Did Feds' Use of Fake Cell Tower Constitute a Search?

hessian writes with this story in Wired: "Federal authorities used a fake Verizon cellphone tower to zero in on a suspect's wireless card, and say they were perfectly within their rights to do so, even without a warrant. But the feds don't seem to want that legal logic challenged in court by the alleged identity thief they nabbed using the spoofing device, known generically as a stingray. So the government is telling a court for the first time that spoofing a legitimate wireless tower in order to conduct surveillance could be considered a search under the Fourth Amendment in this particular case, and that its use was legal, thanks to a court order and warrant that investigators used to get similar location data from Verizon's own towers."

Fed in the Middle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are man in the middle attacks legal?

The Feds agreed it was a search

[Anonymous Coward]

and they said it was backed with a court order, no different than any other wiretap.

One issue could be that they were also getting traffic from thousands of other callers not involved in the case. But, I suppose they could argue that happens in a standard wiretap as well, but it's the phone company that does the winnowing out.

I see opportunity

[chill]

I can see the potential for a smartphone app that learns the cell tower IDs that you normally connect to and lets you know if something is out of the ordinary. Similar to the Certificate Patrol add-on for Firefox, but for cellular connections.

Wigle Wifi already collects the data and shows details on the towers visible to your phone, so that info *is* available.

Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap

[khallow]

I agree. That's a very alarming ruling. It's worth noting that in the wake of Kelo vs. City of New London, 34 states added laws to address to some degree the abuses allowed by this ruling. The US is fortunately that there were means to mostly compensate for a bad court ruling in this case. But in rulings on federal power, states cannot correct for bad court decisions.

Re:Criminals were captured

[billcopc]

Because sometimes the criminals are the ones on our payroll.

If I set up a fake tower to sniff people's cell packets, I go directly to jail. That's practically indefensible.

If the government does it "to catch a criminal", they need to request permission via the proper channels, i.e. warrants. It is a special privilege that must be diligently controlled and protected from abuse. If we start giving law enforcement officials (and their subcontractors) carte-blanche to effectively commit criminal acts, without oversight nor disclosure, in the name of crime-fighting, then democracy is effectively abolished.