IRS: We Used Stingray Devices To Track 37 Phones (arstechnica.com) 63
An anonymous reader writes: In October, we discussed the troubling revelation that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service had its own stingray devices, which are commonly used by law enforcement to intercept phone signals and track criminal suspects. The IRS has now addressed these allegations (PDF), confirming that they do indeed have one of the devices, and are trying to get a second. The agency said it tracked 37 phones across 11 different grand jury investigations, and the devices were also used in four non-IRS investigations. They say, "IRS use of cell-site simulation technology is limited to the federal law enforcement arm of the IRS, our Criminal Investigation division. Only trained law enforcement agents have used cell-site simulation technology, carrying out criminal investigations in accordance with all appropriate federal and state judicial procedures."
Only 1? (Score:2)
Yea. Right
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The IRS are the accountants of the government, it would undoubtedly gall them to no end to keep two sets of books in this matter. I'm not saying they couldn't do it, I'm just saying it would be out of character.
The interesting thing is not the number of phones they "tracked". The interesting thing really is the number of phones which accidentally reported their location to the IRS and had their data ignored by the IRS. Each of those people is put at risk, however slightly. We can hope the IRS destroys that "inadvertently collected" data but given that they don't mention it the letter is a bit disturbing.
There's no need for double book keeping here since they probably are simply not interested in our counting th
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Yeah, those horrible Republicans that were in power in October 2011 when the IRS bought the Stingray device.
Tax cheats should be drawn and quartered!! (Score:1)
Seriously, there need to be strict rules against spying...but those who cheat society by not paying there fair share in taxes deserve the worst the government who enables them to profit can offer.
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Like speeding tickets. Some countries make the fine based on a percentage of your income...
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All costs of living should be based on ability to pay.
No this is not correct at all. In fact this type of thinking is one of the core reasons the wealth gap exists. If someone cannot afford to live where they are the NEED TO LEAVE. If transportation and bridge tolls make it to expensive for you to earn a living working in the city you need to move out of the city.
The fact the middle class taxes go to subsides and safety net programs are what allow the super rich to get away with not paying living wages.
If you want to fix the income gap here is how you do it
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3) Kill off public housing and food subsidies for people who live in high cost densely populated areas. Provide them instead with free bus fair to (1).
This sounds good in principle, but in practice would totally fuck the working poor by requiring them to suffer through multi-hour commutes to keep their jobs. I agree with your end goals, but ANY plan to get there HAS to have some kind of transition built into it, and that transition CANNOT be a short one. You're talking about changes that need to be made on the scale of decades.
If I restate your position slightly, it might help illustrate the scale of what you're proposing: "Have the tens of millions of
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umm he is talking about deporting the poor to midwest/mexico and building a wall to keep them out. not commute.
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umm he is talking about deporting the poor to midwest/mexico and building a wall to keep them out. not commute.
The OP actually used the example of someone commuting to Palo Alto to pour coffee for $15 an hour, and the part of his post that I quoted suggested abolishing housing subsidies in favor of transit subsidies (so people could commute). Either you did not actually read what he said, or you just don't care because you're on the other side of the issue, so are trying to demonize the guy making the argument.
Reasonable people can disagree on these issues. Trying to frame the discussion to paint them as horrible
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"Provide them instead with free bus fair to (1)" where (1) referred to his first point
" It is possible to live on minimum wage in large parts of the middle west and south."
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In 3) he did make a point of having to pay higher wages to local baristas without mandating higher minimum wage (15$) thus giving a choice for the bus ticket holders a shitty low paying job in the Midwest or being a barista in palo alto.
i agree that "Reasonable people can disagree on these issues" but sometimes its ok to see the turd for what it is.
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Govt is becoming nothing more than a wealth transferer. Taking your money and giving it to someone else
70% of govt spending is writing checks to individuals
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org]
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More realistically, there need to be strict rules restricting spying. The government does have a real, if limited, need to spy on people as part of enforcing the law. That's what the 4th Amendment is supposed to be about: keeping the spying within strict limits necessary to enforce the law. I assume what I assume the IRS means when they talk about "carrying out criminal investigations in accordance with all appropriate federal and state judicial proc
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Evidently, there isn't any actual law and/or precedent indicating how to use Stingray's. It is a POLICY decision. This week, we happen to choose to get warrants to use it. Next week, who knows. There might be an emergency situation.
But even if it were, hypothetically, "illegal", the only entity that can do anything about it is Congress, and they won't.
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...Pointless to question the govt. They are going to do whatever they want and raising a stink will merely put you in their crosshairs....
Wow Mr. AC! Didn't I encounter a couple of your nihilistic [slashdot.org] comments [slashdot.org] in another story [slashdot.org]? Or are you just one of many agents charged with fostering hopelessness and indifference to help pave the way for those who would dominate and subjugate the people?
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Taxes are necessary for any society, but I can see why people want to "cheat" the system when they are getting taxed upon already taxed income multiple layers deep.
The IRS needs to set a single flat tax and cut the nickel and dime, fingers in every pie model that they currently have. There also needs to be a way for people to steer where their taxes go or don't go amongst a voted upon list of societal needs.
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The IRS doesn't set taxes. If you are a US citizen, write your senators and congressman. If you aren't a US citizen, do so in your own damn country.
Giving people the ability to direct where funding goes means nothing gets fully funded. Good luck with that model.
Admission is appreciated (Score:5, Interesting)
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This could easily be interpreted as the government simply thinking their missing something in the general populace and they realize people only want to give up so much, they're stuck with meta-data, but they are seriously investing in trying to find out what they're missing.
The only problem being, they've found out that by harvesting literally everything, they have way more than they can effectively use, so they trim it to strictly by the books, on the record use.
Everyone s
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The IRS admitting to using this is sadly comforting
Or maybe it's just to scare the cheaters..
No comfort here (Score:3, Insightful)
The IRS knows they are untouchable now. They can willfully destroy any private group at will, as they did with conservative groups, without punishment - who cares if at the same time they are listening on cell phone conversations of taxpayers? They say it's only the enforcement arm, but since any taxpayer is potentially lying about taxes, the enforcement arm would cover everyone in the U.S....
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The IRS knows they are untouchable now. They can willfully destroy any private group at will, as they did with conservative groups, without punishment - who cares if at the same time they are listening on cell phone conversations of taxpayers? They say it's only the enforcement arm, but since any taxpayer is potentially lying about taxes, the enforcement arm would cover everyone in the U.S....
Their funding got cut, which actually hurts the whole country.
if it's possible, somebody will (Score:3)
That way the US avoids spying on US citizens.
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they can get one from the DoJ or DHS.
But then how will the IRS conduct an investigation on the DoJ or DHS? How do you think these agencies manage to stay in power anyway?
privacy experts are fighting this wrong way (Score:1)
At this time, the focus should be on moving to encrypted voice communications. It is easy enough to do it with android and ios. At that point, it will not matter what tricks are pulled.
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Except with a stingray they could push OTA updates to your phone to root it and listen in on your mic anyway.
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At this time, the focus should be on moving to encrypted voice communications.
Already there (more or less). The wireless link of most cellular calls can be encrypted if the phone and base station negotiate such a connection. The problem is: cellular systems were designed with things like roaming on foreign systems and the ability to fall back to a best effort means of establishing a link. So if the 'base station' says it doesn't support some (or all) types of encryption, the call falls back to unencrypted. This is one of the tricks the Stingrays use.
Calls can be made over a TCP/IP c
Newspeak (Score:4, Insightful)
"in accordance with all appropriate federal and state judicial procedures."
In other words, "as they damn well please".
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I don't think prison works anymore, we need public hangings, hundreds of them, possibly thousands.
Necessary? (Score:2)
Revenue Officers (Score:2)
Of all the Criminal Enforcement branches of the law, the IRS's branch is most likely the ones who use this technology the way we expect them to, the way it was designed to be used. While DHS is likely to keep ALL the data they collect, I can easily imagine that the IRS will either not record, or swiftly dump, any data that isn't specifically attached to the investigation at hand.
Revenue Officers have a good deal more power to them than a typical investigator, as they can make determinations that ..really d
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It's troubling because the very nature of the stingray device means that innocent people are getting swept up in the fishing net by design. The stingray isn't capable of targeting the communications of a suspect in a criminal investigation; instead, it interferes with and collects the cellular signals of everyone in physical proximity to the device. There's a good reason the DOJ is trying to hide this technology behind corporate NDAs as if they somehow trump the law; there's a good reason they're fighting t