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Stingray use requires a warrant and every case should be dismissed where one was used without a warrant. I'm sure that's the main reason they want to hide the u
by calibas 7y ago
Stingray use requires a warrant and every case should be dismissed where one was used without a warrant. I'm sure that's the main reason they want to hide the use of stingrays, they know they're doing something wrong.
Police having the ability to spy on everyone with little to no oversight is nightmarish authoritarianism, it's completely against the spirit of American democracy, not to mention in violation of The Constitution.
- fooey 7y agoThe problem is knowing a Stingray was ever used in the first place. It's been documented that the police routinely utilize parallel construction when they discover things through illegal means in the first place. https://www.wired.com/story/stingray-secret-surveillance-programs/ https://www.wired.com/story/stingray-secret-surveillance-pro...
- calibas 7y agoSeems like the police casually breaking the law is the core of the issue. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- TallGuyShort 7y agoThe ACLU. edit: to be clear, I think the government itself could really do with reeling it back a bit as well - but this very news is a reminder that some people are watching out for the watched.
- masonic 7y agoThe ACLU was mostly mute on these issues during the prior administration, when these abuses became routine.
- gnud 7y agoJust a couple of links to disprove this troll: https://www.aclu.org/cases/florida-stingray-foia https://www.aclu.org/cases/florida-stingray-foia (2014) https://www.aclu.org/cases/aclu-florida-v-city-sarasota-stingray-cell-phone-tracking https://www.aclu.org/cases/aclu-florida-v-city-sarasota-stin... (2014) https://www.aclu.org/cases/foia-request-justice-department-policy-memos-gps-location-tracking https://www.aclu.org/cases/foia-request-justice-department-p... (2014) ... and tons more, at https://www.aclu.org/defending-our-rights/court-battles?topics=98 https://www.aclu.org/defending-our-rights/court-battles?topi...
- masonic 7y agoThe first two are state cases, not federal, as are many of the others. I would have thought that "the administration" would clearly refer to Federal cases.
- dang 7y agoProviding information is fine, but please omit the name-calling. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- throwaway894345 7y agoThe judiciary branch.
- soraminazuki 7y agoThat very same judiciary branch has a secret court that rubber stamps almost all mass surveillance requests given to them.
- m10i 7y agoLatin for "Who will guard the guards themselves?".
- gbear605 7y agoAlternatively also translated as “Who watches the watchmen?”
- codetrotter 7y agoAnd even without knowing Latin the sentence is recognizable :) At least to me, when I looked at it, it looked very similar to that. Guards, watchmen, custodians. Guarding, watching, being in custody of. And I know from other languages like French words like "qui" (though I don't speak French either, only know a select few words).
- markdown 7y agoThe tv show The Wire was a documentary after all.
- t34543 7y agoAlmost all airports permanently run a Stingray like device
- 2StepsOutOfLine 7y agoCare to elaborate more on this?
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago> For two months last year, researchers at the University of Washington paid drivers of an unidentified ridesharing service to keep custom-made sensors in the trunks of their cars, converting those vehicles into mobile cellular data collectors. They used the results to map out practically every cell tower in the cities of Seattle and Milwaukee—along with at least two anomalous transmitters they believe were likely stingrays, located at the Seattle office of the US Customs and Immigration Service, and the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. source: https://www.wired.com/2017/06/researchers-use-rideshares-sniff-stingray-locations/ https://www.wired.com/2017/06/researchers-use-rideshares-sni... > At Trudeau airport, Radio-Canada detected the catcher's presence through the use of a CryptoPhone — a cellphone look-alike that emits red alerts when a fake antenna tries to catch its signal. Several red alerts were received, throughout the afternoon and early evening, in the section of the airport for U.S. departures. source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/trudeau-airport-spying-1.4055803 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/trudeau-airport-spyi... > The devices are operated out of at least five U.S. airports, "covering most of the U.S. population". It is unclear whether the U.S. Marshals Service requests court orders to use the devices. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirtbox_(cell_phone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirtbox_(cell_phone)
- mrandish 7y agoThat's super interesting. Those are international departure airports. I wonder if what they're doing is sniffing for phone numbers of interest showing up in the international terminal indicating a 'person of interest' is trying to leave or arrive. I assume people trying to leave or enter the country without permission might have false ID and a false name on their ticket but they probably don't think about changing their phone number. Once you have a number pop up on the Stingray you distribute that person's photo to all the border agents.
- sebasmurphy 7y agoOr when challenged they drop the charges as to not disclose the true "source". https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/prosecutors-drop-key-evidence-at-trial-to-avoid-explaining-stingray-use/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/11/prosecutors-drop... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/alleged-getaway-driver-challenges-stingray-use-robbery-case-dropped/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/alleged-getaway-...
- snifflumpus 7y agoYou should go read about parallel construction :-)
- abeppu 7y agoBut even when they have a warrant to go after one person, the fact that they can scoop up information from everyone else even remotely near that person, and those people never find out is pretty abusive. Like, if my neighbor is a drug dealer, and the police get a warrant to search their apartment, maybe that's reasonable. If they use that warrant to search every apartment on my block, that's messed up. If they do that without leaving a trace, so I have no idea when or if it has happened ... then I'm living in a panopticon.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y agoAny smart, ethical police department would go for a warrant. I'm friends with someone in law enforcement and they say the last thing they want is evidence tossed. Often they get warrants they don't even need just so there isn't a chance of having evidence tossed later.
- geomark 7y agoThey probably can't get warrants for what they are doing, which is trawling large swaths of traffic hoping to find something useful.
- cosmodisk 7y agoHaving dealt with police throughout various stages of my life(never as a suspect,or offender),all I can say is that they lie,cheat and misinform people. I'm sure there are plenty of decent people out there but the force has plenty of those with broken moralle compasses.
- chaps 7y agoAs part of some volunteer work I'm doing with Lucy Parsons Labs, I submitted a FOIA request to every single state's largest city, asking for search warrant records that would likely exist on complaints for search warrants, the warrants themselves, or from any audit. About 100 requests in total. After two months, only two cities have sent me their search warrant records. All other states have given me rejections saying: 1. The records are on paper and never transcribed. 2. The records are digital, but there's no way to query from a frontend. 3. The records are digital and queryable, but the agency considers the use of queries "creating reports", where tons of states have case law backing this up. 4. Nothing, because they haven't responded yet. So far I've received three enormous fee estimations of ~500k, ~400k and ~150k. Obviously not affordable. Chicago is one of the few cities that sent records (though, it took a year). They've sent three separately sized files for the same timeframe - 11k rows, 9k rows, and 20k rows. The data is messy, and there is some very important info missing from their records. Can't speak too much about it yet, since I'm still confirming the reasons. It's been blindingly frustrating trying to get a consistent message about whether the data is even accurate. All this goes to show that police agencies don't make records on search warrants even remotely easily available to the public, and we have no way of gauging whether our constitutional rights are being upheld throughout the US. It's honestly very sad. If you want to support this work and our other projects, please consider a donation to Lucy Parsons Labs: https://lucyparsonslabs.com/support/ https://lucyparsonslabs.com/support/
- mrandish 7y agoThanks for sharing. Sounds like a useful project. > don't make records on search warrants even remotely easily available to the public, It seems like the right reform would be for all approved search warrants to be automatically posted online one year after issuance.
- jammygit 7y agoIf an innocent person had a warrant issued for them, and they were cleared, I bet employers would still routinely query those records if they were able to. It could affect people’s lives if it was too public
- pacala 7y agoOTOH, Google and Facebook, with annual incomes larger than the GDP of a medium European country, can log everyone’s every breath, on the internet and, more recently, in real life, with impunity. I just can’t wrap my head how the municipal police doing it is “nightmarish authoritarianism”, but big adtech, de facto way more powerful, gets a cursory pass.
- mindslight 7y agoBecause people generally endeavor to stay on the topic of a discussion? You seem to be assuming that criticizing government surveillance is somehow an approval of corporate surveillance - it's not either/or, they're both attacks on Free society.
- drdeca 7y agoGoogle et al don’t arrest people or hold them in jail, so that is one dimension in which they are less able to pose a threat. That doesn’t mean that they don’t pose a threat though.
- mancerayder 7y agoNo, but they certainly can hand them over to those who can! https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18089090/amazon-echo-alexa-smart-speaker-privacy-data https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18089090/amazon-ech...
- BloominOnion 7y agoI think most people would view it from the lens of Police inherently having legislated power over people and the ability to detain, arrest and/or charge people. Big adtech have insane amounts of data and deep pockets but realistically no means to carry out the above, however that doesn't mean big adtech should get a pass.
- auiya 7y agoThe argument is that you use those products and give them that information voluntarily, however under-handed the tactics are to get you to volunteer that info. Law enforcement surveillance isn't voluntary.
- Xelbair 7y ago>Stingray use requires a warrant and every case should be dismissed where one was used without a warrant. I'm sure that's the main reason they want to hide the use of stingrays, they know they're doing something wrong. they'll just do a parallel construction - use stingrays to find other evidence, scrap stingrays from record and only go forward with evidence gathered from usage of stingray.