FCC Complaint: Baltimore Police Breaking Law With Use of Stingray Phone Trackers (baltimoresun.com) 108
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Baltimore Sun: Civil rights groups have complained to the FCC over the Baltimore Police Department's use of stingray phone tracking devices. They claim that "the way police use it interferes with emergency calls and is racially discriminatory." Baltimore Sun reports: "The complaint argues that the police department doesn't have a proper license to use the devices and is in violation of federal law. It calls on regulators at the Federal Communications Commission to step in and formally remind law enforcement agencies of the rules. 'The public is relying on the Commission to carry out its statutory obligation to do so, to fulfill its public commitment to do so, and to put an end to widespread network interference caused by rampant unlicensed transmissions made by BPD and other departments around the country,' the groups say in the complaint. Police in Baltimore acknowledged in court last year that they had used the devices thousands of times to investigate crimes ranging from violent attacks to the theft of cellphones. Investigators had been concealing the technology from judges and defense lawyers and after the revelations Maryland's second highest court ruled that police should get a warrant before using a Stingray. The groups argue that surveillance using the devices also undermines people's free speech rights and describe the use of Stingrays as an electronic form of the intrusive police practices described in the scathing Justice Department report on the police department's pattern of civil rights violations."
Racially discrimitory? (Score:1)
This device can determine race when scanning phone calls?
Re:Racially discrimitory? (Score:4, Informative)
The don't have to... they're used disproportionately in black neighborhoods. It's right in TFA had you bothered to read it.
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they're used disproportionately in black neighborhoods.
And? There are millions of other reasons for that that don't indicate racial discrimination.
It's right in TFA had you bothered to read it.
RTFA? Where do you think you are, someplace other than slashdot?
Re: Racially discrimitory? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is in your first statement.
Being a criminal, does not imply that you are not a victim. It's entirely possible (and in fact common) for the police to victimise someone who is a criminal. Further, it's entirely possible for someone who has been victimised by the police, to feel that the world is out to get them (because it is), and become a criminal.
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If they keep letting repeat-offense crooks (who reside/operate in those neighborhoods) go after their sentences are up, and they go back to the same place... just what the fuck do you expect?
The problem with this is that whenever a crime is committed the police typically looks at people that are have a criminal record.
This leads to a situation where you have a list of suspects based on previous crimes rather than any real evidence pointing in their direction.
Convince a witness to pick out the one that looks the most like the real perpetrator and suddenly you have a case, especially if you sorted out the ones without an alibi beforehand.
It is easy to create repeat-offense crooks if you want to,
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This leads to a situation where you have a list of suspects based on previous crimes rather than any real evidence pointing in their direction.
And 9 times out of 10 they are correct.
I imagine it's trivial to find SOMETHING illegal.
Parole / Probation means they are supposed to be developing a habit of making good decisions. They are closely scrutinized to make sure that happens and yes, strict compliance is 100% mandatory. ~ Deal with it. ~
People have literally been arrested for "crimes" such as standing on a sidewalk, asking an officer "why" and being parked in an empty public parking lot
Officers lives are hard enough without baiting little pricks that do this. They deserve what they get.
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or "collect the usual suspects"
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... which also happen to be the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates. Do you think having cops allocate more resources to neighborhoods with higher crime rates is a bad idea? Sounds like Law Enforcement 101 to me.
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You do realise that Baltimore is mostly black neighborhoods don't you? Also, the highest crime areas (you know, the areas we tell our kids not to wander to?) are black.
I would expect the police to be using tools to catch criminals in the high crime areas, wouldn't you?
Perhaps if you lived in Maryland you would understand.
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"Also, the highest crime areas (you know, the areas we tell our kids not to wander to?) are black."
No, the highest crime areas (anywhere in the world) are poor. Skin colour doesn't enter into that part.
If you start looking into the reasons why disproportionate ratios of the black population are poor then it's easy to see the systemic discrimination across the board which shows the Jim Crow laws might be gone, but Jim Crow attitudes still lurk just under the surface.
Re:Racially discrimitory? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but police can deploy it where it will mostly interfere with minorities.
Breaking the Law (Score:1)
There I was racially discriminating, in the hood down town
all inside it's so incriminating picking phones to own
feel as though nobody can avoid my prying eye
so I might as well begin to put some action in my life
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
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This device can determine race when scanning phone calls?
Watch out, they're coming for the Derps next! You thought you were safe?!
Criminal status is not a race. (Score:1)
Criminal status is not a race, EMF doesn't send or receive better based on the color of your skin.
Unless you're holding it wrong.
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Unless you use it primarily in minority neighborhoods.
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"Lets just give it up and acknowledge the race card has been overused and no longer holds any merit"
Let's not. Even if it appears that way *in some cases*, the cops have been mistreating minorities to a greater degree for a long time and it's not improved much.
The stop-and-frisk reports from the NYPD during the Bloomberg years shows that clearly.
http://www.nyclu.org/content/s... [nyclu.org]
The recent DOJ report on the Baltimore PD is even more damning and backs up what black residents have been complaining about for DE
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What stop-and-frisk reports show is black people tend to live in neighborhoods with more crime. Spinning that into "proof" of racism is exactly what he's talking about.
And nothing, nothing out of this administration should be taken at face value when it touches on race.
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"And nothing, nothing out of this administration should be taken at face value when it touches on race"
That's been very true of a great number of police departments. Sadly, it remains true to this day.
And you need to extend your skepticism to administrations other than merely the current one.
Please include the notable figures that talk about "blah" people and say things about the President such as "we know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war government nig er, A
Re:Criminal status is not a race. (Score:4, Insightful)
I say get rid of both.
Get rid of the race card.
Get rid of racist policing.
Keeping either one, as an excuse of the other, is absurd.
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The problem is that too many think the race card is played anytime anyone complains about being discriminated or mistreated *because* of their race, even if it may well be perfectly legitimate.
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Complaints about racial discriminiation need to be taken seriously, but on the flipside, not everything that "feels" like racism actually is.
I posted earlier up, a pretty long explanation about what i mean by this. Sometimes, naked, raw ststistics present situations that "look" like discrimination, but really aren't.
Like standing in line at the checkout.
It is very easy to feel you are being discriminated against, when you are black, and nearly every single time you go to the store, the person at the front o
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My grandfather was a racist by some metrics: he used the "N" word on occasion, he had a country accent, he told the occasional off color joke about race or foreigners, he was from the deep South. And, of course, he was white, the most damning of traits to some.
He also told all of his grandchildren that if our government forced intermarrying between races our country would be drastically better off in three generations. He encouraged us to take matters into our own hands on this front.
Sometimes I envision
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But I think the real rub here is the people getting caught are getting mad, and they happen to live in the less than well off neighborhoods.
That's a good argument for integration. Segregation by SES doesn't work. It just makes things worse, and the US has never integrated.Ghettos by law, then by convention, then by coercion. We are still in ghetto by coercion. If we ever moved to an integrated society, we'd cut crime in half.
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People living there who haven't done anything to be caught for are a bit tired of being go-to suspects as well.
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If you want to change the stereotype then instead of complaining about racism how about not living up to the stereotype.
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This guy said it better.
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]
Mod points aren't for obfuscating the truth you don't like.
Re:Criminal status is not a race. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would argue otherwise.
When the racecard is used, you get absurd things attributed to racism.
Eg, we can say that white people outnumber black people 10:1. (For the sake of this example, just pretend this is true.) This means that if the rate of incidence in desire for gourmet coffee is identical in both races, 10x as many white people will show up at the coffee shop as black people. that means the likelihood that the first person in line is at least 10x more likely to be white than black. It has nothing to do with preferential treatment, it is just how the odds line up. A black patron visits the shop, and is more likely to wait in line behind a white person, than a white person is to wait in line behind a black person, simply because there are more white people.
When the racecard is presented as an option, THEN there is real, defacto racism involved, because now you are introducing real preferential treatment for the black patron to shorten their waiting times, based only on their skin color, out of some misguided idea that the wait times should be equal.
That causes a grudge to happen, which causes race hatred.
Nearly all of the problem with racism, and perceptions of racism that really arent, can be solved through better understanding, and by that, I do not mean the touchy Feely kind.
If i take a vacation to zimbabwe, i expect that i will wait in line behind lots of people with dark colored skin, because there are more people with dark skin than light skin there, and they got there first. It does not mean the supermarket owners are racist against whites, and i do not feel obliged to cut in line so my wait times are different from the people behind me at the checkout, just because my skin color is different.
Arguments about how some minority ethnicity suffer so terribly because they statistically have to wait behind majority ethnicities, ignores the truth: there are just a bunch of people standing in the line, and the only way it matters what race they are, is when race is MADE into an issue. When a line is statistically N persons long, the average is that you be in the middle of the line somewhere. You wait just as long if the line is made of white people as black people.
The question is not about how terrible it is that black people are typically served after white people-- it is why the black patrons find this offensive, when it is not actually the consequence of racism, and why they feel entitled to being treated priority based solely on the color of thier skin.
The race card makes this peoblem worse, not better.
Just wait in fucking line, and wait your turn, like everyone else.
In regards to the story at hand, the presumption of racism comes from some simple features:
Incarceration rates for black males is vastly higher than for white males.
Predominantly black neighborhoods tend to be lower income than predominantly white neighborhoods.
Lower income populations tend towards higher rates of criminality and recidivism.
Lower incomes are strongly correllated with lower educational achievement.
And if I may, a subjective observation: there is a difference of opinion concerning the value of education between mainstream black culture, and mainstream white culture.
I would therefore conjecture that the income disparity is not defacto racism, but is instead cultural. (Take the same culture and apply it to a different race, you will get the same result.) The income disparity results from the attitude toward education, which adversely affects earning potential, which adversely affects crime rate.
Are these cops being racist, by putting stingrays in black neighborhoods, or are the cops putting stingrays where the highest incidence of crime is, and circumstances just so happen to be that such areas are mostly black?
To me, the line is drawn on motivation. Is the motive this?
Black people commit the most crimes, so we deploy stingrays in heavilh black populated areas.
Because that is racism-- it begs the question that black people are simply more predisposed to criminal behavior, because of blackness, ignoring that there are causal factors behind that outcome that can change.
Is the motive this instead?
We planted stingrays there, because that is where most of the criminal behavior is (ignoring race as a metric entirely).
That is not racism. If the factors that contribute to criminality (education and income level) change, then the stingrays wont be deployed there, because the criminals arent doing businesz there.
Dont be so quick to say something is based on racism, and to demand that people be allowed to cut in line, or evade police, just because of the color of thier skin. It contributes to race hatred, which causes real racism.
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Stated much more eloquently than I.
Thank You.
Re: Criminal status is not a race. (Score:1)
Doesn't matter if it's racist, it's against the law for them to be using these devices without a warrant in the first place.
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That's another point entirely, and one I wholly agree on.
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There is no such thing as race anyway; we're all members of the same exact species. The idea of race is an entirely learned idea and if you watch little kids play you'll notice that they are not naturally prejudice against others who are superficially different unless they've been told to be prejudice.
Variety makes the world more interesting and people themselves are no exception.
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I still stand by my personal theory that the media is deliberately agitating everyone as a response to we are the 99%. Divide and conquer is alive and well.
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http://baltimore.areaconnect.c... [areaconnect.com]
Baltimore is also 64% black...so I would expect the police to use the Stingrays in predominately black neighborhoods more often.
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If 20% of the population is committing 50% of the crime, is enhanced enforcement in minority communities really racism or is it effective asset allocation? If your part of the majority of the minority community members being preyed upon by a minority of gangbanger scum, your really caught between a rock and a hard place.
Re:Criminal status is not a race. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stringray is used mostly in minority neighborhoods (at least according to the complaint) and doesn't just affect the criminal targeted. Everybody in the neighborhood loses data service and has calls blocked or dropped, including 911 calls.
Re:Criminal status is not a race. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is entirely conceivable that if the Stingrays and police were deployed in white neighborhoods and businesses, that most of the crime would be suddenly discovered there.
Re:Criminal status is not a race. (Score:5, Insightful)
It occurs to me that if the authorities had been deploying Stingrays around Wall St and other financial districts, not only would they have found plenty of mostly-white criminals, they might have saved a grateful country from huge losses in money & jobs.
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Wouldn't have done any good, bankers are untouchable. We know there was a ton of fraud in the 2008 financial crisis, but prosecutors didn't bother to prosecute more than a few people because [theatlantic.com]:
Any narrative of how we got to this point has to start with the so-called Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar. Holder’s memo asserted that “collateral consequences” from prosecutions—including corporate instability or collapse—should be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute a big financial institution. That sentiment was echoed as late as 2012 by Lanny Breuer, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who said in a speech at the New York City Bar Association that he felt it was his duty to consider the health of the company, the industry, and the markets in deciding whether or not to file charges.
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I know about as much about financials as the typical banker knows about IT but I also know that greed is a disease and that "too big to fail", left unchecked, will soon become "so much too much bigger to fail" - and when *that* blows up, we in NorthAm will be envious of the situation in Greece.
Ironic Origin of Section 333 (Score:3)
It is entirely conceivable that if the Stingrays and police were deployed in white neighborhoods and businesses, that most of the crime would be suddenly discovered there.
Good point--one point highlighted by The New Jim Crow, IIRC, which discussed studies on how white people used marijuana more than black people but got arrested for it far less.
Ironically, Section 333 (unlawful interference) was created to *enable* calls to the police and emergency services, and keep fly-by-night radio stations from interfering with police radios and shipboard communications for rescue. IIRC the Titanic suffered needless delays in rescue in part because of unregulated radio station broadcas
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Biggest gang in Baltimore (Score:1)
Baltimore PD is Baltimore's largest organized crime ring.
Mass Firings In Order? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's becoming more and more clear, that Baltimore is going to require a truly massive purge of it's law enforcement ranks. Not just slaps on the wrist, or re-training, but a flat-out "You're fired, and law enforcement credentials revoked [techdirt.com]" kind of thing.
There won't be any mass riots or anything like that. Those happen because the firings haven't happened when they should.
If anything, it'll become the most peaceful, most pleasant city to live in, until a fresh crop of high-IQ, college-graduates [go.com] can be convinced to take the job.
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Don't forget to strip them of their pensions and throw them in prison for the crimes committed, as well as allowing them to be held individually liable in any civil suit.
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It's very disturbing you went right for a word loaded with historical baggage like "purge". [wikipedia.org] That sort of thing has a very dark history and suggesting the same tactics be used on people you don't like is worrisome indeed.
I thought IQ tests didn't work and only produced invalid results? Besides, if intelligent people are so intelligent, why don't they just sandbag the test so the results come back at average?
Intelligent people do poorly at tasks requiring a lot of repetition and lack of novel stimulus.
Individual criminal charges (Score:2, Insightful)
Charge anyone who operated one of the devices with felony wiretapping. "Just following orders" has never been a valid excuse for breaking the law.
Hefty Fines (Score:1)
I think that the fine for unlicensed transmission is $10,000/day.
Why Do These Things Even Work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is my phone connecting to random towers all the damned time?
My phone should come with a list of certificates it trusts and should only connect to trusted towers.
I should be able to edit this list as the owner of the phone.
I should be able to accept updates to this list from my carrier (or any carrier of my choice), either as automatically and insecurely as I want (leaving "Auto" checked on the phone, or as carefully as I want (walk into the carrier's HQ and ask for a paper list of cert fingerprints for their towers and the towers of their partners).
I should be alerted whenever a new tower claiming to be a tower of my chosen carrier(s) is detected with an unmatched cert before my phone connects to it. I could then decide to blacklist it, check for an update that includes it so I can confidently add it, or just add it blindly and roll the dice.
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That's a damn fine idea. I recall the blackphone does something akin to this as far as alerting the user when the phone detects that a tower has something....amiss in it configuration. Please implement and open source with haste, lest somebody takes this great idea to field and patents the idea from under you.
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This machine catches stingrays: Pwnie Express demos cellular threat detector (4/21/2015)
http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
The new devices offered to police will try and harmonise to any signal strength in the local area and stay with any modern telco networks detected. The hand over would now be more seamless, to try and mimic just another new tower or smaller
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There is SnoopSnitch for Android which uses a database and detection of unusual configurations. I've used it around London, it's quite an eye-opener.
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Wouldn't work. If each tower has a unique certificate the (security conscious) phone owner would have to trust the new certificate and tower pair, possibly even referencing GPS coordinates.
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All a telco device expected was lots of cell towers to select from. The users voice was consumer encrypted to a weak early standard so that part was secure from consumer recording in the wild.
That is where the early mil systems got in. The tower hand over was a telco weakness and allowed the take over of a users phone.
Years late
Re:Why Do These Things Even Work? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's stopping the police from getting certs?
Wait... (Score:2)
Basically what they're saying is that investing crimes in predominately black neighborhoods is racist... WTF???
What is amazing to me (Score:2)
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I wouldn't exactly call the Baltimore PD "fucking retarded, wild animals", but they do need to be - in your words - "tamed", like all racist knuckleheads.
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I think he meant the niggers, mate.