Posts Tagged ‘4th amendment’

Senators Questioning FBI About Use of Stingray Fake Cell Towers

Posted: January 4, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
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Two U.S. senators are questioning whether the FBI has granted itself too much leeway on when it can use decoy cellphone towers to scoop up data on the identities and locations of cellphone users. The lawmakers say the agency now says it doesn’t need a search warrant when gathering data about people milling around in public spaces.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman and ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee respectively, have written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson about the use of the surveillance technology called an IMSI catcher, though also referred to by the trade name “Stingray.”

Cell tower simulators work by mimicking the legitimate cell towers used by companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. They catch the signals emitted from cellphones and other mobile devices and extract insight into who owns the phone, his or her location, and other details. That’s a bit like someone setting up a big blue box, posting a United States Postal Service logo on the side, copying information from the letters fooled users deposit in it, and then soon after dumping the accumulated mail into a real mail box. No one need be the wiser.

The hitch of, course, is that spoofing the U.S. Postal Service would be illegal. What Leahy and Grassley are wondering is whether what the FBI is doing crosses a legal line.

What has particularly prompted their concerns, they say, is a meeting between their Senate staffs and the FBI. In that discussion, the agency representatives, they say, indicated that FBI policy requires obtaining a search warrant before using a cell-tower simulator to go after a target. But, say the senators, FBI officials revealed that along with the carve-outs for search warrants for cell-tower spoofing that follow regular law enforcement practice — where the public is in immediate danger or where it is a fugitive being tracked — the FBI has recently granted itself an exception for “cases in which the technology is used in public places or other locations at which the FBI deems there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.”

That would seem to suggest that the FBI has determined that simply making a call while walking down a city street is enough to free federal law enforcement from its internal restrictions on digging into your phone data. The senators have given the departments until Jan. 30 to respond. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more @

http://tablet.washingtonpost.com/politics/senators-question-legality-of-fbis-new-policy-on-cellphone-tracking/2015/01/03/a12b6aec2287b69b9cddc8c30a75ef4f_story.html

EFF: Law enforcement ‘desperately’ trying to hide use of surveillance cell towers

Posted: January 3, 2015 by gamegetterII in Police state USSA
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The_forgotten_man

Stingrays Go Mainstream

We’ve long worried about the government’s use of IMSI catchers or cell site simulators. Commonly known as a “Stingray” after a specific device manufactured by the Harris Corporation, IMSI catchers masquerade as a legitimate cell phone tower, tricking phones nearby to connect to the device in order to track a phone’s location in real time. We’re not just worried about how invasive these devices can be but also that the government has been less than forthright with judges about how and when they use IMSI catchers. This year the public learned just how desperately law enforcement wanted to keep details about Stingrays secret thanks to a flurry of public records act requests by news organizations across the country. The results are shocking. The public learned that Harris requires police departments sign a non-disclosure agreement promising not to reference Stingrays. Federal agencies like the US Department of Justice and the US Marshals Service have instructed local cities and police to keep details of Stingray surveillance secret, with the Marshals physically intervening in one instance to prevent information from becoming public. There have been repeated instances of police agencies across the country hiding their use of IMSI catchers from the judges entrusted to provide police oversight:

  • In Sarasota, Florida internal police emails revealed officers concealed their use of Stingrays from judges, having one officer withdraw a warrant affidavit that mentioned the use of an IMSI catcher, and describing a policy of referring to Stingrays as a “source” in official documents.
  • Judges in Tacoma, Washington signed more than 170 orders unknowingly authorizing Stingray use from 2009 to 2014 because police officers did not disclose the orders would be used to operate an IMSI catcher. Judges first learned they were approving IMSI catchers from local newspaper reporting.
  • In a robbery case in Baltimore, Maryland, prosecutors abandoned their use of Stingray evidence after a judge threatened to hold a police officer in contempt for refusing to testify about the device.
  • It’s not just local police. The Wall Street Journal reported on a secret US Marshals surveillance program that attaches IMSI catchers called “DRTboxes” to airplanes to track suspects, gathering data about scores of innocent people in the process. The report prompted a letter from US senators to the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security demanding more information.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/2014-review-stingrays-go-mainstream

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