Help Crowd-FOIA Stingray Usage Across America 89
v3rgEz (125380) writes "Collaborative investigative news site MuckRock is trying to take a national look at Stingray usage across America, and is looking for people to submit contact information for their local police departments and other law enforcement groups for a mass FOIA campaign. The submissions are free, but the site is also running a crowdfunding campaign to cover the cost of stamps, etc. on Beacon Reader."
This comes after news broke that the federal government has been pushing for local police to avoid disclosing their use of Stringray devices.
Re:The eventual redefinition of "privacy" and the (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]
You getting what federal/mil/security services would get over an area via a tame existing telco tower hardware/software at the local state and city level kit.
Re:Stingray or Stringray? (Score:4, Informative)
Think of it as a small cell phone tower like kit that is cheap for a state, city and can offer remotely capturing data from mobile telephones.
Drive it into an area of interest and you become a cell phone tower like hardware to surround telco equipment.
In the distant past you would have to talk to the telco for logs or get access to the real telco hardware ie a mil/federal like tech task.
What local law enforcement want is logs like what a cell tower would for voice, messages, telco data (position) over an area.
Every powered phone in that area eg protest event, one person talking to the press, two people meeting face to face but been tracked.
If the phone is in use you get text messages, emails, cell/telco like information, may have an option for voice communications, position.
Re:Why not just crowdsource stingray detection? (Score:4, Informative)
"ACLU + The Guardian Project"
http://codesign.mit.edu/2014/0... [mit.edu]
http://codesign.mit.edu/2014/0... [mit.edu]
"An Android-based Stingray detector that uses scan differentials to detect anomalous cell towers."
My guess the local network changes would be a new weak or strong local "tower"?
Re:Much obliged! (Score:4, Informative)
Glad I could help you with your research