US Marshals Service Refuses To Release Already-Published Stingray Info 90
v3rgEz (125380) writes The U.S. Marshals Service is known to be one of the most avid users of StingRays, and documents confirm that the agency has spent more than $9 million on equipment and training since 2009. But while it appears the USMS is not under any nondisclosure agreement with the device manufacturer, the agency has withheld a wide range of basic information under an exemption meant to protect law enforcement techniques — despite the fact that that same information is available via a federal accounting website.
The first rule... (Score:3, Interesting)
about Stingray is you don't talk about Stingray...
Re: (Score:1)
they leave it turned on, so the raid is ongoing.
Re: (Score:2)
about Stingray is you don't talk about Stingray...
and definitely not over a cell phone...
Freedom of Information means the terrorists.. win? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Being published by another source indicates nothing about the currency of the information, accuracy, or completeness. If the Marshals release the information, it implies that the Marshals are also publishing all of the metadata that is ever-so-important.
Re:So if it's already published... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
If we trust FCC [slashdot.org] to ensure "fairness" of Internet Service Provision:
why don't we trust the Marshals Service to be fair as well? Are they being controlled by a different President [nytimes.com] or something?
People here are kind of like John Kerry, they were in favor of the Government before they were against it.
Re: Ah, come one, don't we trust the Feds? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
On this subject I am; any and all argument against the FCC's action is immediately given the same treatment by moderators as a GNAA post.
Re:Ah, come one, don't we trust the Feds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your an idiot for holding one person responsible for another's post.
Glass houses my friend, glass houses.....
Re: (Score:3)
The various US federal government agencies are all filled with *people*, all different kinds of people. You can't even expect the people in the agencies under the same department (such as Treasury's IRS versus Treasury's OCC) to act the same; those in different departments are even more divergent with different cultures. The FCC is under the Commerce Department, NSA is part of the Department of Defense - they don't have anything in common until you reach all the way up to the President. And if you think
Re: (Score:3)
While it's true that "The various US federal government agencies are all filled with *people*, all different kinds of people." this doesn't mean that they are trustworthy. The FCC, in particular, has done some rather vile things to support "its constituents" (i.e., the money making groups it is supposed to regulate). And the current chairman is not particularly trustworthy, being closely associated with the MPAA.
OTOH, the FCC has less direct reason to abuse the general citizenry than do the large monopoly
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
The latest FCC actions were DECADES in the making.
Using a law that was first written [wikipedia.org] when your telephone had a hand crank [wikipedia.org] and last updated [wikipedia.org] when 33.6kbit/s voiceband modems represented the "bleeding edge" of consumer internet connectivity.
This op-ed [realclearpolitics.com] raises an interesting question: "The real issue is who pays for new Internet investment. Do big users like Netflix and Facebook bear some costs or are these left to the ISPs -- which shift them to the monthly bills of households? For example: In 2014, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for smoother streaming of its
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
It's nothing at all like that. I merely question the wisdom of applying a law that was originally written before WW2 to the internet. If you believe there's a problem it would be far better to lobby your Congressman to address it through the Congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. The proponents of this action will argue that Congress is generally useless (at least we agree on something) but I've never been a big fan of "the ends justify the means" as an argument.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
POTS is dying, largely because it's unable to respond to more nimble competitors that do not have to deal with a legacy regulatory environment. It's arguably already a niche product, one that will be completely dead in another decade or two at most.
And, incidentally, the law in question hasn't been amended since 1996. When the 33.6kbit/s modem was bleeding edge for consumer internet access. Do you remember those days? Because I do. 19 years later and I have the equivalent of a T3 [wikipedia.org] in my pocket, which w
Re: Ah, come one, don't we trust the Feds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
There isn't an ISP in the world that promises you any specific amount of bandwidth beyond their network, even for business class connections with SLAs and a 1:1 contention ratio. Any ISP that made such a promise would be lying to you, because they can't control the actions of those networks that they interconnect with. You might do well to learn what the internet actually is; it's a collection of networks that are interconnected. Each network is operated by different people, who can only control their ow
Re: (Score:3)
Installing Open Connect means Comcast avoids costs in maintaining higher capacity edge routers, and can place the caching boxes wherever is efficient for their own network topology. For example, if placed in each geographic region hub, it means their own long-haul trunks are less stressed and do not need to be upgraded as soon. If you take as a given that customers will want to watch NetFlix, then the costs of hosting these cache boxes is supposed to be offset by the reduced pressure on the long-distance C
Re: (Score:1)
Why should Comcast give Netflix free co-location services? It's not Comcast's responsibility to enable Netflix's business model. I have no lost love for Comcast, or Time Warner, or Verizon, it's just that I don't see Netflix as a White Knight here. They're throwing their weight around to try and get favorable treatment that is unavailable to would be upstarts. Frankly I think that's offensive to the spirit of what network neutrality is supposed to be about.
I do see some fundamental problems. One of th
Re: (Score:1)
I wonder what the author thinks the ISPs will do? They'll most likely continue to bill the household at the existing rate (because it's what the market will accept), citing the need for further investment in hardware. They'll also bill the various service providers for using their network, which was already paid for by the users.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course Netflix bears some costs. They pay their ISP just like I pay mine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
That's normal for core networks where traffic is expected to be roughly equal in both directions and generally unsolicited (by the network). Comcast is neither; they won't _let_ me send as much as I receive (to be equal, I would have to essentially get nothing but email, and send quite a bit of email out), and everything I receive other than email is by my request. It's not anyone else's fault that Comcast traffic related to me isn't symmetric, it's theirs and mine. So if they need more money to handle the
Re: (Score:1)
Ah, but how does the traffic get from Netflix's ISP to your ISP?
Hint: The actual internet is more than the oft-imagined cloud on network diagrams. Network operators agree to interconnect with each other, for mutual benefit, and if such an agreement is unbalanced (because one party is handing off more traffic than the amount they're willing or able to deliver) one of the network operators will end up paying the other.
A simplified version, wherein we're both network operators, Case 1, equal traffic flow:
S
Re: (Score:2)
My ISP (comcast) is not, never has been, never will be, and never expected to be a symmetric netizen. I feel it entirely appropriate for them to come talk to me if traffic that is on their network because of me is a problem... which describes every netflix stream that ever hit my router.
In the long run it comes out the same either way; netflix bills me or comcast bills me. But I feel it's more honest of Comcast to just bill me directly instead of making netflix do it.
Re: (Score:1)
How is this even a question? OF COURSE the ISPs are left to pay for "new internet investment", that is a material cost of doing business. In order to reach a subscriber, I have to run a cable or build a tower, which requires some capital expenditure.
For a mature/operational ISP, capital is usually obtained by charging the subscribers a monthly fee. The monthly fee covers things like infrastructure and the operating expenses, maintenance and upgrades thereto, labour costs for the people to operate, maintain
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
The FCC is an independent agency
Congress could defund them before end of business today if they were so inclined.
Re: (Score:1)
He does not need to fire him — he just hired him in the first place. FCC is part of the Executive branch and the commissioners [fcc.gov] are appointed by the President.
Do you not think, full agreement with the President is one of the job-requirements for the Chairman? It better be, or else the President is not doing his job...
Re:Ah, come one, don't we trust the Feds? (Score:5, Insightful)
We support the government when it acts in the interest of the public, and oppose it when it acts against the interest of the public. Is that really so goddamn hard to understand?!
Re:Ah, come one, don't we trust the Feds? (Score:5, Insightful)
We support the government when it acts in the interest of the public, and oppose it when it acts against the interest of the public
Obligatory car analogy: Toyotas mostly get people around just fine. They had a problem with uncontrolled acceleration. It happened a few times with bad consequences. They were shady and tried to hide it but finally came clean. So people still drive Toyotas and the acceleration problems are fixed.
Now ... imagine that there were at least three stories a day [killedbypolice.net] about people being killed by malfunctioning Toyotas and then we found out that Toyota was using its onboard electronics to record everything everybody who rides in them is saying, to be used against them in the future, and remotely detonating a few of them every few days. Most people still get from point A to point B, but still a bunch of people are getting killed because they own a Toyota.
We'd stop driving Toyotas and their resale value would fall to almost zero. It's good that we have Honda and Nissan and Tesla (et. al) to choose from, because we could quickly and relatively easily make that choice.
Now, what do you do when Toyota is the only car manufacturer and they're constantly running people into brick walls at high speed, and the frequency is increasing rapidly? Why should they even bother fixing the problems?
Re: (Score:1)
I wish I had mod points just for the car analogy.... :)
Re: (Score:1)
I can accept this analogy but it is not airtight. We do have elections, so we can change out the parts of the government that we don't like. So it is almost like having competitors for government; instead we have competitive ideas. Government is slow to respond because we have a largely apathetic citizenry that does not drive it to respond more quickly.
Sometimes, when I'm in one of my nastier moods, I think a solution might be for those who do vote to approve by referendum a $1000 per capita excise tax o
Re: (Score:2)
Why should they even bother fixing the problems?
Dead people buy fewer cars?
Re: (Score:2)
A car analogy, eh? Alright then, try this one on for size:
Re: (Score:3)
It's not that we want the FCC regulating network neutrality, but more like we were pushed into that corner.
In an ideal world, the market would work out any network neutrality issues and the government wouldn't need to get involved. For example, if ISP A degraded Netflix traffic in an effort to promote their video offerings and get Netflix to pay them, then ISPs B, C, and D would stand ready to pick up the customers who fled due to bad Netflix connections.
We're not in an ideal world, however, and the market
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Some of us have worked on the ISP side of the house (disclosure: I worked for a small one that was crushed by Time Warner a long time ago) and view the Netflix debacle in a different light. Netflix has a history of trying to pass their costs onto third parties, by abusing settlement free peering, pushing their "Open Connect" devices on ISPs without offering to pay the usual co-location expenses, or trying to cheap out on envelopes [slashdot.org] that wound up jamming in sorting machines and causing USPS all manner of dif
Re: (Score:2)
Some of us have worked on the ISP side of the house (disclosure: I worked for a small one that was crushed by Time Warner a long time ago) and view the Netflix debacle in a different light. Netflix has a history of trying to pass their costs onto third parties, by abusing settlement free peering, pushing their "Open Connect" devices on ISPs without offering to pay the usual co-location expenses, or trying to cheap out on envelopes [slashdot.org] that wound up jamming in sorting machines and causing USPS all manner of difficulties. That one turned into a major spat as I recall, with USPS having to threaten to revoke their bulk mailing/pre-sort price discounts before Netflix was willing to back down.
The long standing model for internet traffic has been sender pays. If you're dumping more traffic into my network than you take off my hands you pay me to get it closer to its destination. If you're taking more off my hands than I'm taking from you then I pay you. In the final example, we exchange roughly equal amounts of traffic and agree to do so without remuneration.
Is that model still valid today? It's hard to say. It did build the internet as we know it today, for better or worse. It would be easier for me to be sympathetic if this wasn't a pissing contest between Netflix and ISPs. The arrogance of Netflix is truly astounding, from my perspective as someone who worked in the ISP business, and I see it as billionaires arguing with other billionaires about who should foot the bill for their respective business models.
I'm confused. Netflix dumps their traffic onto the interwebs through some sort of ISP (paying them for the privledge), don't they? And when that ISP interconnects with my ISP they do the "sender pays" sfuff you talk about. Then my ISP gets it to me. How is Netflix doing something wrong here? Was their ISP not paying their internconnection bills?
I thought what happened was that Comcast acting as my ISP realized that they could throttle the Netflix traffic and extort money out of Netflix beyond what Netflix's
Re: (Score:2)
So that's why we need a 300+ page law?
The danger of government network neutrality laws has always been miss-regulation.
What happened to the one paragraph law 'No Internet service provider may accept any payment from any web site or service to prioritize data'?
Leaves their hands free to QoS and fuckwit disconnection purposes, while preventing them from charging for access. Of course they could make their own local servers seem better by just under-building their network. But laws can't fix everything.
Re: (Score:1)
So that's why we need a 300+ page law?
The code (law) is 8 pages. The remaining 290+ pages are legally mandated responses to comments and grievances filed during the public comment period.
It would be nice if we could see the text, but certain Republican commissioners are refusing to submit their own official comments of record. Until the time period for them to do so runs out, we don't get to see a word of it.
Funny to see shills venting (Score:2)
Re:Ah, come one, don't we trust the Feds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I would say we can't trust law enforcement these days ... because when law enforcement cites a corporate NDA to not be able to tell us how they're using software which is designed to violate your constitutional rights ... law enforcement is fucking lying to you.
Law enforcement is consistently trying to hide what they do, consistently saying the law means what they say it means, and consistently ignoring the constitutionality of what they do, and colluding to commit perjury by hiding the truth about how they found certain information.
When law enforcement stops caring about the law ... it's time to stop treating them with trust or respect.
Pretty much all law enforcement these days feels it operates in a special magic bubble.
The rest of us say "fuck that, follow the low, or be charged under it".
General warrants, probable cause, free from unreasonable search and seizure ... these things tell me most people in law enforcement are committing treason.
So, no, we cannot fucking trust law enforcement. Because they are no longer trustworthy.
Re:WE ARE THE LAW!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Becoming? This is a police state.
The government classifies tomes of information to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing. They use secret tools to gather secret evidence which they attempt to present in secret, sealed and off the record. And in the event that an "activist judge" calls them on it, they withdraw the evidence so as not to have it revealed, and re-file charges a month later to go shopping for a different judge. Last week we found out they lock people up in secret detention facilities (in America!) without booking them, with no access to a lawyer, such that no one but the police even knows where these people disappear to for days or weeks on end. Police are shooting and killing people weekly if not daily, acting as judge jury and executioner, and face zero consequences.
The police state isn't coming, it's here. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
Surprise, little girl: rules aren't uniform (Score:3)
Each agency has a set of rules and procedures for releasing information. Just because one group allow the release doesn't mean a different one - with a different mission - has the same rules.
Think of it as a set of NDAs. Your CFO may have given proprietary information to investors, but that doesn't mean you can talk about it at the cocktail party after work. Not even to said investors.
So you mean to tell me.... (Score:2)
Justified (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Their refusal is "justified", though.
My sunglasses are in my other jacket...
Re:How does stingray connect to the wider network? (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't. It just acts as a fake base station; if you happen to connect to one you'll have no service. They don't use these things to intercept your traffic, they can do that Verizon/AT&T/Sprint/T-Mobile's switch, without having to follow you all over town. These devices are used for two purposes:
1. To localize idle cell phones with greater precision than the macro cellular network can.
2. To determine which cell phones are being carried in a specific area.
#2 sounds Orwellian but it has legitimate purposes during criminal investigations, i.e., trying to figure out the IEMIs of burner phones being carried by suspects you have under surveilliance. Once you have the IEMIs you can wiretap them with lawful interception technology built into the phone company's switch.
Re:How does stingray connect to the wider network? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
And to do that, they act as a man in the middle, also known as a repeater.
That said, this still doesn't explain how they're registering themselves on the local network. THAT is probably one of the things that's "national security" -- especially as this appears to be that "golden key" that they want for other kinds of encrypted data.
And of course, THAT means that anyone who is operating outside the law can use the exact same techniques to intercept cellular data.
Re: (Score:1)
Which may have value in intelligence operations aboard but is completely pointless domestically, where the law requires that telecommunications providers provide for lawful interception, interception that can happen while you sit in the police station rather than chasing your target all over town trying to maintain a MITM attack against his cell phone.
Re: (Score:2)
The interception side will not need a telco database, any telco legal oversight, any staff at a telco understanding what cell users are of interest to law enforcement officials. No telco costs to a city or state, no other staff or teams to see the legal requests in advance or databases been set up to log users.
Has the US gov found leaks in the wa
Can't we just use Snoopsnitch and crowdsourcing? (Score:5, Interesting)
With enough people using SnoopSnitch ( https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com] ), which detects Stingray cell phone trackers, and a collection site on Facebook or any other social media site (Reddit sounds like a good candidate), the locations of these things could be mapped and published in jig time.
Re: (Score:2)
With enough people using SnoopSnitch ( https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com] ), which detects Stingray cell phone trackers, and a collection site on Facebook or any other social media site (Reddit sounds like a good candidate), the locations of these things could be mapped and published in jig time.
Except that they're mobile perhaps?
We need a revised Constitution (Score:3)
I long for a police force whose sole task is to protect the clear meaning of the Constitution, with the authority and balls to arrest any federal employee or contractor.
(Not really. I have not idea that it would work out well. But a girl can fantasize...)
C R I M I N A L S !! (Score:2)
Anyone who uses force and evades investigation, responsibility and punishment is indistinguishable from a criminal.
I fear many LEOs have forgotten their job is not to catch bad guys but to create respect for the law by enforcing it impartially and in a manner seen by all to be correct.
reminds me (Score:2)
It makes sense, from the POV of the Marshalls (Score:3)
I have worked with classified documents for decades. If something is classified, you cannot release it until it is declassified.
Even if it was already leaked, and the person asking for the information is waving a copy of it in your face. If you do, you lose your job in the least, and serve some time in prison at the worst.
Works the other way around. Several newspapers are blocked in government systems because if an unclassified machine (any with internet access will be unclassified) browses one of the news articles that contained a leaked document that machine is now contaminated with a classified document and has to be wiped. Because that machine is not cleared to hold that document- no matter where it came in to the machine from.