DHS Deployed Plane Above San Bernardino To Scoop Up All Phone Calls After Attack (dailymail.co.uk) 147
schwit1 writes: Federal investigators looking into the San Bernardino massacre deployed a spy plane overhead after the attacks in an apparent attempt to find additional suspects. The Department of Homeland Security is said to have put up the single engine craft over the California city and ordered it to make repeated circles overhead. The craft would likely have been equipped with Dirtbox technology which can scan tens of thousands of phones in one go to identify suspects. The report adds to the intrigue about whether or not there were accomplices in the San Bernardino attacks, which took place last Wednesday and were the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.
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in other words, could someone who lives under where there plane was flying sue the court for unreasonable search and seizure?
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Or alternatively, they will just lie about what it does. It has gotten very easy for the police to lie to the public in the US. And even when caught, nothing ever happens to them.
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There is lying and lying. Unless an independent expert gets access to the software without them being warned before, they can just come up "accidentally" with and "older version" of the software that does indeed pass muster as you say.
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Are you sure they did? I _think_ they did, because mass-surveillance is unsuitable for preventing terrorism or crime, but by now I have really started to wonder whether they are really that incapable.
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Are you sure they did? I _think_ they did, because mass-surveillance is unsuitable for preventing terrorism or crime, but by now I have really started to wonder whether they are really that incapable.
Re-frame your reference.
The truth is, they don't WANT to stop this type of violence. They USE those events to further steal rights away from regular law-abiding citizens.
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If i am having a fire on my property and some smoke goes over to your yard, is it now no longer "private"??
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Does the smoke affect your neighbor in any way?
Perhaps your neighbor is asthmatic or sensitive to smoke or was trying to star-gaze that night or just doesn't like the smell of smoke.
Of course your fire impacts your neighbor if its products escape your property.
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It's not the first time that idea has been floated: http://kxan.com/2015/04/02/cit... [kxan.com]
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Does the smoke affect your neighbor in any way?
He says it slows down his WiFi and gives his goldfish panic attacks.
During or immediately after the attack (Score:5, Insightful)
Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
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Think about the message: "Any time a couple people shoot up a building, everybody's civil liberties and due process are forfeit for the next few days (months? years? )."
Does that sound like a reasonable response and a good idea?
That's what they did in Boston after the marathon bombing. To an even greater degree, even, as they basically house-arrested all of the residents of Watertown for over 24 hours. I have not heard or read very much outrage over the government's response, despite the fact that they only caught the suspect after the curfew was lifted and as pretty much a direct result of the curfew being lifted.
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The lockdown didn't seem to hamper his movement at all, so I'd guess the risk was the same either way. They would've found him sooner, though, as people would've been at the marina sooner and noticed something was amiss sooner, so in that sense the risk would've been less, as he would've spent less time not in custody.
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The lockdown didn't seem to hamper his movement at all, so I'd guess the risk was the same either way. They would've found him sooner, though, as people would've been at the marina sooner and noticed something was amiss sooner, so in that sense the risk would've been less, as he would've spent less time not in custody.
Those pesky criminals. It's bad enough they break the felony laws, but then they go and break the lockdown laws and the "no guns" laws too.
Re: During or immediately after the attack (Score:5, Informative)
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Who gives a shit? That's what rights are for. Rights involve risks. Yeah, they might have harmed more people but that doesn't give them the right to take away your rights without due process or suspicion. Sorry, but that's the way the whole thing works.
Stripping away my civil liberties is not an acceptable response to your cowardice. Yes, that means risks. Yes, that means that bad things might happen. Oh well... You'll get over it.
Re: During or immediately after the attack (Score:4, Informative)
Does this involve white terrorists, like the one in Colorado, as well? Or is this one of those rules we apply to people whose beliefs or skin-color are outside of the norm?
It appears that it is applied when some of the suspects got away from the scene of the crime.
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You clearly did not read the constitution, because it says no such thing. It protects people against "unreasonable search and seizure", but it does not make it a crime to violate that right (Congress had). Also, there's a lot of common sense exceptions that are consistent with the intent of the 4th amendment. E.g. if police are chasing you on foot and you run into your friend's house, they don't have to get a warrant.
So basically, you're a moron.
Analogies are descriptive, not proscriptive (Score:1)
E.g. if police are chasing you on foot and you run into your friend's house, they don't have to get a warrant.
What they did here is enter every house in town, to see if anyone is running in.
Re:During or immediately after the attack (Score:5, Insightful)
Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
Yeah, the notion that this is a bad thing to do *during* an emergency is a bit hard to swallow. Exigent circumstances are when we want these dragnets used.
We can talk about pre-scanning metadata and background spying etc all we want, but in an active emergency I want those tools available If something wasn't justified. Feel free to sue after the fact.
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I don't mind they used it on that day; where there's a real threat with a possible follow-up. My problem is what they do with tools like this the other 364 days a year. If anyone believes that this sits in a hangar waiting to be available during an emergency, I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
Well, that's the point. Ensure there are proper safeguards. Five directors, and a Deputy Assistant at the FBI or something. Hell, require five keys or the President to sign off.
We have nuclear weapons and have managed to not fire them off even though the power is there. A secure system can be built ensure it only happens when authorized by those who bear political responsibility for their use.
Re:During or immediately after the attack (Score:5, Interesting)
The big question is did they follow procedure?
....snip.....
It is important to rewrite this to "The big question is did they follow a legal procedure?".
I read too often that the department reviewed the incident and has ruled
the official acted as per departmental policy. No one addresses the legality
of departmental policy.
Consider asset forfeiture related policies. If the policy is in effect
see valuables especially cash, grab it, do not provide a receipt with the
exact sum. Do not bring the individual up on charges, do this for the
poor or out of town visitors.
Consider policies in a training academy that that teach an officer to
fire his weapon in concert with other officers to ensure fatalities. Such policies
have evolved for many reasons one is to eliminate expensive hospital and life long care to the
wounded and maimed. Death benefits are less expensive and the one
witness that knows the truth is dead.
Departmental review is not a legal action. It is law outside of the law and
is fundamentally as illegal as the mafia boss sending his minions out to
execute the competition for his illegal actions.
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> Yeah, the notion that this is a bad thing to do *during* an emergency is a bit hard to swallow. Exigent circumstances are when we want these dragnets used. ... except that there is no conceivable way to identify who is a terrorist and who is not, from just where their phone happens to be at the time.
At the very best, the FBI could match the phones in the area to people who are on the "watch lists", and pretty much only after the fact. You know how much information we're talking about, right? We're no
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The problem is that they have reconstructed quite a bit of information that they already had or was already public (ie, facebook). They had been in contact with known terrorist suspects, it's just that the contact 'didn't meet a threshold'. So they have tons of information, but they don't want to use it. They just want to collect more information (various omnibus NSA programs).
It's like those people who download every torrent known to mankind. It's a hoarder mentality. We need a thinking mentality.
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Another reasonable thing (Score:2)
Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
Another reasonable thing would be to get judicial approval afterwards, to ensure that exigent circumstances were warranted and that it was an appropriate use of the technology.
You know, so that it doesn't ratchet into future phone sweeps for just any little thing?
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Search ALL calls in a city of 200k residents? With no constraints, that's at best a waste of time. At worst, it's datamining for a witch hunt.
Even in an emergency laws still exists. It's too easy to manufacture an incident if parallel construction is too hard for you.
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Exactly... I'm not even sure how it would do that. Locate phones? possibly... determine if a particular phone is in range? Sure... Actually scan the calls for keywords? No way... At least, nothing portable in anything less than a plane much bigger than a 4 seat cessna, or with a massive data pipe back to land-based crunching resources
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If a couple of witches have just murdered over a dozen people with magic missiles, then a witch hunt is not a witch hunt.
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Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
Maybe. Obviously it wasn't actually successful because there weren't any others to find. But do we have any reason to believe it would have found them if there were? And what was done with all of the data that was gathered?
And perhaps even more important: What was this plane and equipment doing the day before the attack? And the day after? And the previous month? Etc. Why was this resource so readily available and what else is it used for?
Re:During or immediately after the attack (Score:5, Interesting)
Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
Reasonable in this context, sure.
Now that the data has been collected what else might they do with it?
The unreasonable process of parallel reconstruction wins convictions and
is so effective in scoring wins in court such that prosecutors and persecutors
alike want access to the data. Juries expect a case to be airtight today
because of the theater of TV crime fighting. The reality is that a total
parallel reconstruction of fiction will appear more airtight and more convincing
than the truth which depends on facts.
Recently a local city was pondering the right of an officer to review all
body and vehicle camera footage before they submit their action report.
This was the union demanding it of the city.. Where is the union elected
by the citizenship to demand closed door considerations...
Does their report process also extend to phone metadata as well?
I would note that the review of video evidence is not extended to the defendant. Any
discrepancy is held up as a lie in court and in the media to the disadvantage of the
defendant.
In this case deploying an aircraft to slurp up conversations and other
metadata makes a lot of sense on the surface. Further an aircraft may well
allow improved communications so authorities can communicate with the public should
terrorists attack cell service. Oh wait that is not part of the tool....
Such tools are very much double edge knives. Why is it that double edge
knives are so illegal?
Today such tools are an omission under the law and the secrecy surrounding them
sheds fruit from the poison tree to to a degree that some will regret.
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Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
Sure, why spend $8 an hour on a rent-a-cop security guard on guarding the residence [huffingtonpost.com] of the suspects when we could be spending millions of dollars on a spy plane and violating the privacy of hundreds of thousands of US citizens instead.
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Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.
I, and at least 12,000 others was listening on police band (over the internet from 3 states away), and was able to watch on TV while listening to the scanner traffic, both apparently delayed by nearly the same amount.
On the scanner, several police units reported being "slow rolled by a car full of long beards". There were several different incidents of this with words to the same effect, "watching us closely", "seem way too interested", etc.
They even passed these car descriptions and plate numbers to ot
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It didn't help before the attack, why should it now suddenly work after the attack? Some sort of magic? A miracle, perhaps?
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But their skin was brown, so this is a terrorist attack!
Last week was from white people. Totally different!
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Race-divider squad activate! Set grievance-politics field to "social unrest"! Aim sites on people getting along! And ... Go!
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*Cell* phones (Score:2, Interesting)
Have we reached the point where "phone" refers to a cell phone? Or do we presume that terrorists don't have access to secure radio-free telephone technology?
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I"m charitably assuming you don't think landlines are secure.
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Simple: This is not about fighting terrorism or crime at all. It is about demonstrating to "do something", justifying all the expenses for "law enforcement" and collecting some nice bit of surveillance data with a good pretext in the bargain.
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Maybe they won't find it quite so easy to text one another to plan and co-ordinate their attacks, like the ones in Paris did.
N404KR (Score:5, Informative)
And it's registered out of a P.O. box in Virginia, along with many similar companies and aircraft.
Nothing suspicious here, move along citizen...
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other southern California spy planes
FBI: N956D, LIM0053 (N239LF), N657TP
DEA?: N48Q,N66W,N65U
other: N145AF
Any Bright Spot? (Score:2)
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Actually, it is getting easier and easier to be a criminal, as the bar for that is constantly lowered. It is getting even more easy to be a successful criminal if you are smart, because nothing of these technologies are useful to catch smart criminals. And law enforcement actually likes crime, as it gets them new shiny toys and more power. I am sure they are carefully selecting which criminals they catch, so as to not dry up the supply. They will of course keep catching criminals, otherwise what they do mig
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You are either naive or being purposefully obtuse. Anything that can be used against others can be used against you. This makes it harder for EVERYONE, not just criminals.
An in other news: Criminals turn off their pones.. (Score:2)
... before doing anything criminal, neatly making this a tool suitable exclusively for mass-surveillance and completely worthless for crime-fighting. But those that want this kind of tech have known that all along, because, rather obviously, mass-surveillance is what they want. My take is this use of the surveillance drone served exclusively to collect data to use for research into mass-surveillance, the actual crime on the ground just provided a nice pretext.
Trash article (Score:2)
Unrelated stock photos and innuendo. I love the "is to to have deployed" ... said by who? And the spy device that was "likely" used, if used at all, might have been blah blah blah. A troll article for the uber paranoid followed by 52 messages from people with nothing to add.
Was Sandy Hook really not terrorism? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Was Sandy Hook really not terrorism? (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of terror was brought to the society, a lot of innocent people were killed. Just because the shooter wasn't an Islamic radical doesn't mean it wasn't terrorism;
Terrorism: the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.
It can't just be "something that scares people" otherwise lightning and thunder would be terrorism. The Sandy Hook shooter was crazy, he didn't seem to have any political motive as far as anyone can tell. Oklahoma City might be called terrorism, since it had a political goal (and indeed, McVeigh even feels his goals were somewhat achieved), but McVeigh wasn't trying to scare or kill average people. He later said he wished he had done targeted assassinations instead of a mass bombing, since it would have avoided needless casualties. So OK city is kind of in a grey area.
I don't know why I am discussing this, an argument about a definition of a word is kind of silly thing to do, but oh well.
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Oklahoma City might be called terrorism, since it had a political goal (and indeed, McVeigh even feels his goals were somewhat achieved), but McVeigh wasn't trying to scare or kill average people.
But he was targeting civilians (I gather either to target the ATF office present there or generic federal employees). That's average enough.
Surprised the acted this fast (Score:4, Interesting)
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They did not 'act so fast' if they were already in the air, in an area close by...........
Meaning, they don't sit around waiting, they are already scooping up calls all the time.
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Luckily terrorists in general are pretty darn stupid and can not think of alternatives.
The police have always been lucky that the bulk of baddies are really dumb.
There is probably cause (Score:3)
Re: There is probably cause (Score:2)
What about setting up roadblocks for a city of 200,000 people based on one localized shooting incident? It's not like San Bernardino is some tiny village, after all.
It'd be like closing down five blocks surrounding a liquor store hold-up. Either the government is grasping at straws, or their purpose for this survellance is pretty much unrelated to the incident.
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(1) not a liquor store holdup, a terrorist action
(2) you really know nothing about perimeters for manhunts, do you?
Contradiction - can they record calls or not? (Score:2)
From the article:
[Caption] Spy plane: The operator is able to locate a person's location quickly but cannot listen to calls
The operator is able to locate a person's location quickly although they are not able to listen to calls.
[Caption] Inside look: Customized controls in the spy plane allow operators to listen in on tens of thousands of phone conversations in one go around
So which is it? Can they capture conversations or not?
They also don't seem entirely sure if their facts are facts:
It was equipped with 'Dirtbox' technology which can scan tens of thousands of phones in one go to identify suspects
The craft would likely have been equipped with 'Dirtbox' technology which can scan tens of thousands of phones in one go to identify suspects.
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That doesn't answer the question of whether they are actually capable of doing it or not.
Besides, meta data can (presumably) tell you which phones are calling which other phones. It also gives you the phone's location. That's plenty of useful info.
Snoop planes (Score:1)
Terrorist Checklist (Score:2)
~0.5% (Score:1)
While any murders are awful, the number of people killed in SBD was incomparable to the number killed at 09/11. Please stop comparing the two in attempting to imagine that it's become worse, or using the more recent to justify further destruction of our rights and of our country.
Not all of them (Score:2)
DHS is hoping your terrorists are stupid and uses standard cellphones.