Jack Gillum and Eileen Sullivan of the Associated Press reveal the Obama administration has been advising local police not to disclose details about the new Stingray surveillance technology that allows police to captures cell phone data from entire neighborhoods without going through phone companies with warrants. In US pushing local police departments to keep quiet on cell-phone surveillance technology, they say:
One well-known type of this surveillance equipment is known as a Stingray, an innovative way for law enforcement to track cellphones used by suspects and gather evidence. The equipment tricks cellphones into identifying their owners' account information and transmitting data to police as if it were a phone company's tower. That allows police to obtain cellphone information without having to ask for help from service providers, such as Verizon or AT&T, and can locate a phone without the user even making a call or sending a text message. ,...revealed that Stingrays "force" cellphones to register their location and identifying information with the police device and enables officers to track calls whenever the phone is on.
Citing security reasons, the U.S. has intervened in routine state public records cases and criminal trials regarding use of the technology. This has resulted in police departments withholding materials or heavily censoring documents in rare instances when they disclose any about the purchase and use of such powerful surveillance equipment.
Nathan Wesslar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union says, "(t)hese extreme secrecy efforts are in relation to very controversial, local government surveillance practices using highly invasive technology, If public participation means anything, people should have the facts about what the government is doing to them."
Buy your own Stingray surveillance tracker, $300.00
Public records show that one-third of the Harris Corp'.s' $5 billion in government sales are for "communications systems such as the Stingray." which appears to be portable phone towers the police can set up an operate to pick up, and send, all the same information the phone company cell towers would pick up, but without warrants. So, with these portable towers, the police, or anyone who has them, can ping your phone code, look up its GPS location (probably turn on its mic too), and have it send back a signal, which can then determine your phone's exact location.
Gullum and Sullivan recount about a dozen anecdotes of local police departments across the country refusing access to records about this surveillance equipment under state public record laws, citing San Diego, Chicago, Oakland County, Michigan, all declining for variety of reasons. Oakland claimed "police-secrecy exemptions and attorney client privilege." WTH?
"It's troubling to think the FBI can just trump the state's open records law," said Ginger McCall, director of the open government project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. McCall suspects the surveillance would not pass constitutional muster. ..."The vast amount of information it sweeps in is totally irrelevant to the investigation," she said.
"Troubling" is understatement.
In another court case FBI special agent Bradley Morrison file an affidavit attesting that having to disclose information about the technology the used to presumably to gain evidence in a criminal case would "result in the FBI's inability to protect the public from terrorism and other criminal activity because through public disclosures, this technology has been rendered essentially useless for future investigations."
The Terrible Trio of U.S. Drug Enforcement: Directors of the DEA, DOJ, and FBI
The FBI also claim disclosing such information would violate Homeland Security law, and international arms-control laws - so much for your Freedom of Information Act folks. Other outside civil rights lawyers suggest these arguments are bogus, but will local defendants and judges have the resources to consult international arm-treaty lawyers to check this?
Of course the FBI will not respond to any questions about ongoing cases, or controversial issues, so "you can just screw off shitheads." "Bill of Rights? We don't need no stinking Bill of Rights! We're fighting terrorism! We can do whatever shit we want to!"
In Sarasota, Florida, the U.S. Marshals Service confiscated local records on the use of the surveillance equipment, removing the documents from the reach of Florida's expansive open-records law after the ACLU asked under Florida law to see the documents. The ACLU has asked a judge to intervene. The Marshals Service said it deputized the officer as a federal agent and therefore the records weren't accessible under Florida law. ...
In this example, although the primary story appears to focus our outrage on the new Stingray technology that allow local police departments to track you location from you phone without having to get warrant or go through the phone company by setting up their own towers, a secondary, and probably more important outrage, is that we see our Freedom of Information laws and our state level transparency laws being trumped by national Homeland Security National Security overrides.
We are seeing a perfect storm of technologies, coordination and power of the intelligence agencies, and perceived threats of terrorism coming together to shift the balance of power of the state versus the individual to the most extreme ratio ever seen in history
Unless we do something to reign this in, individual freedom as we have known it in the past is over. We need a major blue ribbon commission to review these issues from top to bottom to recommend some new approach because what we are doing now is not even remotely close to an adequate response.
Congressional hearings will no be adequate. Congresspeople have proven themselves to be unqualified to evaluate these issues by virtue of the fact they have already not held such hearing. We need to include a much broader range of people with broader attributes: people like Bob Gate, Eton Musk, Marcy Wheeler, or own Bobswern, Edward Snowden, and other hackers, some American civil liberties lawyers, people who have demonstrable appreciation for our Bill of Rights (which would seems to exclude just about everyone currently sitting on the the Intelligence Oversight Committees.)
6:52 PM PT: One of our Do-it-yourself craft people post an EMF blocking phone pocket glove that looked like a pot holder. It was about a 3 inch by 6 inch by `1/2 inch pocket lined with a wire screen mesh sewn together.
At the time at thought it was cute and almost teased her suggesting I was going to republish this in my "Drug Dealers, Criminal Gangs, and Fugitives From the Law" group, but then censured myself under my rule don't make jokes that if misunderstood could hurt people's feelings by causing to think one is making fun of them - one of my most important self censuring rules.
Cuz I did see it as very useful having just read an article that criminals were using scanners on the streets of Manhattan to read information off of peoples credit cards from their wallets or purses. So some kind of Faraday Cage seems like a good idea.
A Faraday Cage can also protect sensitive electronic chips or data in case of a nuclear or EMF blast. Any kind of a metal box (than conducts electric charge) lined Internally with a thin layer of styrofoam or other insulating material apparently works. I knew from physics classes that if one is inside a perfect copper sphere no electromagnetic waves can get inside because any induced charges on the surface of the sphere spread out evenly then the geometry of the sphere is such that everywhere inside the charges would cancel out.
Apparently, the spherical shape isn't necessary or the basic rectangular shielding is sufficient to protect walkie talkies according to the "post-nuclear blast" survival show I was watching. I thought it was pretty funny, but also sad, that folks were protecting their credit cards from nuclear blast EMF blast corruption, so they will be ready for those post-nuclear holocaust markdown sales at Macys.
Now, my entrepreneur spider senses are tingling, because, I know I could design and FBI-NSA-NextDoorNieghboor13 year old-proof phone case we could sell several thousand of pretty fast and split this "hot dog stand" of poverty blogging. I've already been an INC500 CEO once and I'm getting the urge again.
Except this time I will not under any circumstances marry my business partner or be the primary product (as a lead consultant, public speaker, etc) "Safe Phone"