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Privacy Government The Courts

Judge Unseals 500+ Stingray Records 165

Posted by Soulskill from the going-for-the-high-score dept.
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Ars Technica: A judge in Charlotte, North Carolina, has unsealed a set of 529 court documents in hundreds of criminal cases detailing the use of a stingray, or cell-site simulator, by local police. This move, which took place earlier this week, marks a rare example of a court opening up a vast trove of applications made by police to a judge, who authorized each use of the powerful and potentially invasive device

According to the Charlotte Observer, the records seem to suggest that judges likely did not fully understand what they were authorizing. Law enforcement agencies nationwide have taken extraordinary steps to preserve stingray secrecy. As recently as this week, prosecutors in a Baltimore robbery case dropped key evidence that stemmed from stingray use rather than fully disclose how the device was used.
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Judge Unseals 500+ Stingray Records More

Judge Unseals 500+ Stingray Records

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  • Consent of the Governed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @12:20AM (#48442555)
    You can not consent to what you do not know. A free society mandates that the governing be done in open view of the public. Otherwise, how can we consent to what we are unaware of. As Lincoln said: "... of the people, by the people, for the people..."

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by cold fjord ( 826450 )

      The US is a Republic, not a direct democracy. The lawmakers are representatives that do some things behind closed doors out of practical necessity. Abraham Lincoln had people spying on the Confederacy, and that wasn't done in the open view of the public either. There is always going to be a tension between the need to keep the public informed and the need to keep some things secret. Trying to resolve that tension by asserting there must be no secrets in government is a losing game and it goes against pr

      • Re:Consent of the Governed (Score:5, Informative)

        by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @01:55AM (#48442743)
        ...certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it ... End of story. There can be no action taken by a government on behalf of its people argued to be for its people, yet conceal that action from its people in the name of its people. It's oxymoronic.

        need to keep some things secret

        Need to keep things secret? Who decides what is needed to be kept secret? Patriots? Those who stand with liberty and freedom certainly don't.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Re Need to keep things secret?
          Thats what the release of the records will show. Legal teams can go over past cases and talk about what was done to the press.
          Issues of parallel construction, what legal teams saw or where not allowed to see and when can be talked about to the press.
          Legal teams can then talk to the press about the use of a IMSI catcher, IMSI catcher like devices with denial-of-service attack options, location monitoring, transceiver amplifiers.
          Meet the machines that steal your phone

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by cold fjord ( 826450 )

          You seem to hold some mistaken ideas about what "those who stand with liberty and freedom" actually do in some cases. The people that wrote that text you quote employed spies and kept some matters secret, both before and after the Revolution.

          Resolution of Secrecy Adopted by the Continental Congress, November 9, 1775 [yale.edu]

          Resolved, That every member of this Congress considers himself under the ties of virtue, honour, and love of his country, not to divulge, directly or indirectly, any matter or thing agitated or debated in Congress, before the same shall have been determined, without leave of the Congress; nor any matter or thing determined in Congress, which a majority of the Congress shall order to be kept secret. And that if any member shall violate this agreement, he shall be expelled this Congress, and deemed an enemy to the liberties of America, and liable to be treated as such; and that every member signify his consent to this agreement by signing the same.

          Maybe you should read that again just so it sinks in - not keeping certain secrets could make you an enemy of the liberties of America in the eyes of the Founding Fathers.

          Do you understand the

        • ...certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it ... End of story. There can be no action taken by a government on behalf of its people argued to be for its people, yet conceal that action from its people in the name of its people. It's oxymoronic.

          need to keep some things secret

          Need to keep things secret? Who decides what is needed to be kept secret? Patriots? Those who stand with liberty and freedom certainly don't.

          You are arguing that *nothing* should be kept secret from the people. Not the use of these devices by law enforcement, or the plans to go kill bin Laden, nuclear launch codes, etc.

          If you claim you're not arguing that, then you *must* believe that *some* things should be kept secret, and if you do, I'll ask you who decides which things should be. You?

          I love absolutist arguments like the one you made. You represent a "pure" view - really, *no* action can be taken by the government to benefit the people,

      • Good to you so proudly standing for the queen....

        • I know you're not really detail oriented, but your overlooking the first sentence of my post is a bit egregious even for you.

          The US is a Republic .....

        • There are only two things that I stand for

          1: The Queen
          2: To Pee

      • Unfortunately, now the gov't is "Abraham Lincoln" and the rest of the population is "the Confederacy".

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        The US is a Republic, not a direct democracy.

        He didn't say it was. If you think Republic and Democracy are incompatible, you don't understand either term.

        The US is an oligarchy in rhetoric only, in reality it is a republic in which corporations can't vote but citizen can. Election still determine the composition of Congress and it is Congress that makes the laws, not corporations, even if corporations can and do influence the contents of various laws.

        What kind of dumbfuckery is this? The bank bailouts al

        • He didn't say it was. If you think Republic and Democracy are incompatible, you don't understand either term.

          If you think a republic and direct democracy are compatible, you don't understand the term. That is an important distinction that plays into that whole "representative government" thing, not to mention secrecy debates.

          What kind of dumbfuckery is this? The bank bailouts alone make a very bad liar out of you. The mandate to purchase for-profit health insurance further pulls back the curtain to reveal that you've put on your clown shoes.

          Consulting the Congressional record I could find votes by Senator Mccain and Reid. Could you show me in the Congressional record the votes by Citibank and United Healthcare? Or aren't there any?

          Where are Citibank and United Healthcare registered to vote?

          I find it hard to believe you took a t

          • The pedant's pedant antecedant was to see the point, but fail to read it.

            Since your pedantry has you all tied up in knots, let me break down what others are so desperately trying to get you to realize.

            1) Yes, The people casting the votes for legislation are indeed the elected officials. HOWEVER, the laws being voted on are often NOT PENNED BY THESE PEOPLE. Instead, they are often first penned as proposals by interest groups, which then get run through an approvals and support process, and get folded into l

            • It has been fucking PROVEN that the popular vote and popular issue created interest groups have practically no power to influence US policy, and yet you cling to the "VOTE!, IT'S THE WAY!" statement.

              Really? I hear that the NRA, unions, ACLU, AARP, NAACP, and plenty of other organizations have influence. You'll telling me they don't? .

              • If you note in the article I cited, there was research that concluded this after reviewing data for 20 years.

                If you disagree with the position, the onus of proof is on you to show how the interpretation is wrong.

                you don't get an easy out.

                • It doesn't matter if you have 100 years of data if the study is wrong.

                  Here is Center For American Progress President Neera Tanden [realclearpolitics.com] explainging how she helped write one of the biggest pieces of legislation in US history, Obamacare. It seized control over 1/6th of the economy and had many far reaching effects, not all of which have been seen yet.

                  I don't recall that the Center for American Progress is noted as a being an advocate for "the rich." So it looks like interest groups do have some pull after all.

                  • While your example is indeed a high profile one, it is still just that-- one example-- which is not what is needed to counter the claim of the researchers.

                    That claim being that statistically, politicians listen more to campaign financiers and lobbyists than they do to their actual constituency of registered voters, and do so by a very large margin.

                    "Oh look! This voter advocacy group got what they wanted! That means 'You're Wrong!'"

                    No, it means one of several things:

                    1) The disparity is not an absolute; (whic

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        First, Abe wasn't any part of the government of the Confederacy so the obligation to openness didn't apply there.

        However, no matter where you might draw the line for public disclosure, surely the executive has no right to keep Congress and the judicial branch in the dark as they have done with Stingray. I would go further and say that the existence and use of the tech should be publicly disclosed while I understand they may need to keep the operational details of a particular use secret until they either pr

  • Police legal authority (Score:3)

    by currently_awake ( 1248758 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @12:25AM (#48442577)
    In the absence of a judicial order/warrant a police officer should have the same rights as any ordinary citizen, except when they see a crime being committed. If police can operate a stingray then anyone should be able to do so. If police can demand (and get) telephone records without cause then so should everyone else.
    • If the police do not have a warrant, then you can refuse to give the police information. Like an individual can plead the 5th, and remain silent, short of a court order, so can a corporation. Verizon / AT&T do not have to hand over anything without a warrant or law saying they have to. But the question is, how much money do they get for cooperating? How much does the government spend on telecom services, and how much grant money is spent on the telecom industry? They are incentivized to cooperate.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jonwil ( 467024 )

        The issue here isn't that AT&T or Verizon are handing over data.
        The police are basically using devices produced (without the cooperation of carriers in many cases) that essentially "man in the middle" cellular telephony signals to capture the information they want.

        • I know, the stingray is essentially a hacking tool. That makes you think though, why on earth is there a large wireless network carrying sensitive data without TLS (transport layer security), or encryption between the modem on the phone, and the carrier? Either the contents are not sensitive, or the carriers / cell phone manufactures are complicit or worse.. incompetent.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            Re 'Either the contents are not sensitive"
            Think back to the early cell standards. Who set them and why? Emerging cell networks had to be safer from random strangers but totally open in real time to govs and mil needs.
            Cost, time and who works on the telco networks can also be important to local law enforcement officials.
            Why risk a computer database entry or tracked code change in a national or global telco system? A number or location is now been tracked.
            Who at the telco has seen or can track the l

          • I know, the stingray is essentially a hacking tool. That makes you think though, why on earth is there a large wireless network carrying sensitive data without TLS (transport layer security), or encryption between the modem on the phone, and the carrier? Either the contents are not sensitive, or the carriers / cell phone manufactures are complicit or worse.. incompetent.

            GSM dates to 1987. When it was created, the previous mobile telephony standard was analogue - you could listen in on calls just with a regu

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AHuxley ( 892839 )
              The only trick is getting local state and city officials to upgrade for 4G LTE without paperwork showing to local media or a FIOA request.
              Cities scramble to upgrade “stingray” tracking as end of 2G network looms (Sept 2 2014)
              http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
            • If technical standards (in this case, for GSM) mean anything, then you should be able to design and implement such a pseudo-tower from the documentation. GETTING the documentation, on the other hand, may be expensive : many standards are actually quite expensive to purchase, and many are also particularly encumbered with patent rights too. But these [should be | are] implementation issues which should be resolvable.

              So in theory, you ought to be able to work out the maximal capabilities of such a device fro

        • The way to make them was shown at Defcon years ago, and there is plenty of information online on how to make a femtocell.

          You could make one and use it, but unless you're only intercepting your own phone, you'll likely get some unwelcome attention from law enforcement.

    • If the police have in their possession the full telephone meta-data for all phone calls, then we should be able to get that with an access to information request. Since it's not part of an ongoing police investigation and there are no privacy considerations in meta-data.

      • No no thats not how it works. When it comes to you asccesing you info its breach of privacy. SIlly citizen tricks are for kids...

    • except when they see a crime being committed

      Citizens already have the same powers as police when they see a crime being committed. That is to say that police officers have nothing special other than a presumed reliability when testifying in court.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Marful ( 861873 )
        Police also have qualified immunity. Which is the most important part that separates regular citizens and police from effecting arrests.

    • I agree with one exception....

      The police should have less rights than an ordinary citizen when acting in their official capacity. Our rights guaranteed in the constitution are protections from government intrusions and the police are government plain and clear. The people however have more leeway in some matters that government is expressly prohibited in or limited unless certain hoops are cleared first.

    • The fact that (onduty) police would rather throw away evidence gathered using Stingray that admit they used Stingray seems to heavily indicate that even the police don't believe that evidence gathered without a warrant through the use of Stingray can very well get them into legal trouble.
      If you think I'm talking about the Stingray "evidence" being excluded, that obviously isn't it for two reasons. First, they themselves dropped it, which if that was the penalty they were worried about, it would be extremely

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Zxern ( 766543 )

        And that's it exactly. The stingray is basically a wireless phone tap without the pesky need to go through the phone company to do it and therefore no need to goto a judge for a warrant or even an NSL letter.

        Right now they can tap anyone they want whenever they want with no oversight whatsoever. They don't want this brought before a court as this would reveal their (probably illegal) parallel construction schemes. So it shouldn't be a surprise they'd rather throughout a case than have it brought up for

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bl968 ( 190792 )

        It's being kept such a secret because the government doesn't want you to know the police are running these devices for the NSA. I can bet you that they are getting copies of anything these things vacuum up.

        That's the whole secret here the government has turned the powers of the NSA on the American people in the name of the war on drugs, and the war on crime by claiming they want to fight terrorism. People will give up freedom for that. They will fight tooth and nail the other two reasons. The NSA is providi

        • It's being kept such a secret because the government doesn't want you to know the police are running these devices for the NSA. I can bet you that they are getting copies of anything these things vacuum up.

          This is unnecessary paranoia. I'm sure you can bet police are sending copies of the data to the NSA, but I'm also sure you'd also wave goodbye to your money.

          The police and the NSA have different agendas, and are unlikely to be interested in the same targets. The amount of overlap is probably so small that they just don't bother to ask. Your assumption that the police simply send everything they get to the NSA is tinfoil-hat territory. It would take too much effort to incorporate it into what the NSA is

    • a police officer should have the same rights as any ordinary citizen, except when they see a crime being committed.

      Your sentence should have ended right after the word "citizen" if you really were talking about "rights".

      Note that if you're talking about "powers" (something governments have instead of "rights"), I'm curious what "powers" you think a police officer should have when they see a crime being committed that you don't think an ordinary citizen should have.

  • If they will reveal which one killed Steve Irwin.

  • In Soviet America... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In United Russia, you track down cell phone...

    In Soviet America, cell phone track you down.

    --sf

  • and his copilot "Phones" of the W.A.S.P.

  • NDAs (Score:4, Informative)

    by NormalVisual ( 565491 ) on Sunday November 23, 2014 @02:10AM (#48442769)
    Regarding the NDAs that have been signed with Harris and the government not to disclose information regarding the Stingray devices - I was under the impression that a civil contract could not override state or federal law, and any such clauses requiring such are non-enforceable. These judges need to be finding every single one of the officers and prosecutors in contempt when they present "but we're under an NDA" as an argument in a court of law.

    • Yes, and torturing people is a war crime. Good luck getting either enforced.

      • Bah water boarding is not torture. It's more of a kind gesture to entire people to hand over sensitive information. The vice president told me so.

  • Poor people who have to live in countries like Russia, USA or North Korea. They don't know what is "freedom" anymore.
    Government makes decision for them, poor chaps just need to bend over and take it in the asssssss

    • There are many, many things wrong with the USA, but comparing it to Russia never mind North Korea is just plain stupid.

      • Rather, a result like North Korea and Russia are possible if we do not get our government to start following the constitution and respecting our fundamental liberties.

        Personally, I don't understand why all these pro-mass surveillance people don't just move to North Korea. It already has all that they want, or what they'll eventually get if they keep pushing their hardcore authoritarian agendas.

      • You actually think that you have more freedom in the USA than the average person in Russia? That's priceless.

  • Justice is hardly blind (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They just want you to look the other way....

    Never trust a cop. It's their job to make you suffer.

  • Clandestine agencies in the US have circumvented all pillars of free and open government in order to slice off your balls, and tell you that you do not need to look down when you notice the pain. Please act with urgency while there are still means to sew them back. It is your duty to push back. No matter what maze-like justification is used to create a framework that undermines the foundation of our country; it is never justified nor does it serve to create justice. Stingray breaks the law just by existing
    • Here is an idea. Lets give the government even more power than before. That will show them! And lets always vote the party of big government because they say they want to give us freebies all the time!

      When you give up your rights, no matter how seemingly insignificant they may seem at the time or for whatever good reason they have to justify it, you will not get them back. Most people sleepwalk through that thinking their government is their friend. Thousands of years of history have shown otherwis

      • And lets always vote the party of big government because they say they want to give us freebies all the time!

        "the party is big government" is The One Party, which is actually just the Republican and Democrat parties. Surely you aren't under the illusion that there are truly meaningful differences between the two? The One Party has been taking away our fundamental liberties in the name of safety for a long time; there is consensus between the 'two' fake parties. They just distract people with issues like welfare, abortion, the economy, and same sex marriage and pretend that that's all there is.

        The only people you s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        My country has a small government type conservative government, the only thing they believe government should be doing is spying on the citizens and locking them up for thought crimes (and other victimless crimes). Those parts that do things like make sure our food is safe to eat or make sure the railroads are run good enough that towns don't get destroyed by trains rolling into town and exploding, well they get rid of that part of government.
        I'd rather have a large government that is interested in civil ri

  • If a device is used on the airwaves in the cell phone bands to emulate a tower, then necessarily, it will have to have a transmitter. Is the device type registered by the FCC, does each emulator have a site license? Does each operator have a license to operate the device?

    If it is a "cell phone test device" then it must be associated with a properly licensed technician.

    The legal requirements to simply operate the device include much more than the rights of the person of interest. For that reason alone, th

    • If a device is used on the airwaves in the cell phone bands to emulate a tower, then necessarily, it will have to have a transmitter. Is the device type registered by the FCC, does each emulator have a site license? Does each operator have a license to operate the device?

      If it is a "cell phone test device" then it must be associated with a properly licensed technician.

      The legal requirements to simply operate the device include much more than the rights of the person of interest. For that reason alone, the concealment of the use of the device would be reason enough to throw out any information obtained from it, even before any case law is considered.

      IANAL, but I have had 6 different FCC licenses, and have had to jump through many hoops. (I think only 3 are current now).

      The FCC is an Executive Branch agency, the same as the NSA, DoJ, etc.

      If any bright-boy at the FCC *did* bring up the legal status concerning use of Stingrays FCC-regulation-wise, he'd be told to shut up, and also quite likely put on a surveillance list as a possible security/leak threat. "The most transparent administration in history" is extremely aggressive about stomping on whistelblowers and their families with government jackboots.

      Strat

  • Is it possible for the existing cell network/protocols to identify "unknown" towers -- ie, those that appear in the spectrum but aren't known to be legitimate cell towers and somehow blacklist them to limit their functionality?

    Do cell towers have a way of communicating to handsets which towers should be avoided or not used?

  • These have been around for years.
    Police departments can buy one from:
    http://www.meganet.com/meganet... [meganet.com]

  • I spent an hour trying to figure out what this posting meant. Wikipedia lists lots of meanings for "stringray" but none having anything to do with human body cells. And why would a policeman want to simulate the location of my human body cells? Stimulate, with a T, perhaps, painful like a stingray, but not smulate.

    The missing keyword was "phone". I live in Thailand. They're not called "cell phones" over here, they're called "mobile phones". If anyone posts an article about (US cell) phones, I hope they throw in the word "phone" somewhere so that we over here can comprehend it.

    Thanks.

  • I know squat about cellular, but I'm guessing some sort of authentication system is in place to allow mobile units from a particular carrier to connect to a tower from the same carrier and only those towers ? ( ignoring roaming for the moment )

    Would it be possible to ' fingerprint ' all of the carriers towers and push that information to a database kept on the phone ? I wouldn't think such a database would be all that big considering any given carrier has a few thousand towers at best. During the handsha

  • I'm looking for the download. No, I don't expect the software to be made available, although that would be cool. I just want to view those records that have been unsealed.

  • There are still some judges left that use common sense and reject to become tools for orvellian spy programs.
  • Does anyone remember the code that turned the Misubishi Diagem into a cell phone scanner? It's been a long time and I cannot remember.

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