Baltimore Police Used Stingrays For Phone Tracking Over 25,000 Times 83
An anonymous reader writes The Baltimore Police Department is starting to come clean about its use of cell-phone signal interceptors — commonly known as Stingrays — and the numbers are alarming. According to recent court testimony reported by The Baltimore Sun, the city's police have used Stingray devices with a court order more than 25,000 times. It's a massive number, representing an average of nearly nine uses a day for eight years (the BPD acquired the technology in 2007), and it doesn't include any emergency uses of the device, which would have proceeded without a court order.
Loose procedures (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds to me like not only the police is wrong by applying for too many uses of the device (of course they do - it's their job to gather as much information about potential criminals as possible), also the courts appear to be wrong by not doing much evaluation of the requests. Now having to handle nine requests a day is a huge number as well (that's before accounting for holidays and weekends), yet no excuse for not following proper procedures.
From the face of it, the courts should be more strict. Take more time to properly evaluate each one, possibly causing a backlog, but that in turn should force the police to lower their number of requests to only the ones they believe are valid - and arguably the courts should be hiring more people to get the work done in a timely manner.
Re:Loose procedures (Score:5, Insightful)
A pipe dream, I know, but what the hey.
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To me it is (or at least, should be) the modern equivalent of a wire tap where police investigators are listening in to someone's phone line.
For that reason it should come with the same set of checks and balances: a court warrant required (with maybe an exception for "emergency cases" which will have to be defined really well), and the requirement that only the phone for which the warrant is given can be listened in to, so no "collateral damage".
Re:Loose procedures (Score:4, Insightful)
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It depends what they are doing. TFA describes a situation where a murderer was found because he kept the victim's phone (on!) in his house. I have no problem with using cell phone intercept to track down a murder suspect in a situation like this, although the degree of stupidity required for this to work is astonishing. So based on the article we don't actually know that there were lax procedures. I'm not saying there weren't, but getting a court order for this sort of thing is precisely what they sh
Re:Loose procedures (Score:4, Insightful)
What's interesting is that you make an assertion... and then act as though that assertion was a fact.
One of the things you've failed to account for, there are probably hundreds of judges in a city of a half million - thus it's quite possible to be strict and evaluate each one and still come up with this number. It's a distributed parallel system - what sound like scary huge numbers arise quite easily from a relatively modest number of actors, especially considering the length of time involved.
But the ill-educated (or deeply biased, or prejudiced towards panic*) won't stop and think about these things. Thinking Is Hard.
And, to those moderating, yes - I know the actual number is 4,300. I'm just so damn tired of the level of ignorance so prevalent on Slashdot.
* Actually there's considerable overlap in these categories.
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Correction: 4,300 times (Score:5, Informative)
The article states that the earlier figure was incorrect; the Baltimore police actually used it 4,300 times, not 25,000 times.
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These are searches with warrants, so no NSL.
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For the witty commentary and the recollections of /. old timer stories?
I remember this one time...
Re:Correction: 4,300 times (Score:4, Funny)
The article states that the earlier figure was incorrect; the Baltimore police actually used it 4,300 times, not 25,000 times.
Is this one of these things where they try to make 4300 sound small by first quoting a bigger number?
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4,300 over eight years in a city the size of Baltimore is not that big a number. 1-2 a day in a city of 600,000 (metro of 2.7 million) may actually be on the low side of what you would expect.
But hey, math class is tough. OUTRAGE!
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1-2 trips to court per day to get a warrant sound like a full time job to me.
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~~
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The article states that the earlier figure was incorrect; the Baltimore police actually used it 4,300 times, not 25,000 times.
It's still a big enough number that they must have full-time staff dedicated to these illegal searches. No wonder B'more has so many problems with dropped calls.
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How is it illegal if there's a court order?
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Any warrant that doesn't list the particular; one that authorizes a general collection is unconstitutional and illegal regardless of what the Judge says. In this case the Judge
From courts to no telco needed (Score:2)
The lack of any new court comment or even telco paperwork is telling. Local law enforcement have moved away from needing local telcos to just collecting it all.
It is now cheaper to log all calls in an area and sort them than to request paper work a person of interest at a city or sate law enforcement level.
A cell phone is now a gps, text, voice print, photo, numbers called and beacon carried aroun
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In the past a telco would have to see court paper work to set a number into their system to track and log.
Presumably stingrays are used for the real time interception of communications and live tracking of a suspect. Having the telcos provide the capability for real time monitoring across their networks to law enforcement provides far more potential for abuse than localized stingrays.
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The cellular phone surveillance device becomes a cell tower like device in a community and collects all calls in that area.
The cell site simulator has total access as it forces all mobile phones in the area to connect to it.
Collect it all is how a cell site simulator works for cellular phone surveillance.
A change to bulk collection.
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Classic court allowed telco support would be for one cell number, account or person.
The cellular phone surveillance device becomes a cell tower like device in a community and collects all calls in that area.
The cell site simulator has total access as it forces all mobile phones in the area to connect to it.
Collect it all is how a cell site simulator works for cellular phone surveillance.
A change to bulk collection.
Are these devices attended by actual humans, or, as is likely, it's set up and left recording in some nearby convenient location like the back of a parked van, motel room, or abandoned building, etc?
If so, they should be easy to radio-locate, like the old CB radio 'rabbit hunts'. How upset would they be to find their expensive toy missing when they returned?
If it *is* attended, surround the location and start protesting and out them. Don't forget to video record.
If police don't need a warrant, then does tha
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"This machine catches stingrays: Pwnie Express demos cellular threat detector" (Apr 21, 2015)
http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
Looks for Unauthorized or unknown cell providers, Anomalous or suspicious base stations, IMSI catcher/interceptor identification, Rogue or malicious cellular base stations.
Found in small town, CA? (Score:2)
So, I went to the local Social Security office in smallsville, CA. While waiting, I used my phone, and noticed that (Verizon) I was getting a 1x signal.
There are *no* 1x signal towers in my local area, it's all 100% digital. There aren't even any 3G towers that I know of. And when I left, within a few hundred feet, I resumed seeing 4G signal,like normal.
Stingray much?
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Wonder what the areas around news papers and press offices are like
Journalists and people they meet should be very aware of that a log on a map can show. Two people standing next to each other for a short time both with their phones on.
Re:Found in small town, CA? (Score:4, Informative)
1x is digital too. [wikipedia.org]
It does have longer range than 3G and 4G, and so it could very well be that you were simply getting a marginal signal and there was no Stingray involved at all -- your phone just used the best that was available, and that was 1x.
And once you left, the 4G signal got strong enough again to use, and your phone switched back.
Re:Found in small town, CA? (Score:4, Interesting)
There aren't even any 3G towers that I know of.
Seriously? A good chunk of the existing phone base can't even do 4G - prepaid is still largely 3G-only phones, which are still sold new today. It would be very rare to have 4G-only coverage areas in a town.
However, if you never go anywhere and have really good 4G coverage, setting your phone to 4G-only may well be a good workaround to reduce your chance of an intercept.
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However, if you never go anywhere and have really good 4G coverage, setting your phone to 4G-only may well be a good workaround to reduce your chance of an intercept.
The current generation of Stingray devices can do LTE interception.
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If you travelled outside of the cities, you'd find that much of the country is 2G.
Repeater system (Score:2)
Most likely the SSA office has a cell phone repeater system installed inside the building to provide decent service for the workers and clients. I have installed multiple systems inside office buildings when the local tower is not providing a decent signal.
4300 times, 1 suspect. (Score:1)
Yah, makes sense to me. Nothing like using time, material, massive tax dollars and technology used to stop _a_ nasty homicidal maniac from murdering again. Well done! A truly Cadmean victory to brag about. Whoo hoo! Let's hear it for the Blatimore Policy mens!
*gasp* (Score:4, Interesting)
What the actual fuck?! What did they do before Stingrays? Not catch anybody? Good fucking grief!
The above was my initial reaction, anyway. I checked the article; seems to have been updated to say 4300 times, which is not such a jaw-dropper. Also, I'd be interested to know whether that covers every time the device was used to intercept or track a mobile device (4300 is a number I could believe, if not like) or if that was the number of court-orders/warrants obtained (4300 still seems ridiculously over-used).
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The new cell site simulator count could be how many times a person of interest connects or is logged vs the bulk community collect it all using the cell site simulator 24/7.
A smaller number would be presented to keep the bulk community collection count well hidden.
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I was wondering when a reference to The Wire would pop up.
Remember - they actually caught Stringer by using a cell tower snooper in Season 3.
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Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 20, 2015 @09:11PM
from the i-don't-remember-that-episode-of-The-Wire dept.
I think the editor beat them to it.
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What the actual fuck?! What did they do before Stingrays? Not catch anybody? Good fucking grief!
No, the real question here is, did they start catching anyone after abusing the shit out of our Rights.
capabilities? (Score:2)
i understand the basics of how a stingray works - it puts out a stronger signal than the nearest tower, and the phones connect to it instead of the tower. but what is it capable of, and how does it do it?
First, location. obviously any phone that connects to the stingray must be in the vicinity of the stingray. But do phones ping the tower with their GPS coordinates? Cuz then the stingray would be receiving a whole bunch of imei numbers with attached gps coordinates.
what about call metadata and call content
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Yes, they record your position and call metadata. They can most certainly collect your content, too. A stingray is literally a miniature celltower that does a MITM attack.
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Voice prints would be the next step. Malware down for software passwords would then allow for plain text as entered no matter the secure app loaded.
The phone trusts the cell site simulator network as it would a telco cell tower. The network between the phone and cell site simulator is wide open at the point.
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Since IMSI catchers are well understood, all this secrecy is a bit surprising. It makes speculation about additional capabilities plausible. It could use exploits in the modem software to install malware. Such malware could do all sorts of things like reading local fi
Update (Score:4, Interesting)
Police outlined for the first time this month their usage of the stingray, pegging it at more than 4,300 times — a figure experts called a "huge number" compared to a trickle of disclosures in other cities.
Lets do the math over. 4300/8/365= 1.5 times a day. Then there is the issue of duration and range. Is every day a different court order? Is every Stingray a different court order? One ongoing investigation that covers a home, a workplace and a meeting place would more than cause that many "uses".
Big numbers look big until you break them down.
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Let's do some more math. All cell calls within a mile are intercepted and rerouted. I really don't give a hoot about this particular case, but how about giving us an educated guess as to how many 'innocent' cell phone calls are intercepted each and every day in each and every major city(and undoubtedly many mid and small sized cities as well) by not only the local PD but also any number of state and federal agencies.
Sorry, you can make this seem small with your math, but in reality this is probably a bigger
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I really don't give a hoot about this particular case, but how about giving us an educated guess as to how many 'innocent' cell phone calls are intercepted each and every day in each and every major city(and undoubtedly many mid and small sized cities as well) by not only the local PD but also any number of state and federal agencies.
Those are "interceptions" that are not logged or looked at. All that happens is the call is passed through to the real cell tower.
You see the judge had decided to issue a blanket search warrant for all the locations on the GPS.
So the cell phone of a suspect found in possession of dealer quantities of drugs was searched and found to contain an number of locations. The judge found that the link between the drugs and the locations on the cell phone sufficient evidence to provide probable cause to search those locations. You do not have enough detail to make an accurate determination on how far the warran
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If it's just for one phone, all telecommunication providers in the US have to, by law, provide full "tapping" ability. What's the advantage of the Stingray then?
BTW, would a blanket search warrant even be Constitutional? The Fourth Amendment says that warrants must be specific.
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What's the advantage of the Stingray then?
Timing. Stingray allows real-time access to the presence of a desired number without having to wait for the information to filter through the telco's bureaucracy. A telco will not watch for a suspect while police will.
BTW, would a blanket search warrant even be Constitutional?
I bet the warrant was more like "here is the list of locations from the cell phone we would like to search". I think that because the judge approved all the locations the OP calls it a "blanket warrant".
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Actually three Stingrays only running half the time would account for the usage.
The Wire! (Score:1)
A Bit Odd (Score:3)
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What was big for Iraq and Afghanistan is now back for domestic use. Data visualisation, graphs, geospatial maps are all in the mix depending on what is offered. Mix in private databases, purchased data for phone numbers.
The US seems to have been early with it but the US is now finding other nations efforts locally.
The other side is the wired versions for any/all Public Switche
Wouldn't this be causing crappy cell service? (Score:2)
So quite simply I hope that the various cell manufacturers are presently working on technolo
Holy shit (Score:1)
There are only about 50,000 TOTAL ARRESTS a year in Baltimore. So for every 16 arrests, there is one Stingray use?? They must be regularly tapping the phone of everyone even suspected of being a felon in the fucking city.
Stealing Bandwidth (Score:1)
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Lockdown to single user (Score:2)
Suspected this for a while (Score:2)
I've had very weird signal connections and data problems in certain areas of Baltimore. And have been convinced for a while that I've been encountering a stingray tower in certain areas.
A interception device for interceptors (Score:1)