Did Feds' Use of Fake Cell Tower Constitute a Search? 191
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."
It is unquestionably a wiretap (Score:5, Insightful)
As they are intercepting communications, it is unquestionably a wiretap.
Whether the courts are still legitimate enough to declare that remains to be seen.
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Whether the courts are still legitimate enough to declare that remains to be seen.
You have a lot more faith in the government to do the right thing than I do.
Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap (Score:4, Insightful)
You have a lot more faith in the government to do the right thing than I do.
You're supposed to be able to have faith in the government to do the right thing. That's what they're supposed to do. That's why we have them. If they don't act accordingly, that's when you know there's a serious problem that needs to be addressed. So how do we reform the government is the issue we should be looking at instead of firing off quips.
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Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap (Score:5, Informative)
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What IS troubling however is the fact that once law enforcement has found the suspect/device they as a rule WIPE THE DATA from the stingray. They've been doing this supposedly to prevent defendants/criminals learning how they were caught. The issue is that a judge signs a court order approving the use of the Stingray. Then after gathering evidence, law enforcement DESTROYS that evidence instead of handing it over to the court for review. All this to prevent the defendant from getting it during discovery.
On the other hand, if they are deleting that data, they are also deleting any other extraneous cell phone location data they may have gathered in the process.
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Bingo. But while it addresses, it also raises my biggest concern about this. In TFS they had a warrant to obtain location data through the cellular network, and while it's grey area as to whether that warrant extends to the use of a device like the Stingray, the device itself doesn't have enough finesse to only trick the hardware you're trying to locate. It'll trick any hardware on the same network that's within range, including potentially hundreds of innocent bystanders, all of whose information would be
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No. They wipe the data so they can claim no data was recorded or actively monitored, therefore no wiretapping was performed.
The scary part is that they have the capability to handle calls while doing this spoofing. Which for all intents is the equivalent of them snipping your landline and running it through a black box, then afterwards wiping the blackbox and claiming it doesn't constitute a wiretap. Problem is that the original wiretap really was a guy hanging on the pole with a testset clipped onto your
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They pretend to be a tower and re-route all call info from nearby devices through the box, relaying the calls over to an actual cell tower. That's worse than a wiretap as it's intercepting everything in the area. Wiretap used to mean tapping into a specific line. This is full blown re-routing of all calls including those which were not within the scope of the search warrant.
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That's a great airtight defense you have there.
May be, you should just build yourself a fake FedEx drop off box or a fake UPS drop off box and place it just in front of a police station. The only thing you'd do would be to record all the routing information stored on the *outside* of those envelopes. That wouldn't count as intercepting their mail right, since you wouldn't actually open their envelopes, and you'd put them in a real drop off box as soon as possible to avoid being discovered.
I'm sure the cops
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Because you're rampantly paranoid?! Look, this practice is obviously wrong and needs to change, but if you're really that concerned about being tracked you are either:
a) involved in nefarious activity
b) batshit tinfoil hat paranoid
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Because you're rampantly paranoid?! Look, this practice is obviously wrong and needs to change, but if you're really that concerned about being tracked you are either:
a) involved in nefarious activity
b) batshit tinfoil hat paranoid
or c) concerned that you may at some point in the future be in a country where such activities are necessary. Given the way that governments and corporations have been expanding their powers and decriminalizing their actions, there may come a point, not too far in the future, where such paranoid actions are necessary to keep from being made into some organization's indentured servant.
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or c) concerned that you may at some point in the future be in a country where such activities are necessary. Given the way that governments and corporations have been expanding their powers and decriminalizing their actions, there may come a point, not too far in the future, where such paranoid actions are necessary to keep from being made into some organization's indentured servant.
Well then why is he doing it NOW? I already said it was wrong and needed to change. If we at some point live in a society where it's necessary to use a throw away phone, chances are a throw away phone wont even be a feasible option. I'm concerned about this as well, but I'm not using a throw away phone because I have no reason to do so. If the poster feels that strongly about it in the here and now, then there are more effective avenues to take than taking steps to remedy a problem that isn't even there for
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"Well then why is he doing it NOW?"
Data retention. He's making sure there's no record of something that MIGHT become a crime in the future. Which, all things considered, appears as though that very thing is not far off.
Remember, the use of ex post facto is only a majority opinion away.
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After Citizen's United vs. FEC, I completely lost my faith in the court's ability to interpret the spirit of our Constitution...
Nonsense. Looks like a straightforward application of the First Amendment to me.
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I am aware the the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are legally people, but that flies in the face of around 200 years of law that up until then said otherwise. That decision merely shows how messed up today's Supreme Court is.
If you -- or the courts -- actually think corporations have all the legal rights of people, then why aren't they allowed to vote? Or marry?
F
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It can't be a straightforward application of the First Amendment, because corporations are not people and do not have "rights".
This is a non sequitur. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.
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"The courts found that the law acknowledged corporations had a right to free speech every time except withing X days of an election, and told Congress that you can't have it both ways."
Apparently my point went completely over your head. The issue I raised is whether corporations are actually people, and therefore have "rights" at all. If they do, then the First Amendment applies. But if they do not, then the First Amendment cannot apply.
As you say: Congress could legislate what corporations may or may not do. But those aren't rights, those are legal privileges. Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to either grant or take away rights, without first amending the Constituti
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Citizen's United vs. FEC is a simple 1st amendment issue. If you are looking to lose faith in the SCOTUS look no further than than the Kelo decision.
Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap (Score:4, Interesting)
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Except the right of free speech, and of the press, is not defined as of the PEOPLE. Instead it is a blanket command telling the government keep your grubby mitts off of censorship, no matter the source of the opinion. Now, there has been an exception carved out for obscenity, which while the exact age used may be up for debate, does nothing about limiting actors who are not considered under the age of majority.
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"Except the right of free speech, and of the press, is not defined as of the PEOPLE. Instead it is a blanket command telling the government keep your grubby mitts off of censorship, no matter the source of the opinion."
I cannot agree. While people are not explicitly mentioned there, the notion that the 1st Amendment was intentionally written to include corporations is a bit too much of a stretch of the imagination for me.
Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap (Score:5, Insightful)
a court order and warrant that investigators used to get similar location data from Verizonâ(TM)s own towers.
I'm really surprised again by Wired. The government got a warrant -- the same level of scrutiny they need to search your house or haul your ass to a concrete room. What more can they do to conduct a lawful investigation? The purpose of the warrant requirement is to make sure that probable cause is evaluated by a neutral and detached magistrate, not to bar all searches and make it impossible to catch identity thieves.
I'm firmly for electronic privacy but I think it's patently absurd to say there should be a higher standard for getting cell-phone data than physically entering a person's home or arresting him.
Re:It is unquestionably a wiretap (Score:5, Informative)
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The problem is that the fake wireless tower appears to be outside the scope of the warrant. Keep in mind that judges do not issue blank checks when they write out a warrant. Doing something that's not in the scope of the warrant is just as illegal as if the warrant didn't exist at all.
No disagreement to the last sentence but I think "you can get location information from Verizon's network" and "you can spoof Verizon's network to get location information" are indistinguishable both as to the "thing being searched" (the suspect's location) and "method of searching" (by using the suspect's cell phone signal).
So if Wired's point is that maybe the Feds did something that pushes the scope of the warrant, OK -- my impression from TFA was that they were against the use of spoofed cellphone tower
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For example, if a thief breaks into your house and moves the contents of a safe onto the street, they have committed larceny but not violated your 4th amendment rights (nor have the cops when they riffle through those documents which are now in a public location).
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Well, and the constitution, such as the 13th amendment.
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hmm... I wonder if Apple's FindMyiPhone feature could be considered an illegal search and a violation of the 4th A. rights of the iPhone thief
If the government did it, possibly. You aren't subject to Fourth Amendment provisions. It may be one of the reasons that police departments don't necessarily go running after stolen phones / laptops when the owner 'finds' them in someone else's hands.
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hmm... I wonder if Apple's FindMyiPhone feature could be considered an illegal search and a violation of the 4th A. rights of the iPhone thief
Probably not as it's tracking your property. Some of the laptop recovery programs that take screenshoots or webcam pictures could cause privacy issues though. What happens if the thief was a 12-yr old boy who took your laptop and the Prey Project software ends up snapping a picture of him in his underwear? Does that become child porn?
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A picture of a kid in underwear is not "child porn" anyway.
I'm sure you understood the gist of what I meant. In this day and age where a burglar who slips on your front doorstep can sue you for not clearing the ice, I'm sure the parents of such a thieving kid would try to sue you for invasion of their privacy,
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Breaking encryption may be illegal, but there is no law that prevents the feds from doing it (though there is no law saying they can, and the supremes have not considered it).
I would imagine the headers are not encrypted and simply recording them is not a violation of the 4th either, after all, you broadcast them over the air. Not that different from putting a billboard on your roof and expecting unencrypted communications to remain private.
Fed in the Middle? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are man in the middle attacks legal?
The Feds agreed it was a search (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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But wiretaps (and search warrants in general) are supposed to be specific in what they're searching for.
If the warrant was specific about searching Verizon towers, then this fake tower would not count being as it wasn't a Verizon tower. Not that I've read the warrants or anything -- this is just a guess about a possible problem.
Still, if the police had a warrant, and it covered what they did -- then it sounds like they did it right.
Re:The Feds agreed it was a search (Score:5, Insightful)
IF they have a warrant for a targeted wiretap why not go to verizon??? This device exists so they can avoid having to get warrants all the paperwork etc that verizon might require. The FCC should come down on them hard unless for impersonating a cell tower they did not have the rights to use those frequencies. It sounds like they are trying to use there few legit cases to justify them having and using these devices.
How long before the real criminals figure out how to use encrypted voip? I already have this on my phone connecting me to the office pbx.
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They stipulated that in this one case they would call it a search for the purposes of not disclosing any technical information about the technology. They also made sure to retain the right to argue that it's not a search in any other court hearing.
In other words, they have declared their intent to use the device without a warrant.
For this particular case, they will argue that a warrant is more or less carte blanche even though they're supposed to be quite specific.
Can you hear me now? (Score:2)
Good... BUSTED!
Don't need no steenking warrant (Score:2)
Just tag everybody as terrorists and have the now immune phone companies do the tapping.
I see opportunity (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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How about an app that beeps and turns the display red if encryption, as feeble as it is, gets turned off.
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I'll have to dig. I don't think they spoof the specific ID, but rather just appear as an authorized tower. This goes on with the cooperation of the cell companies.
An approved tower would be easier to manage and have less if a possibility of a screw up than a spoofed tower.
Liars vs Constitutional Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
It's obvious the government is lying about what it's doing so it can violate our privacy rights. The purpose of a judge is to be a reasonable human who can see that the government is lying, and stop the government. Judges who don't see through these lies are obviously either stupid, corrupt or both.
We need a Constitutional Amendment that simply says
Because over the years stupidity and corruption have allowed the Fourth Amendment [cornell.edu] to fail to protect our privacy, when that is the right it instructs the government to protect:
Even stupid and corrupt judges, to say nothing of stupid and corrupt congressmembers and police, will have a harder time using the government to damage our rights instead of protecting them.
Re:Liars vs Constitutional Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Your wording does no better. Indeed the problem is that once you start down the road of trying to form the perfectly worded genie wish, you've already lost. English isn't a programming language, and concepts are broader than can be expressed likewise anyway.
Even with your privacy wording, the sentence will be twisted to mean something absurd, in part because the courts love making absurd rulings, presumably as a motivator to legislatures to play the genie wish game with progressively more wordy and less understandable documents. I suppose we'll always need lawyers, but at the same time, the existence of lawyers only exacerbates the problem, not only by breeding complacency by partially alleviating the issue through careful research, but also by arguing the very absurd interpretations that are sometimes accepted by the courts!
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Why is my wording no better? The current precedents that allow privacy violations "because there's no right to privacy in the Constitution" would be useless when the court hears "Amendment 30 says quite clearly that the court must protect the privacy right, in this case in their papers and effects". That makes damaging privacy much harder, without those precedents.
What you're arguing is that no amendment or law wording can possibly protect us. While we have a corrupt system, it is not nearly as corrupt as t
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It was thought so, but it has proven not to be. Proven by actions in courts. Counteractions have their own countereffects. The countereffect is to make it harder.
Your willingness to give up and say there is nothing we can do in the system to protect our rights is equally as important as the support from the large part of the public you're saying means we're doomed.
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What is this Fourth Amendment of which you speak? (Score:2)
A Search (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't what we traditionally think of as a search, but it should, at the least, be considered a warrantless wiretap. Basically, anything that intercepts communication data is a wiretap. Be it listening in to their handheld radios or putting a recording device on their phone line or otherwise doing the fandango with data from their cell phone. All forms of wiretapping.
This would be just the same as them setting up an overpowering fake cordless phone base station and using it to listen in to their phone calls, and then arguing that it doesn't constitute wiretapping because they didn't have to go through the phone company to do it. No, sorry feds, you can't argue for spirit of the law in one case and then turn around and say that only the letter of the law matters in another case.
The whole point behind needing a warrant to wiretap is that people should be secure in their homes and have a reasonable expectation to privacy. You can't just go about using technical means to violate that spirit of the law, while your other arm turns around and arrests someone for 'inciting riots' because they posted in support of Occupy Wall Street.
Unauthorized access to computer (Score:3)
The phone is a computer which is being accessed and tricked into doing things the owner does not authorize. You might call this a search, but it is not because it is made without announcement, ala sneak'n'peek. Wiping the logs is excellent evidence of the perps (Feds) guilt.
we had a good run (Score:3, Insightful)
FTA:
"As such, the government has maintained that the device is the equivalent of devices designed to
capture routing and header data on e-mail and other internet communications, and therefore does not
require a search warrant."
LOL so we should all have cell phone jammers, the equivalent of a door.
Folks we had a good run, it's over. Everything now however illegal is being justified
"National security". Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has had enough, being blocked
with that iron door to his lawsuit.
http://news.yahoo.com/ventura-miffed-court-says-hes-off-mexico-174718110.html [yahoo.com]
I watch the local TV broadcast and commercials of "see something, say something"
and think of the tales taught me about the Nazi's and how neighbors told on neighbors
till nobody trusted anyone. Godwin's law does not apply, this was taught me in school
and how Hitler came to power; through old reel to reel's of "You are there"'s
by Walter Cronkite.
Of course building a cell phone tower to capture a persons cell info is illegal.
That it's even questioned is a red flag.
But, did they have.. (Score:2)
..appropriate FCC authorization and permits to run a bogus cell tower?
No, it's not! (Score:3, Funny)
I track my ex with a fake cell tower all the time, I don't see anything wrong with it!
Re:Criminals were captured (Score:5, Insightful)
Suspected criminal...
Re:Criminals were captured (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yall is postin in a troll thread....
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I can almost guarantee that you have committed at least one Federal felony, based on the thousands and thousands of laws that now exist.
Did you know that it is a felony in the United States to import a plant or animal if it is illegal to export it from WHATEVER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD it came from, even if that plant or animal is perfectly legal here?
Which essentially means that our government is letting other nations define our laws for us.
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For the same reason we defend innocents. It's because you don't know who is a criminal and who is innocent, until after you have played the defense. If we knew who the criminals were prior to trials, we wouldn't have trials and courts, or even cops. Most of the Bill of Rights wouldn't exist, or if you take everything to its extreme conclusion, we wouldn't even have governments.
Ultimately, if you are against suspected criminals having trials, you are an anarchist
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I agree. I don't necessarily think this is about defending or prosecuting innocence or guilt, but rather the examining the means used to get them there.
This smacks of wire tapping. Surely there are other legal avenues they could have pursued to get from A to Z?
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Governmental agencies aren't the only way to catch people. Mercenaries have existed for thousands of years. More recently, there are Private Military Companies [wikipedia.org] have been paid by companies like GE to protect their property.
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If you automatically knew who was innocent and guilty to be punished then you are in either a totalitarian or religious authoritarian system.
True anarchy has no justice or revenge of any kind, because revenge is predictable, and anarchy isn't supposed to be predictable.
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Maybe I don't understand the concept, correct me if i'm wrong, but I thought true anarchy was "he who has the biggest guns makes the rules' ala Somalia? I bet if you rape a warlord's daughter predictable or not he will hang you by your intestines from the nearest bridge.
Somalia is comprise of eight tribal clans, the warlords are in the employ of the clans. The fighting was because none of the tribes trusted any of the others enough to have a central government. Also there exists a sophisticated customary law system called the Xeer, so it is likely the warlord would ask the familily of the offender for compensation. If they refuse he will take it to an elder of that family. If the elder refused he would go speak to the elder of his own family, and both elders would agree t
Re:Criminals were captured (Score:5, Insightful)
Because criminals are entitled to a complete and proper defense?
When it comes to privacy, every inch we give results in another mile taken by the government. Consider how the Patriot act evolved from where it began back in 2001 to where it is today, the way the TSA began and the way it is being pushed out beyond it's original boundaries with people advocating and supporting random vehicle searches on Interstates, shipping, busing, backscatter X-ray being used for major sporting events which will eventually trickle down to every public building and who knows how far beyond that...
The Fourth Amendment exists because privacy is necessary for liberty and a free society.
Re:Criminals were captured (Score:5, Insightful)
Because criminals are entitled to a complete and proper defense?
Not really. It's because it takes a complete and proper defense to be (fairly) certain that the defendant is in fact a criminal.
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Not really. By now everyone is sure to have broken criminal law at some point or another, even if they were only misdemeanors.
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Rule 1 of the internet:
Dont Feed The Trolls.
Re:Criminals were captured (Score:5, Insightful)
United States v. Jones will be argued in the Supreme Court this week, on whether warrantless tracking of a drug dealer by putting a GPS tracker on his car requires a warrant on the fourth Amendment.
An idiot would think that we were arguing that case in the Supreme Court to defend drug dealers. Maybe the guy actually arguing it is--but the reason that we are considering it as a society, the reason we care about these things, is because of the risk of it being done to innocent people. The risk of government tracking everyone as part of its standard law enforcement duties. (I'm not saying NSA doesn't do that now, but law enforcement doesn't usually.) There should be some limit on the power of the people acting for the state--Something that at least requires a police officer to say "there is probable cause to search this person and here's why..."
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We are trying to protect what our founding fathers created.
If you cant understand that rather simple concept that then you are an idiot.
Re:Criminals were captured (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I have no idea! Every time these federal scofflaws get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, a bunch of people come out of the woodwork arguing about how it's OK to commit crimes against people you think might be criminals (or you don't like their tie) and then Congressmen pop up with new "crime is legal unless you're a peon" bills.
OH! you mean the OTHER criminals! Nobody's defending them, we just want to make sure the cure doesn't become worse than the disease.
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The real question is, why do the "MSM", ISPs, and others cooperate so easily with the government? Why, as you put it '"trip over themselves to kiss the ring"? You mentioned Occupy Wallstreet, but for the sake of making my point apolitical, let's just assume somebody, maybe an OWS splinter group, maybe a Tea Party splinter group, maybe the Committee to Bronze Nixon's Balls and Hang Them from the St. Louis Arch (CtBNBaHTftStLA), decides to get seriously violent. What happens to a reporter or an editor or a sy
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Plus it's a principle of good police work. If you don't have probable cause you are wasting valuable resources by just randomly searching people.
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Odd that.
You must be new here...
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What a terrible submissions. Do you expect them to accept a text filled with accusations towards the editors and editorial bias?
Don't worry, I don't expect this to make it to the frontpage either
This is what's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy".
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What a terrible submissions. Do you expect them to accept a text filled with accusations towards the editors and editorial bias?
Don't worry, I don't expect this to make it to the frontpage either
This is what's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy".
YOU must be new here...
-AI
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Just guessing, but if your summary had been more summary like and less editorial, it might have gotten more attention.
The links themselves were interesting.
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Just guessing, but if your summary had been more summary like and less editorial, it might have gotten more attention.
The links themselves were interesting.
Perhaps... but isn't it just a bit fishy that a BIG network outage
like that is getting swept under the rug, look at the other subs
that made the front page. This is more newsworthy than half
of those.
-AI
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Because the police state also wants the power to do whatever the cops want, without being subject to anyone else, especially judges in a separate and theoretically independent branch.
And just as Congress has let the president take so much of its power, like declaring war and everything that comes with it, the Judicial Branch has let the cops (Executive Branch) take its power to decide what rights can be infringed. They've all got so much more power than the Constitution creates for them that they're not eve
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so will the Internet, you won't be able to access the Internet with out a certain chip or ID and the telecoms will be required to implement and enforce it. It will be sold to us as a security feature.
The reason for this is people go to forums and cry about it, and not a one of them does anything "IRL" about it, we are all mice.
Taking the example of India again, all ISP's are required to keep URL logs for 6 months, encryption with a key>40bits is illegal without depositing the key with the govt (not enforced much though), ISP's have to provide a room(or multiple depending on their network) to the govt which has full access to the network., cyber cafe's require a govt. ID proof to be able to use the computer
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Why does anyone involved in anything illegal use a cellphone that's attached to their name? Go to Walmart buy a prepaid phone, buy a dozen, have someone else buy them, use your head.
Wouldn't help you as much as you want. They use stingrays in exactly that sort of case. In the one at hand, they didn't know the identity of the individual at first either. They can still identify you by the device you're using. You'd have to burn a phone or aircard (as in the case at hand) after every single use once you use it to commit a crime. Otherwise, they could quite conceivably use these devices to track you down.
I'm all for privacy but keep in mind there are limits to how easily you can hide
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Best use of Godwin's Law I've seen so far