For the moment, at least (pending any SCOTUS activity on this case), this is a huge win for the American Civil Liberties Union, and for Americans, in general.
Meanwhile, as you'll read about it further down the page, in Baltimore--and throughout the country, for that matter--phone surveillance remains downright obscene! (And, not being a lawyer, I'm not even sure that today's Appeals Court ruling will apply to the FBI, DHS, and local law enforcement, who are now, officially, at the forefront of domestic phone surveillance, per our government's pronouncements of same at the beginning of this year. In other words, the courts are a few years behind what's actually happening at the local level, here at home.) First, the breaking news from the U.S. Court of Appeals...
Appeals court strikes down government's phone surveillance program
Brad Heath and Richard Wolf
USA TODAY
1:31 p.m. EDT May 7, 2015
A federal appeals court declared on Thursday that a National Security Agency program that sweeps up logs of Americans' phone calls is illegal, representing the most significant setback yet for the long-running surveillance operation.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York said the program "exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized" under the USA Patriot Act, which the government has maintained permitted that massive data collection.
"The statutes to which the government points have never been interpreted to authorize anything approaching the breadth of the sweeping surveillance at issue here," Judge Gerard Lynch wrote for the three-judge panel.
"The sheer volume of information sought is staggering," the court said, extending to "every record that exists, and indeed to records that do not yet exist."
The challenge was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union nearly two years ago after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden disclosed the program's existence. Since then, a federal judge in Washington has said the program is likely unconstitutional, and two other federal appeals courts are reviewing it....
Kossack
gjohnsit has an earlier post on this breaking part of the story up on the Rec List,
HERE.
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Now, the news about the surveillance travesty that's playing out in Baltimore...
For the record, the original title of this post was going to be (before this afternoon’s breaking news from the U.S. Court of Appeals): “The Massive, and Still-Escalating, Warrantless Surveillance of West Baltimore…and the Entire Country.”
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“Americans should be deeply skeptical of government power. You cannot trust people in power.”
–FBI Director James Comey (10/12/14)
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There’s a rather stunning story in Wednesday’s edition of The Washington Post, describing how our surveillance state has deployed advanced cellphone wiretapping and tracking technology via low-flying airplanes over West Baltimore in recent days.
Surveillance planes spotted in the sky for days after West Baltimore rioting
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post
May 5 at 8:21 PM
As Benjamin Shayne settled into his back yard to listen to the Orioles game on the radio Saturday night, he noticed a small plane looping low and tight over West Baltimore — almost exactly above where rioting had erupted several days earlier, in the aftermath of the death of a black man, Freddie Gray, in police custody.
The plane appeared to be a small Cessna, but little else was clear. The sun had already set, making traditional visual surveillance difficult. So, perplexed, Shayne tweeted: “Anyone know who has been flying the light plane in circles above the city for the last few nights?”
That was 9:14 p.m. Seven minutes later came a startling reply. One of Shayne’s nearly 600 followers tweeted back a screen shot of the Cessna 182T’s exact flight path and also the registered owner of the plane: NG Research, based in Bristow, Va.
“The Internet,” Shayne, 39, told his wife, “is an amazing thing.”
What Shayne’s online rumination helped unveil was a previously secret, multi-day campaign of overhead surveillance by city and federal authorities during a period of historic political protest and unrest…
…
…Discovery of the flights — which involved at least two airplanes and the assistance of the FBI — has prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to demand answers about the legal authority for the operations and the reach of the technology used. Planes armed with the latest surveillance systems can monitor larger areas than police helicopters and stay overhead longer, raising novel civil liberties issues that have so far gotten little scrutiny from courts.
Civil libertarians have particular concern about surveillance technology that can quietly gather images across dozens of city blocks — in some cases even square miles at a time — inevitably capturing the movements of people under no suspicion of criminal activity into a government dragnet…
The article continues on to note:
“The FBI declined to comment on the flights. Capt. Eric Kowalczyk, a Baltimore Police Department spokesman, referred questions about the flights to the FBI.”
Heavily documented in the balance of the WaPo piece, and as explained down below in significant detail, recent news reports have described how this massive surveillance effort in Baltimore, which involves a hell of a lot more surveillance technology than just “tracking,” has been in place for at least seven years--much more comprehensively via land-based surveillance than in the air—and movements of individuals continue to be tracked and wiretapped, en masse, in West Baltimore, as you read this.
Wednesday’s Post article reminds us that “…the Wall Street Journal reported in November, it [the U.S. Marshall’s Service] has used cellphone-tracking devices called 'IMSI catchers' in airplanes to track the movements of people in U.S. cities…”
Perhaps the most glaring truth about this WaPo report is that while it attempts to inject doubt into the “news” that this is being done outside of federal supervision, that false meme is completely obliterated by the fact that the FBI has been strongly supportive of intensive telephone surveillance within Baltimore since 2007.
For those that have been paying attention to the over-arching U.S. surveillance state story for awhile, there are greater, systemic travesties in play here, and they’re exemplified by a Baltimore Sun article from April 9th--just three days before Freddie Gray was killed by six of Baltimore’s not-so-finest—which explains how the City of Baltimore has been under massive surveillance by the Baltimore Police Department for over seven years.
Baltimore Police used secret technology to track cellphones in thousands of cases
Justin Fenton
Baltimore Sun
April 9th, 2015 6:42AM
The Baltimore Police Department has used an invasive and controversial cellphone tracking device thousands of times in recent years while following instructions from the FBI to withhold information about it from prosecutors and judges, a detective revealed in court testimony Wednesday.
The testimony shows for the first time how frequently city police are using a cell site simulator, more commonly known as a "stingray," a technology that authorities have gone to great lengths to avoid disclosing.
The device mimics a cellphone tower to force phones within its range to connect…
…
… Baltimore has emerged in recent months as a battleground for the debate. In one case last fall, a city detective said a nondisclosure agreement with federal authorities prevented him from answering questions about the device. The judge threatened to hold him in contempt if he didn't provide information, and prosecutors withdrew the evidence.
The nondisclosure agreement, presented for the first time in court Wednesday, explicitly instructs prosecutors to drop cases if pressed on the technology, and tells them to contact the FBI if legislators or judges are asking questions.
Detective Emmanuel Cabreja, a member of the Police Department's Advanced Technical Team, testified that police own a Hailstorm cell site simulator — the latest version of the stingray — and have used the technology 4,300 times since 2007.
Cabreja said he had used it 600 to 800 times in less than two years as a member of the unit…
But,
The Sun’s report doesn’t stop there. You see, these aren’t just ordinary Stingrays. They’re the most powerful, up-to-date version of Harris Corporation’s (the manufacturers of these IMSI-catchers) older product. And, the name of this “new and improved” model is, “Hailstorm.”
Readers are then made aware that the Baltimore Police Department—like virtually every other law enforcement organization in this country that owns Harris Corporation’s surveillance technology—was forced to sign a “nondisclosure agreement to keep information secret” about not just the technology, but the entire surveillance program. (See link immediately below this paragraph.) And, that’s due to the fact that it’s the folks over at the Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the FBI, that are preventing these municipal police departments revealing these programs.
Baltimore Police Stingray Non Disclosure Agreement by bobswern
In fact, the Sun article notes, “At a hearing last year, a Maryland State Police commander told state lawmakers that "Homeland Security" prevented him from discussing the technology.”
How strict and confidential/classified are these non-disclosure agreements and related supporting documents? The Baltimore Police Department has been “…instructed by our government and the Harris Corporation to withhold critical evidence about these technologies and their related policing programs”…up to and including withholding “…evidence from the state's attorney and Circuit Court, even upon court order to produce…”
So, just how intrusive are these Hailstorm, state-of-the-art mobile surveillance devices?
Here’s Ars Technica with the skinny—information you’re highly unlikely to ever read in the MSM, by the way—on Hailstorm and a couple of the company’s earlier products that have been on the market, in some instances, for over a decade, such as "FishHawk" and “TriggerFish.”
Meet the machines that steal your phone’s data
by Ryan Gallagher
Ars Technica
Sep 25, 2013 10:00am PDT
…“Stingray”
The Stingray has become the most widely known and contentious spy tool used by government agencies to track mobile phones, in part due to an Arizona court case that called the legality of its use into question. It’s a box-shaped portable device, sometimes described as an “IMSI catcher,” that gathers information from phones by sending out a signal that tricks them into connecting to it. The Stingray can be covertly set up virtually anywhere—in the back of a vehicle, for instance—and can be used over a targeted radius to collect hundreds of unique phone identifying codes, such as the International Mobile Subscriber Number (IMSI) and the Electronic Serial Number (ESM). The authorities can then hone in on specific phones of interest to monitor the location of the user in real time or use the spy tool to log a record of all phones in a targeted area at a particular time.
The FBI uses the Stingray to track suspects and says that it does not use the tool to intercept the content of communications. However, this capability does exist. Procurement documents indicate that the Stingray can also be used with software called “FishHawk,” (PDF) which boosts the device’s capabilities by allowing authorities to eavesdrop on conversations. Other similar Harris software includes “Porpoise,” which is sold on a USB drive and is designed to be installed on a laptop and used in conjunction with transceivers—possibly including the Stingray—for surveillance of text messages.
Similar devices are sold by other government spy technology suppliers, but US authorities appear to use Harris equipment exclusively. They've awarded the company “sole source” contracts because its spy tools provide capabilities that authorities claim other companies do not offer. The Stingray has become so popular, in fact, that “Stingray” has become a generic name used informally to describe all kinds of IMSI catcher-style devices.
“Triggerfish”
The Triggerfish is an eavesdropping device. It allows authorities to covertly intercept mobile phone conversations in real time. This sets it apart from the original version of the Stingray, which marketing documents suggest was designed mainly for location monitoring and gathering metadata (though software can allow the Stingray to eavesdrop). The Triggerfish, which looks similar in size to the Stingray, can also be used to identify the location from which a phone call is being made. It can gather large amounts of data on users over a targeted area, allowing authorities to view identifying codes of up to 60,000 different phones at one time, according to marketing materials.
“Hailstorm”
The Hailstorm is the latest in the line of mobile phone tracking tools that Harris Corp. is offering authorities. However, few details about it have trickled into the public domain. It can be purchased as a standalone unit or as an upgrade to the Stingray or Kingfish, which suggests that it has the same functionality as these devices but has been tweaked with new or more advanced capabilities. Procurement documents (PDF) show that Harris Corp. has, in at least one case, recommended that authorities use the Hailstorm in conjunction with software made by Nebraska-based surveillance company Pen-Link. The Pen-Link software appears to enable authorities deploying the Hailstorm to directly communicate with cell phone carriers over an Internet connection, possibly to help coordinate the surveillance of targeted individuals.
For more on Stingray, here’s a link to a piece from the
Baltimore Sun, from late last year: “
How a stingray device works.”
Then again, if one doesn’t consider the deployment by the BPD, in no less than 4,300 documented instances over the past seven years, of the most intrusive of all mobile cellphone wiretapping technologies available to U.S. law enforcement, Harris Corporation’s “Hailstorm” IMSI-Catcher suite of surveillance tools—think Stingrays on steroids, which are capable of capturing all of the call content, geographic locations, texts and tweets, on a keystroke-by-keystroke basis (as a person actually enters it into their cellphone), from up to 60,000 users at a pop; and, I haven’t even discussed the reality that these Hailstorm devices enable law enforcement to remotely turn on the audio functionality of these cellphones, too—as being “massive,” then I guess this is all just another Daily Kos post about a hyperbolic conspiracy theory.
Except when it's not! Many of these facts, stated herein, have also been the reality in recently-documented reports regarding the same type of (technologically) militarized police activity, in reports from Los Angeles, Chicago (also see here, and here), northern California, Florida, and, possibly (due to the intense secrecy behind the deployment of this federal government-sanctioned surveillance, we’ll probably never know half of it) even in Ferguson, Missouri, if one also considers this national pattern of surveillance, especially since the country's home base of the U.S. Marshall's surveillance flight program is located in Kansas City; and the USMS provides its aerial surveillance services to law enforcement organizations around the country.
In other words, in the name of our country’s “war on terrorism,” racial oppression—and legally-obfuscated, massive oppression of all sorts of social activism in general--is baked-in to law enforcement throughout this country, and at levels enabled by advanced technology that make it all-encompassing. And, until it’s effectively obliterated at the federal level—starting with the FBI, which is now “assuming a larger surveillance role” in domestic spying, and is now, officially, at the forefront of this effort--the U.S. citizenry will continue to play whack-a-mole with this travesty for generations to come.
As this diarist has reported it here over the past few years, local law enforcement has been wiretapping, tracking and tracing, and otherwise illegally circumventing the U.S. Constitution via warrantless phone surveillance more than a million times per year, since at least 2011, and “only” a few thousand of those instances have occurred in Baltimore during that time. Obviously, it’s not a stretch to speculate that this type of Orwellian (some people have a problem with the use of this appropriate word) surveillance of U.S. citizens has been occurring on a matter-of-fact basis throughout the U.S. for quite awhile, too.
And, since we’re now learning that these widely-deployed IMSI-catchers may actually capture up to 60,000 phones’ data per deployment, up to and including the wiretapping of call content, if one does the math, it’s reassuring to know that this means that no more than 60 billion calls per year (give or take a dozen billion) are being monitored on an annual basis, via this methodology throughout the U.S. Of course, there have been numerous reports over the past decade describing, in great detail, how virtually all of our domestic calls are also being captured via at least a few other surveillance methodologies.
I’m sure it’s just “a coincidence” that—based upon virtually countless reports regarding same, and as it’s been this country’s reality for at least a century—many of those on the business-end of all of this surveillance activity happen to be, disproportionately, people of color, or social activists, or both.
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Earlier on Wednesday, Kossack Old Redneck published a post on the aerial spying aspect of my post here: “‘previously secret, multi-day campaign’ of FBI aerial spying on Baltimore protests.”
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