translate those frequencies operating in the cellular range and create communication between two cell phones through the system.
This project is currently being supported by the UNICEF Innovation team. Read about the project here and here.
Visit the Tele-source blog for complete documentation and setup.
Messenger of God
Art Hack Day - Collaboration with Daniel Moore and Jonathan Dahan
The Messenger of God was an experiment in GSM and GSM traffic interception. The purpose of this installation was to demonstrate how we should not have unfettered faith in our mobile devices and how anyone can intercept or disrupt the public GSM cell 
phone network. The piece consisted of an openBTS installation on an Ubuntu linux machine, a software define radio (an Ettus Research USRP B100), and some node.js. With this hardware/software combination we basically had our own reconfigurable GSM cell phone tower inside the gallery. We configured our network to represent itself as the commercial GSM service provider : < redacted >. We created a web interface to openBTS allowing the audience to broadcast sms messages to every device registered to the network. Over the course of the night we were able to automatically register 45+ devices on our GSM network and transmits countless messages.