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Pagers and walkie-talkies over cellphones – a security expert explains why Hezbollah went low-tech for communications
The synchronized explosion of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon in 2024 targeted Hezbollah, demonstrating the vulnerabilities and tracking capabilities of communication devices.
Last Updated on September 18, 2024 by Daily News Staff
Richard Forno, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Electronic pagers across Lebanon exploded simultaneously on Sept. 17, 2024, killing 12 and wounding more than 2,700. The following day, another wave of explosions in the country came from detonating walkie-talkies. The attacks appeared to target members of the militant group Hezbollah.
The pagers attack involved explosives planted in the communications devices by Israeli operatives, according to U.S. officials cited by The New York Times. Hezbollah had recently ordered a shipment of pagers, according to the report.
Secretly attacking the supply chain is not a new technique in intelligence and military operations. For example, the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted computer hardware bound for overseas customers, inserted malware or other surveillance tools and then repackaged them for delivery to certain foreign buyers, a 2010 NSA internal document showed. This differs from accessing a specific person’s device, such as when Israel’s Shin Bet secretly inserted explosives into a cellphone to remotely kill a Hamas bombmaker in 1996.
Hezbollah, a longtime adversary of Israel, had increased its use of pagers in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. By shifting to relatively low-tech communication devices, including pagers and walkie-talkies, Hezbollah apparently sought an advantage against Israel’s well-known sophistication in tracking targets through their phones.
Cellphones: The ultimate tracker
As a former cybersecurity professional and current security researcher, I view cellular devices as the ultimate tracking tool for both government and commercial entities – in addition to users, criminals and the mobile phone provider itself. As a result, mobile phone tracking has contributed to the fight against terrorism, located missing people and helped solve crimes.
Conversely, mobile phone tracking makes it easy for anyone to record a person’s most intimate movements. This can be done for legitimate purposes such as parents tracking children’s movements, helping you find your car in a parking lot, and commercial advertising, or nefarious ends such as remotely spying on a lover suspected of cheating or tracking political activists and journalists. Even the U.S. military remains concerned with how its soldiers might be tracked by their phones.
Mobile device tracking is conducted in several ways. First, there is the network location data generated by the phone as it moves past local cell towers or Stingray devices, which law enforcement agencies use to mimic cell towers. Then there are the features built into the phone’s operating system or enabled by downloaded apps that may lead to highly detailed user tracking, which users unwittingly agree to by ignoring the software’s privacy policy or terms of service.
This collected data is sometimes sold to governments or other companies for additional data mining and user profiling. And modern smartphones also have built-in Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS capabilities that can help with locating and tracking user movements around the world, both from the ground and via satellites. https://www.youtube.com/embed/CxC1KCoGbIM?wmode=transparent&start=0 Your phone contains many sensors that make it useful – and easy to track.
Mobile devices can be tracked in real time or close to it. Common technical methods include traditional radio direction-finding techniques, using intelligence satellites or drones, deploying “man in the middle” tools like Stingrays to impersonate cellular towers to intercept and isolate device traffic, or installing malware such as Pegasus, made by Israeli cyberarms company NSO to report a device’s location.
Nontechnical and slower techniques of user tracking include potentially identifying general user locations from their internet activity. This can be done from website logs or the metadata contained in content posted to social media, or contracting with data brokers to receive any collected location data from the apps that a user might install on their device.
Indeed, because of these vulnerabilities, the leader of Hezbollah earlier this year advised his members to avoid using cellular phones in their activities, noting that Israel’s “surveillance devices are in your pockets. If you are looking for the Israeli agent, look at the phone in your hands and those of your wives and children.”
Researchers have shown how these features, often intended for the user’s convenience, can be used by governments, companies and criminals to track people in their daily lives and even predict movements. Many people still aren’t aware of how much their mobile devices disclose about them.
Pagers, however, unlike mobile phones, can be harder to track depending on whether they support two-way communication.
Why go low-tech
A pager that only receives messages does not provide a signal that can facilitate tracking its owner. Therefore, Hezbollah’s use of pagers likely made it more challenging to track their operatives – thus motivating Israeli intelligence services’ purported attack on the supply chain of Hezbollah’s pagers.
Using low-tech tactics and personal couriers while avoiding the use of mobile phones and digital tools also made it difficult for the technologically superior Western intelligence agencies to locate Osama bin Laden for years after the 9/11 attacks.
In general, I believe the adversary in an asymmetric conflict using low-tech techniques, tactics and technology will almost always be able to operate successfully against a more powerful and well-funded opponent.
A well-documented demonstration of this asymmetry in action was the U.S. military’s Millennium Challenge war game in 2002. Among other things, the insurgent Red forces, led by Marine General Paul van Riper, used low-tech tactics including motorcycle couriers instead of cellphones to evade the Blue forces’ high-tech surveillance. In the initial run of the exercise, the Red team won the contest in 24 hours, forcing exercise planners to controversially reset and update the scenario to ensure a Blue team victory.
Lessons for everyone
The preference for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and al-Qaida to avoid using smartphones is a reminder for everyone that you can be, and likely are being tracked in various ways and for various purposes.
Israel’s purported response to Hezbollah’s actions also holds a lesson for everyone. From a cybersecurity perspective, it shows that any device in your life can be tampered with by an adversary at points along the supply chain – long before you even receive it.
Richard Forno, Principal Lecturer in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Long Track Back
Why Downtown Los Angeles Feels Small Compared to Other Cities
Downtown Los Angeles often feels “small” compared to other U.S. cities, but that’s only part of the story. With some of the tallest buildings west of the Mississippi and skyline clusters spread across the region, LA’s downtown reflects the city’s unique polycentric identity—one that, if combined, could form a true mega downtown.
Last Updated on February 18, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Panorama of Los Angeles from Mount Hollywood – California, United States
When people think of major American cities, they often imagine a bustling, concentrated downtown core filled with skyscrapers. New York has Manhattan, Chicago has the Loop, San Francisco has its Financial District. Los Angeles, by contrast, often leaves visitors surprised: “Is this really downtown?”
The answer is yes—and no.
Downtown LA in Context
Compared to other major cities, Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is relatively small as a central business district. For much of the 20th century, strict height restrictions capped most buildings under 150 feet, while cities like Chicago and New York were erecting early skyscrapers. LA’s skyline didn’t really begin to climb until the late 1960s.
But history alone doesn’t explain why DTLA feels different. The real story lies in how Los Angeles grew: not as one unified city center, but as a collection of many hubs.
Downtown Los Angeles
A Polycentric City
Los Angeles is famously decentralized. Hollywood developed around the film industry. Century City rose on former studio land as a business hub. Burbank became a studio and aerospace center. Long Beach grew around the port. The Wilshire Corridor filled with office towers and condos.
Unlike other cities where downtown is the place for work, culture, and finance, Los Angeles spread its energy outward. Freeways and car culture made it easy for businesses and residents to operate outside of downtown. The result is a polycentric metropolis, with multiple “downtowns” rather than one dominant core.
A Resident’s Perspective
As someone who lived in Los Angeles for 28 years, I see DTLA differently. While some outsiders describe it as “small,” the reality is that Downtown Los Angeles is still significant. It has some of the tallest buildings west of the Mississippi River, including the Wilshire Grand Center and the U.S. Bank Tower. Over the last two decades, adaptive reuse projects have transformed old office buildings into lofts, while developments like LA Live, Crypto.com Arena, and the Broad Museum have revitalized the area.
In other words, DTLA is large enough—it just plays a different role than downtowns in other American cities.
View of Westwood, Century City, Beverly Hills, and the Wilshire Corridor.
The “Mega Downtown” That Isn’t
A friend once put it to me with a bit of imagination: “If you could magically pick up all of LA’s skyline clusters—Downtown, Century City, Hollywood, the Wilshire Corridor—and drop them together in one spot, you’d have a mega downtown.”
He’s right. Los Angeles doesn’t lack tall buildings or urban energy—it just spreads them out over a vast area, reflecting the city’s unique history, geography, and culture.
A Downtown That Fits Its City
So, is Downtown LA “small”? Compared to Manhattan or Chicago’s Loop, yes. But judged on its own terms, DTLA is a vibrant hub within a much larger, decentralized metropolis. It’s a downtown that reflects Los Angeles itself: sprawling, diverse, and impossible to fit neatly into the mold of other American cities.
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Community
Local governments provide proof that polarization is not inevitable
Local politics help mitigate national polarization by focusing on concrete issues like infrastructure and community needs rather than divisive symbolic debates. A survey indicates that local officials experience less partisanship, as interpersonal connections foster recognition of shared interests. This suggests that reducing polarization is possible through collaboration and changes in election laws.
Lauren Hall, Rochester Institute of Technology
When it comes to national politics, Americans are fiercely divided across a range of issues, including gun control, election security and vaccines. It’s not new for Republicans and Democrats to be at odds over issues, but things have reached a point where even the idea of compromising appears to be anathema, making it more difficult to solve thorny problems.
But things are much less heated at the local level. A survey of more than 1,400 local officials by the Carnegie Corporation and CivicPulse found that local governments are “largely insulated from the harshest effects of polarization.” Communities with fewer than 50,000 residents proved especially resilient to partisan dysfunction.
Why this difference? As a political scientist, I believe that lessons from the local level not only open a window onto how polarization works but also the dynamics and tools that can help reduce it.
Problems are more concrete
Local governments deal with concrete issues – sometimes literally, when it comes to paving roads and fixing potholes. In general, cities and counties handle day-to-day functions, such as garbage pickup, running schools and enforcing zoning rules. Addressing tangible needs keeps local leaders’ attention fixed on specific problems that call out for specific solutions, not lengthy ideological debates.
By contrast, a lot of national political conflict in the U.S. involves symbolic issues, such as debates about identity and values on topics such as race, abortion and transgender rights. These battles are often divisive, even more so than purely ideological disagreements, because they can activate tribal differences and prove more resistant to compromise.
Such arguments at the national level, or on social media, can lead to wildly inaccurate stereotypes about people with opposing views. Today’s partisans often perceive their opponents as far more extreme than they actually are, or they may stereotype them – imagining that all Republicans are wealthy, evangelical culture warriors, for instance, or conversely being convinced that all Democrats are radical urban activists. In terms of ideology, the median members of both parties, in fact, look similar.
These kinds of misperceptions can fuel hostility.
Local officials, however, live among the human beings they represent, whose complexity defies caricature. Living and interacting in the same communities leads to greater recognition of shared interests and values, according to the Carnegie/CivicPulse survey.
Meaningful interaction with others, including partisans of the opposing party, reduces prejudice about them. Local government provides a natural space where identities overlap.
People are complicated
In national U.S. politics today, large groups of individuals are divided not only by party but a variety of other factors, including race, religion, geography and social networks. When these differences align with ideology, political disagreement can feel like an existential threat.
Such differences are not always as pronounced at the local level. A neighbor who disagrees about property taxes could be the coach of your child’s soccer team. Your fellow school board member might share your concerns about curriculum but vote differently in presidential elections.
These cross-cutting connections remind us that political opponents are not a monolithic enemy but complex individuals. When people discover they have commonalities outside of politics with others holding opposing views, polarization can decrease significantly.
Finally, most local elections are technically nonpartisan. Keeping party labels off ballots allows voters to judge candidates as individuals and not merely as Republicans or Democrats.
National implications
None of this means local politics are utopian.
Like water, polarization tends to run downhill, from the national level to local contests, particularly in major cities where candidates for mayor and other office are more likely to run as partisans. Local governments also see culture war debates, notably in the area of public school instruction.
Nevertheless, the relative partisan calm of local governance suggests that polarization is not inevitable. It emerges from specific conditions that can be altered.
Polarization might be reduced by creating more opportunities for cross-partisan collaboration around concrete problems. Philanthropists and even states might invest in local journalism that covers pragmatic governance rather than partisan conflict. More cities and counties could adopt changes in election law that would de-emphasize party labels where they add little information for voters.
Aside from structural changes, individual Americans can strive to recognize that their neighbors are not the cardboard cutouts they might imagine when thinking about “the other side.” Instead, Americans can recognize that even political opponents are navigating similar landscapes of community, personal challenges and time constraints, with often similar desires to see their roads paved and their children well educated.
The conditions shaping our interactions matter enormously. If conditions change, perhaps less partisan rancor will be the result.
Lauren Hall, Associate professor of Political Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Making a Difference
Why Christian clergy see risk as part of their moral calling
As clergy join protests against harsh immigration enforcement, a religious ethics scholar explains why many Christian Clergy view personal risk—arrest, backlash, even violence—as part of their vocation to protect vulnerable neighbors.
Laura E. Alexander, University of Nebraska Omaha
As Christian clergy across the United States participate in ongoing protests against harsh immigration enforcement actions and further funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, many are still pondering the words of Rob Hirschfeld. On Jan. 18, 2026, Hirschfeld, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, encouraged clergy in his diocese to “prepare for a new era of martyrdom” and put their wills and affairs in order.
He asserted that “it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”
Hirschfeld’s words attracted a lot of attention, with clergy generally responding positively, though at least one priest argued that he “did not sign up to be a martyr” and had a family and church relying on him.
Other clergy have willingly faced arrest for their advocacy on behalf of immigrants, seeing it as a moral calling. Rev. Karen Larson was arrested while protesting at the Minneapolis airport. She stated that when people are being separated from their families and taken to unknown detention centers, “this is our call” to protest on their behalf.
As a scholar of religious ethics, I am interested in how Christian clergy and thinkers consider personal risk when they feel called to engage in social action.
Ethics of risk
There are many examples of Christian leaders who have taken on risks out of a religious and moral obligation to provide spiritual care for people in need or advocate for oppressed communities.
Most data on the risks that clergy face in their roles as religious leaders comes from studies of religious leaders in institutional settings, such as hospitals or prisons.
Scholarship on clergy and chaplains in medical settings points to a professional obligation to take on risks. Similar to medical providers who often see risking exposure to infection as part of their professional responsibility, many clergy and chaplains in medical settings understand their vocation to include such a risk.
Questions about professional risks became particularly acute during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, when researchers were uncertain exactly how the disease was spread and caregivers feared they might acquire HIV through their bedside work.
In her memoir about chaplaincy with HIV patients, Audrey Elisa Kerr notes that Riverside Church in New York continued to organize funerals, ministries and support groups for HIV/AIDS patients despite “terror” in the wider community about contagion.
As a chaplain herself, Kerr says this story of “radical hospitality” inspired her to set aside her own fears and embrace her professional role caring for people who were ill and dying.
Priests and nuns of the Catholic Church who cared for HIV/AIDS patients in the 1980s risked both the fear of contagion and the disapproval of their bishops and communities, since many of the people they cared for were men who had sex with men.
Some felt, however, that they must care for those at the margins as part of their role in the church or their monastic order. Sister Carol of the Hospital Sisters of Saint Francis felt that it was simply her moral duty as a sister to “go where she was needed,” despite potential risk.
Examination of the ethical obligations of chaplains and clergy ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic when at least some priest, pastors and hospital chaplains felt an obligation to continue visiting patients for spiritual care.
In a reflection from 2020, Rev. David Hottinger, then working at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, noted that chaplains “felt privileged” to use their professional skills, even though they took on extra risk because they did not always have access to adequate protective equipment.
Risks in other institutional settings are not such a matter of life and death. Because of their professional preaching function, however, clergy in church settings do accept the risk of alienating church members when they feel religiously called to speak about social issues. Rev. Teri McDowell Ott has written about taking risks when discussing LGBTQ+ inclusion and starting a prison ministry.
Risk-taking during social protest
For many clergy, religious and ethical obligations extend beyond their work in institutions like churches and hospitals and include their witness in public life.
Many feel an obligation to preach on issues of moral importance, even topics that are considered controversial and might elicit strong disagreement. It is common for priests and pastors in conservative churches to include messages against legalized abortion in their sermons.
Tom Ascol of the Center for Baptist Leadership urged Baptist pastors to preach about abortion in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.
Rev. Leah Schade, a Lutheran minister and scholar, has argued that since 2017, mainline pastors have preached more often on issues like racism, environmental justice or gun violence. Schade says pastors are inspired to speak more bluntly about social issues because of their religious concern for people who are at risk of harm from injustice or government policies.
Some clergy view their moral obligations as going beyond preaching and leading them to on-the-ground advocacy and protest. Rev. Brandy Daniels of the Disciples of Christ denomination examines these obligations in an article on her participation in a group of interfaith clergy in Portland, Oregon. The group was convened by a local rabbi and supported protesters for racial justice in Portland in 2017. In Daniels’ analysis, clergy took on the risk of staying in the middle of protests and facing a violent police response in order to “bear moral witness,” something they were both empowered and obligated to do as religious leaders.
Risking their lives
There are more extreme cases in which clergy who challenged government leaders or policies were killed for their words and actions of protest.
In a well-known historical example, Bishop Oscar Romero, canonized as a martyred saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 2018, was assassinated in 1980 after speaking out against human rights violations against poor and Indigenous communities committed by the government of El Salvador. Romero viewed himself, in his priestly role, as a representative of God who was obliged to “give voice to the voiceless.”
During recent protests against ICE in Minneapolis and elsewhere, many clergy risked arrest and bodily harm. Rev. Kenny Callaghan, a Metropolitan Community Church pastor, who says that ICE agents in Minneapolis pointed a gun in his face and handcuffed him as he tried to help a woman they were questioning, said, “It’s in my DNA; I have to speak up for marginalized people.”
On Jan. 23, 2026, over 100 clergy were arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport as they protested and prayed against ICE actions. Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard said that she and others accepted being arrested as a way of demonstrating public support for migrants who are afraid to leave their homes.
In Chicago, ministers have been hit with projectiles and violently arrested. Presbyterian pastor David Black was shot in the head with a pepper spray projectile while protesting outside an immigration detention center in October 2025.
The clergy have told reporters that they feel a particular call to be out in public and to protect and support their vulnerable neighbors against ICE raids, at a time when families are afraid to go to school or work and U.S. citizens have been swept up in enforcement tactics as well.
As I see it, for these and many Christian clergy and ethicists, the call to ministry includes an obligation to express their values of care for vulnerable neighbors precisely through a public willingness to accept personal risk.
Laura E. Alexander, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Nebraska Omaha
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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