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Government Cellphones Communications Privacy United States

How Police Fight To Keep Use of Stingrays Secret 140

Posted by Soulskill from the you-can-trust-us dept.
v3rgEz writes: The NY Times looks at how local police are fighting to keep their use of cell phone surveillance secret, including signing NDAs with Stingray manufacturer Harris Corp and claiming the documents have been lost. It's part of a broader trend of local agencies adopting the tactics of covert intelligence groups as they seek to adopt new technology in the digital era. "The nondisclosure agreements for the cell site simulators are overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and typically involve the Harris Corporation, a multibillion-dollar defense contractor and a maker of the technology. What has opponents particularly concerned about StingRay is that the technology, unlike other phone surveillance methods, can also scan all the cellphones in the area where it is being used, not just the target phone. ... For instance, in Tucson, a journalist asking the Police Department about its StingRay use was given a copy of a nondisclosure agreement. 'The City of Tucson shall not discuss, publish, release or disclose any information pertaining to the product,' it read, and then noted: 'Without the prior written consent of Harris.'"
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How Police Fight To Keep Use of Stingrays Secret More

How Police Fight To Keep Use of Stingrays Secret

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  • I am thinking that some sort of a white list for real towers, their signal and locations will need to be developed and actively maintained to stop this fucking abuse of power on the technology level.

    On the individual rights level the fucking police state is completely destroying those with all of these unauthorised searches (which is what they are), the Constitution is used to wipe the fucking government officials asses.

    (oh, and /. it's been 16 seconds since I pushed the 'reply' button, has it? I am a quick

    • Re:Whitelisting real mobile carrier towers (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:21PM (#49271825)

      Encryption... bah.
      Snooping ... bah

      I say let them listen, but drown them out with noise.
      Congest the networks with noise. Make an App that send packets of random data to random IP addresses, sprinkle other packets with "key words" randomly , hell even use older broken encryption schemes to "make their life easier".

      Needle in a haystack, bugger that, make it like looking for a very specific grain of sand on a very very big beech and down them in worthless data.

      • Re:Whitelisting real mobile carrier towers (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @09:17PM (#49272305)

        You're forgetting how good computers are at searching for stuff in big data sets, or in filtering crap from real data. 95% of my e-mails are spam, but the best filters manage to block them them out with incredible accuracy. Also, I take it you're volunteering YOUR bandwidth for generating all that extra data? Most of us don't have unlimited data plans.

        Don't pooh-pooh encryption. That turns your data into actual white noise for them, which is why they're scared silly of people actually using it without mandatory government-approved back doors. Soon, privacy-savvy customers are going to demand end-to-end encryption for ALL communication all their devices, including messaging and normal phone calls. You can already see this happening in incremental steps. There's simply no other way to be assured that people aren't listening in on you.

        • Use compound encryption. Compound encryption means using algorithm one, applied to a file encrypted with algorithm two. And at least one of the algorithms is salted and so that two encryptions of the same input file produce different output results. I wrote software that generates 16**3 different encryption keys, randomly selected. (srand(clock)); The cypher block chained vigenere encryption is the first algorithm and triple DES is the second. All that the recipient knows is that the key number, ranges f

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      It depends on what the next gen can do. The change of cell phone coverage patterns was a tell in the past that an app could detect, map and share.
      How smart will the next modded smartphone have to be to detect expected local network changes?
      Some ability to map normal for the area and then look for changes? The interesting part is a permanent site would be given settings that would be seen as a new normal.
      Looks like a new smaller cell site with urban features, connects like a cell site, passes all types

      • The need to keep IMSI-catcher like systems away from courts, cleared lawyers and trusted domestic telcos systems is telling.

        I appreciate (and assume) that the way you mean "need" is along the lines of "the perceived need of those implementing it", and not a need in the true sense of an essential thing that must not be absent. There really is no need. An individual is still much more likely to be killed by their own goverment (typically: shot by a cop) than be harmed in any terrorist attack. If there's a need at all, it's for strongly encouraging surveillance of police and swift, certain, vigorously enforced legal consequences

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          re "Like I think you're saying, the "need" comes from":
          Why risk an unsafe court setting that can face a legal challenge? The new IMSI-catcher hardware could have been detected in an area.
          The parallel construction may not hold up under legal questions in open court.
          All law enforcement officials have to do is get rubber stamped court papers to watch over a person to build a case that will hold in any open court.
          The need to keep IMSI-catcher like systems away from courts, cleared lawyers and trusted domest

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xeoron ( 639412 )
      Or use wifi only calling with known WAP.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      what's that gonna do to your original problem: law enforcement agencies ignoring the spirit of the laws.

      like, fuck, NDA? look, you're just going to need to wait few years for every freedom of information request to be excluded with the same fucking excuse. "oh but our windows software license includes a NDA that we don't tell about flaws in our security procedures or lost emails".

  • DERELICTION OF DUTY. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Sworn, badged officers OF THE LAW are actively subverting the law to protect their interests.

    SHUT IT DOWN.

    • But being like the NSA is soooo cosmopolitan now... They're just keeping up with the Jones's.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xeoron ( 639412 )
      They are violating the public's trust!

    • Nothing new to see here. Move along... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @11:22PM (#49272777) Journal

      Sworn, badged officers OF THE LAW are actively subverting the law to protect their interests.

      And they've been doing that since police forces were invented. And before that since government was invented.

      Example: Decades ago the public ire was raised over crappy info in law enforcement data banks, leading to some innocent people being harrassed, wherever they went (nationwide), by cops who thought they were crooks. So governents at various levels passed things like the FOIA to allow people to find out what was in the databases about them and, if appropriate, get it expunged.

      So how did the cops react?

      They took their (error-filled) files out of the police stations (and out of reach of these new laws), gave them to new private-enterprise criminal-information databank companies (started by retiring or moonlighting police officials), and subscribed to these companies "servces".

      Same crummy data resulting in the same crummy screwups, but you couldn't use the new laws to get to it and get it purged. (Further, the various systems traded it around with flooding protocols. Manage to purge it from some of them and the others just put it back, on the electronic assumption that they just hand't gotten the news yet.)

  • America, the Police State. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:15PM (#49271799)

    Stingrays are just the latest in a long line of prosecutorial abuse.

    The government classifies volumes of information to hide evidence of their own wrongdoing. They use secret tools like stingrays 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 then re-file charges a month later to go shopping for a different judge.

    This month we found out they lock people up in secret detention facilities in Chicago, in America, without booking them, no Miranda rights, 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. This isn't Gitmo, this is happening in the USA. Police are shooting and killing people weekly if not daily, acting as judge jury and executioner, and they face zero consequences.

    The police state isn't coming, it's here. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

    • Re:America, the Police State. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:25PM (#49271845)
      Isn't this exactly what the second amendment was for?

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by ganjadude ( 952775 )
        which is exactly why they fight so hard to chip away at it. see the new ammo ban as one more in a long line of abuses

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          But at what point do you actually *do* something? All this corruption and surveillance and the absurdity of the TSA powers is all tolerated because of the guise of freedom in the form of "we have guns so we could do something about it" but how much more government bootlicking will you tolerate being forced to do before you actually *use* the powers you have been granted by the second amendment?

          If you overturn the ammo ban then will you use the second amendment powers to change the oppressive dystopian gover

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            but how much more government bootlicking will you tolerate being forced to do before you actually *use* the powers you have been granted by the second amendment?

            Well, the second amendment grants you the right to own weapons. Many people do. That's all it does. It isn't a hunting license for human representatives of the US government, it just means that you can own guns.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

              This was enacted and justified on the basis that an oppressive government regime can be overturned. Where is this "well regulated Militia" and when will it move against the oppressive dystopian government? Clearly the surveillance, the killings by police that are not indicted, the corruption of politic

              • Well, the inner cities have, de facto or de jure, eliminated the militia by making inexpensive firearms illegal ("Saturday night speciala") or banning them all, outright. Those people have long been disarmed. So that's why we're seeing the level of oppression we are. I don't agree with others that it's a race war-- it's a class war, and black communities are being affected the most not necessarily because they're black, but because they're poor. Police oppression is now working its way into the suburbs,
          • i dont believe we are there yet. close, but not there yet.

    • This month we found out they lock people up in secret detention facilities in Chicago, in America, without booking them, no Miranda rights, 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. This isn't Gitmo, this is happening in the USA.

      You've been modded up to 3 at this point, but I really need a citation on this one. I'm lazy in my news gathering, and I've not heard of this at all.

    • You know who's to blame ? Common people (includes slashdot). When some of us were seeing this coming 10-15 years ago.. we were branded as lunatics. Now.... I'm so glad this is happening.
      That's for being too blind(or more probable - dumb) to see it before it happened. And guess what ? It's gonna get worse. They gonna teach your kids through movies, music, mainstream media, *tube thingies to like living in a police state were no rights exist.. only (couple of) privileges.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      That is disturbing, but one nit to pick.

      Gitmo *IS* the United States, in spite of bending logic and reason into a pretzel to make a bad excuse for going around the constitution. The U.S. flag flies there, not the Cuban flag. The U.S. military controls the grounds, not the Cuban government. No Cuban citizens can go there.

      • Gitmo *IS* the United States, in spite of bending logic and reason into a pretzel to make a bad excuse for going around the constitution.

        And bending the logic didn't even work out for them in the end - Boumediene v. Bush pointed out that it's nothing but sophistry.

  • If you're doing nothing wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 50000BTU_barbecue ( 588132 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:23PM (#49271831) Journal

    you have nothing to hide, right? What's good for the pig is good for the swine, no?

  • I am surprised that one hasn't been stolen yet.

    • I am surprised that one hasn't been stolen yet.

      Are you SURE about that?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I expect that an operator's manual might find its way out of a local police department and over to Wikileaks in the near future.

  • What puzzles me is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nutria ( 679911 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:30PM (#49271859)

    why the ACLU hasn't filed suit yet to bring this to the SCOTUS.

    • Maybe because they're trying?

      You can't just magic your way into a SCOTUS review.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nutria ( 679911 )

        Trying to "what"? File suit?

        I've seen instances where they file suit the day after a law goes into effect. Stingray has been public knowledge for long enough that their 4th Amendment lawyers should have on it like stink on shit the day after they read about it.

        • The problem is likely in finding someone with standing to file the suit. Just because something is blatantly illegal doesn't mean the courts will give you the time of day. You have to convince someone who has been harmed in some way by action you want to sue over. Using a stingray device to track down a specific cell phone could likely degrade the performance of cell phones in the area where it is used and violate peoples expectations of privacy, but actually proving that any one persons privacy was invaded

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Consider the origins, contractors, new cash flows and other cell projects in the USA
      CIA Worked With DOJ To Re-Purpose Foreign Surveillance Airborne Cell Tower Spoofers For Domestic Use (2015/03/10)
      https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]
      "developed technology to locate specific cellphones in the U.S. through an airborne device that mimics a cellphone tower"
      Products and services that was in use during the occupations and in other roles in South America are now back for domestic use and funding.
      The only puzzl

    • You mean, like this [aclu.org]?

  • Welcome to the new America (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goodmanj ( 234846 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:32PM (#49271879)

    Welcome to the new America, where license agreements can trump the Bill of Rights.

  • What is the point? (Score:3)

    by Mullen ( 14656 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:34PM (#49271889)

    I don't see the point of this device. If you use a Stingray to catch a criminal, then can't the criminal simply request how the device works and once that is denied, the evidence used to catch the criminal is simply thrown out. The whole point is gather evidence but if that evidence is unusable, then the whole point of the device is gone.

    • Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:43PM (#49271925)

      I don't see the point of this device. If you use a Stingray to catch a criminal, then can't the criminal simply request how the device works and once that is denied, the evidence used to catch the criminal is simply thrown out. The whole point is gather evidence but if that evidence is unusable, then the whole point of the device is gone.

      Oh, I'm sorry. You must be mistaking this decade for previous ones when we actually upheld the law, and did not place lawmakers and enforcers above it at all times, with almost guaranteed impunity.

      Good luck with your theory here. Let me know how that shit works out.

      • They also use this garbage lying theory called Parallel Construction, which if they explained it to time machine transported Founding Fathers, they would fall upon them like a pack of ravening zombies, as they would see this for what it is: Tyranny.

    • Re:What is the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ganjadude ( 952775 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @07:44PM (#49271929) Homepage
      the problem is they use the stingray to gather evidence. After they have it all, they only use the evidence they can claim they collected the old fashioned way to avoid talking about the sting ray. its an end run around the constitution is all it is

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Welcome to parallel construction.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Two words: Parallel Construction.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Stingray would not normally be used as direct evidence. Law enforcement agencies can, and should use similar techniques as if they are passed intelligence information that is not admissible as evidence - they use to to cue or construct an event that generates the actual evidence.

      e.g. if you know that suspect X lives in cul-de-sac, from a Stingray intercept, then you don't need to use that as evidence. Just set up a random breath testing station road stop around the corner, and boom - you have probable c

    • You use the Stingray to build evidence, you then construct a case so that what you find out via Stingray can be presented as having been discovered legally.

      That way defense counsel has nothing to challenge and the secret/illegal intelligence gathering stays safely hidden.

      The appropriate literary reference isn't some John Grisham novel, it's Franz Kafka.

      • Parallels could perhaps also be drawn with the Enigma codebreaking project in WWII. The allies had to be very careful to ensure that some "other" method of discovering German state secrets was plausible to avoid giving the game away. For instance, they'd direct spotting planes over U-boat positions before attacking even though they already knew exactly where they were.

        • They also set up fake listening stations with real people in to be captured by the Germans in order to keep it secret. It was an awful sacrafice to have to make, but one that was probably necessary in order to win the war.

        • That was acceptable because the government was spying on a foreign government. Spying on your own citizens is wrong because you're supposed to be protecting their right to privacy instead of violating it.

          • Don't misunderstand... I'm not trying to justify the current stingray use. I was just showing an example of how an organization can use secret information without revealing the origin of that secret information.

            I'm not actually opposed to the technology in general... just the warrant-less and secretive nature of it, which seems like an obvious breach of current wiretapping laws and precedents to me. If there are criminal or terrorist elements that need monitoring, then the police should be able to get a w

    • Yes - if the criminal knows you used it. Most criminals use a Public Defense Lawyer who does jack shit. They don't investigate, and never find out it was used and never complain, so the evidence is accepted.

      OR the police lie about how they got your location "anonymous tip" was used in at least one legal proceeding, when the anonymous tip was called in by a police officer using a stingray.

    • I don't see the point of this device. If you use a Stingray to catch a criminal, then can't the criminal simply request how the device works and once that is denied, the evidence used to catch the criminal is simply thrown out. The whole point is gather evidence but if that evidence is unusable, then the whole point of the device is gone.

      It let's them find you. Always find you. Every-time I see an article about stingrays, it presumes that the issue lies in the fact that innocent people in a several block radius are inadvertabtly monitored along with the target. This is no accident - it's a key feature of Stingrays. The device can import your call history and build a profile of you. It then monitors which numbers all phones in the area call / text and looks for matches between between your old call logs and all cellular activity in the area.

    • If you use a Stingray to catch a criminal, then can't the criminal simply request how the device works and once that is denied, the evidence used to catch the criminal is simply thrown out.

      That's why law enforcement uses parallel construction to conceal how they actually got the evidence.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]

  • It is not how they are doing it, but why -- what have they got to hide? If they are not doing anything wrong then they have nothing to fear by us knowing!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It is not how they are doing it, but why -- what have they got to hide? If they are not doing anything wrong then they have nothing to fear by us knowing!

      Their biggest fear is that a court will rule that this system is invasive enough to require a warrant. So law enforcement will do anything it takes to keep stingray out of the courts eyes. It has happened with thermal imagers and they don't want it happen with stingray.

  • Politicians use the expression "public-private partnership" like it is a good thing.

             

    • Ceci n'est pas une signature.

      Why? If it looks like a signature, reads like a signature and tastes like a signature (I got an iPad), then it's a signature.

  • Freedom of Information Act

    If they really could hide wholesale violation of millions of people's 4th Amendment rights behind a civil NDA contract it is seriously time for new federal felony laws with MANDATORY prison times for every government employee involved in the conspiracy to block FOIA releases. Of course obviously if it were something they wanted to do they would brush civil contracts aside just like they do criminal laws now.

    I have about decided that the magic wand of "National Security" should be

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      If a journalist, citizen journalist, local lawyer gets to near some local towns paper, digital records about the costs or use of a device...
      A Freedom of Information Act cant find records that got moved around the USA that night :)
      Walk in requests by journalists, citizen journalists, local lawyers could find hardware funding or upgrade requests in that community.
  • Pick one cellular provider. Give them one month to tell the cops to get bent. If they don't do so, every customer (well, all the customers we can get to do so) switches to another provider. Or, if that's too drastic, a warning shot: no cell-phone week. We all leave our cell phones at home, turned off, with the threat to cancel service if Stingrays don't become extinct.

    • "Phone calls" are remnants of the old century. Stop using cellphone services and use wi-fi only.

      • "Phone calls" are remnants of the old century. Stop using cellphone services and use wi-fi only.

        Um, that might work if you never leave the city. Some of us like to actually leave the city and go places where there might possibly be a cellphone signal, but there definitely ain't no wi-fi. Actually, my last real vacation was sufficiently out there that there wasn't hardly any radio, much less cellphone or internet. Surprised how little I missed it all.

  • Sounds like the kind of deals OCP would be making. The future is now and it's terrifying.

  • The way to 'defeat' Stingray is to talk about it. Incessantly and to all the people you know who don't necessarily read Slashdot. If you use Facebook, link articles like the ones in the OP above to your Facebook page.

    Everybody who pays taxes is entitled to know as much as possible about Stingray. We can help that process along.

  • What is the legal theory here? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crbowman ( 7970 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @11:17PM (#49272753) Homepage

    One of the things that I really hate about some journalism today is a failure to ask the obvious question. Could someone please explain under what legal theory an agency (state or local police) can sign an NDA and claim the NDA allows them to fail to meet a provision of law. I would think the law trumps the NDA and that it wouldn't be legal or perhaps unenforceable to sign such an NDA when you are required to release records under state or local law.

  • Since police departments have cited at trial that the NDA prohibits them from revealing information that would be beneficial to the defendants, and the device that the NDA covers is specifically designed to put the defendants in that position where they need the information it prevents, then clearly this NDA is evidence that it itself is a contract whose engagement explicitly leads directly to perverting the course of justice. It should be possible to sue Harris for conspiracy to pervert the course of justi

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