Slashdot Mirror
New Limits to FBI Tracking of Cell Phone Users
EvilTwinSkippy writes "According to the Washington Post (free registration),
Two Federal Courts have seperately ruled that the FBI may not track the location of cell phone users without proof that a crime has been committed, or is in progress. The cases involve the FBI seeking court orders to track suspects in real-time using the mobile phone network as part of an ongoing investigation."
You mean this stuff isn't just in the movies? :(
Isn't any tourist ("foreign body") in the US by definition a suspect terrorist under the new definition?
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
what about this patriot act? if the person is a terrorist, isn't that the same thing as being already convicted in the states now?
But I thought that in the eyes of the Federal Government we were all guilty of a crime anyway?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
lots of crimes are commited every day, does this mean that anyone can be investigated following any crime?
thats what it sounds like. no i didnt rtfa
make you go HMM.
FBI: We need to tap his phone to prove he committed a crime.
Court: You need to prove he committed a crime to tap his phone.
In the last year or so, cell phone tracking of criminals has lost its value more and more.
As more cell phone evidence has been submitted in court, the more loopholes have opened up.
One of my importer/exporter customers already pulls his battery when hitting the road. Before dumping the battery back in, he picks a random sim card. I set every sim card to ring the same voice mail on "Missed Calls" so he can easily find out what he missed.
No black market businessman is stupid anymore. Hell, there are entire newsletters now offering advice on how to avoid mistakes that might get you in trouble.
Like this decision really matters when you have this coming...
Tracking Cell Phones for Real-Time Traffic Data:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/07621
Just like with the "traffic" cameras everywhere now... once they're in, they use them for whatever they want.
Don't think so? FOIA your local surveillance-equipped local police station & ask them how they have been using these "traffic" cameras.
And quote "traffic" because that is what they were sold to the taxpayers as. We were ensured that they would not be used for anything other than that and there would not be any privacy violations etc.
So if you want to commit a crime and have an alibi, AND frame someone else:
- leave your phone turned on at home but with the ringer off
- get another phone, clone the sim card of the person you want to frame
- just before its time to do the crime, borrow their phone to make a quick call, then TURN IT OFF!
- go to the location where you
- insert battery into cloned phone
- do the nasty deed
- make a call to your real cell phone, leave 20 sec of dead air.
- remove battery from cloned phone
- return home
"You" have never left home. "They" were at the scene of the crime. If their phone has roaming, and it was out of their primary area, their cell bill will "prove" they were there with the call to your phone. You==alibi, them==fucked.To get a search warrant or a wire tap they have to meet the same test. On the other hand, they are allowed to follow you around at will. I wonder when they will get a law saying that all the video cameras in the city have to be connected to their central server. Then they'll be able to 'follow' you around without leaving the comfort of their desks.
Here is the New York decisions.
Unfonatly that link in the OP is very lacking on specific and explaining some details. Here is a quick description and judges reasoning.
1) the FBI asked for the cell towers used so they would have a rough idea of the location the person was located.
2) In most cases this has been easy to get since the Supreme Court has declared that a person has no expectation of privacy with the numbers that are dialed so also as the FBI says the information is relavent the courts allow easy access. The FBI claims that the tower being used for "control codes" is at the same level of expected privacy as phone number, they also used some other laws such as the Stored Communication Act to prove they should have that level of access.
3) in the New York case the judges ruled that this was not the case and the tower being used is different. "When the government seeks to turn a mobile telephone into a means for contemporaneously tracking the movements of its user, the delicately balanced compromise that Congress has forged between effective law enforcement and individual privacy requires a showing of probable cause,"
So it looks like Congress will probaly need to give some more specifications on what they mean.
One of my importer/exporter customers already pulls his battery when hitting the road. Before dumping the battery back in, he picks a random sim card. I set every sim card to ring the same voice mail on "Missed Calls" so he can easily find out what he missed.
I have to ask: what's this guy hiding from? And doesn't going to this kind of trouble pretty much scream, "I'M UP TO SOMETHING!"?
What's with all the talk about battery swapping? I don't see how, in this post or others, it is relevant to tracking. Just curious.
Just like EFF has uncovered the use of steganography to identify printed material, all major cell phone manufacturers are inserting hidden markers in the datastream to identify the phone that is used and when it is used. There is no point in using a cloned SIM card as some people have put forward, as the phone will have identify itself with a hidden code anyway. (And I'm not talking about the phone serial# here, I'm talking about the code hidden in the data stream.) I work for a major manufacturer and have been part of one of the teams putting forward suggestions on how this can be done.
If one writes about possible rains or a harvest or even congratulates somebody for fathering a child, yet the actual meaning behind this is a facilitation of terrorist activity, this is very dangerous. This is the Al-Qaida way. We as Americans cannot succeed in such an environment.
That is why for example, IEDs are exploding daily, killing and maiming our GIs despite the fact that Baghdad was "combed" by coalition forces. To me, this is a wasted effort by the FBI. They should devise more effective means to deliver.
at least not to the government rep quoted in the article. He's basically arguing that the FBI has been treating cell phone calls as a public forum when he indicates that cell phone users do not have an "expectation of privacy". This meshes with the idea that they seem to believe that they don't need a wire tap order or warrant to legally listen in on cell phone calls. I think that they believe that the only time these orders/warrants come into play is when they have to look back on a call using the operator's records in cases where they did not have equipment of their own in place tracking this supposedly public signal.
I personally expect privacy on any person to person communications device regardless of what the technology holes in the device may be and believe that to be a reasonable expectation. Basing the expectation on the reality of the technology rather than the will of the people as they seem to will never work. No technology is fully secure.
This issue has nothing to do with the patriot act. The no "expectation of privacy" argument is completely independent of that act.
Buy those "disposable" cell phone, and buy it often
Want more rulings like this?
Donate to the EFF They wrote briefs for these cases.
Remember: the rights you save may be your own.
- Neil Wehneman
P.S. More information is at the EFF coverage of the cases.
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
The goverment used to be for the people by the people... Now it for protecting the government against the people.... Whats broken?
When the FBI went to do wiretaps on regular phones, they ended up having to have a court order and evidence of a crime being committed or in progress. This is much the same thing, however there is a much bigger effort involved. To get the cellular company to track your phone:
1 - It won't be accurate as GPS
2 - It won't be easy, and will take much effort
3 - Cellular is much easier than Voice over WiFi, but still takes a lot of work
4 - Tracking the location of a cellular phone is nearly stupid, especially if its a 'go' phone that you can simply throw away
5 - Knowing where a phone is, doesn't tell the cops anything unless they can also prove you were with it
The technical issues around this are just too many to make it of any real use. Real bad guys (not the stupid ones) already know how to get around this. If you are not a bad guy, you are not worth the effort to get a court order for, and believe me, cellular companies are not going to go through the motions without a warrant (I have some experience here) because it costs money. Tracking joe bloggs' cell phone just for kicks is not going to happen.
The more interesting things that can be done is to use the cellphone service to locate possible victims in collapsed buildings etc. in a disaster. Say, New Orleans 9th ward, if there is a working cellphone found, there is probably someone with it. Tracking cellphone positions (without personally identifying information) can lead to better service if you know where they are all at (usually) during different periods of the day. There are social welfare implications to this type of knowledge, and they are good things too. The trouble is that it will take something like an IBM supercomputer to collect and use the information in a useful way.
Until the police / authorities run the cellular networks, there is not a lot to worry about on this particular issue.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Mr. "Tom Hudson";
Go ahead and try your method of swapping cellphone in the midst of your "brilliant" criminal heist (whatever that may be).
It is one thing to talk about weakness of a system (and defy the responsible engineer ethic that is stated in various engineering organizations' charters); it is another thing to advoate such system exploitments (if any) in the midst of a crime.
You're evidently not the kind of engineer we want in our moderate Judeo-Christian/Hindu/Buddah/Islamic society.
Just to clarify for the "what's he trying to hide" people. What the finding states is that the FBI must have proof that a crime has been committed. That is, they can't just pick people that they think are dirty and start tracking them unless there is a crime. This seems like the fundamental basis of police protection - their job is to investigate crimes and prosecute the perps. Not to monitor people they don't like in case they commit a crime. The crime has to come before the surveillance.
Do you disagree? Do you think the FBI should act as our watchers before any crime is committed?
I don't. I think the FBI's job starts when a crime occurs.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The UK security service (MI5) doesn't need a court order to access traffic data, which includes tracking your mobile phone. If you find out you've been tracked (or bugged, or burgled) you can complain to a tribunal, but "In the course of their existence, no complaints have ever been upheld by the interception of communications tribunal, security service tribunal and intelligence services tribunal." - The Guardian
I've had my phone for over 3 years now, same battery, a little worse for wear (some lines in the screen have gone out). My aunt's phone died recently, so I called up Verizon and tried to transfer my phone to her. (I have another phone of the same model that I was going to switch to.) "Sorry, we can't add any phones that aren't GPS-enabled". Hmm? FCC dictate since May 2005, I guess. All the more reason for me to keep it. :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I know a lesbian couple who could register in California for Domestic Partnership, which would entitle them to certain benefits from their employers. One of them refuses to be registered because she remembers what happened in the Third Reich. I'm not making this up.
People have a right to be suspicious of government power. In fact, the Bill of Rights largely validates that suspicion.
People who say "you have nothing to fear" are ignorant of history, including US history.
[...] and jury nullification practically illegal [...]
Has anyone actually been punished for delivering a verdict other than those presented by the judge, and/or finding the defendant not guilty on the grounds that the law is wrong, etc.? Last I'd heard, the problem stemmed from people trying to inform the jury members of their rights while a trial was ongoing, and usually urging them to exercise said rights. The latter part of that is what I suppose tends to land people in trouble - "influencing the jury" or something.
So, were you just being melodramatic?
You are partially incorrect. There is minimal due process, but that due process is lacking significantly. Specifically, your rights may be determined by a "properly authorized" military tribunal, with relaxed rules of evidence.
The issue of rights of enemy combatants was litigated in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld . You can find my discussion of that case, based upon my law school lecture, at this location.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Not "proof". "Probable cause (to believe)" that a crime has been committed or in progress.
... Do you think the FBI should act as our watchers before any crime is committed?
"Proof" is a matter of courts, with advocates for both sides punching holes in each other's arguments.
"Probable cause" is a far lower standard than "proof", but a higher one that "suspicion". It requires some objective evidence of a form that has been shown in the past to indicate with reasonable probability that a crime is really taking place. Gut feelings by cops (that might be driven by personal bias) and similarity of a person to a stereotype of what past crooks have been like and have done ("profiles") need not apply. You must have something that the person actually DID that looks like he's doing dirty work.
This seems like the fundamental basis of police protection - their job is to investigate crimes and prosecute the perps. Not to monitor people they don't like in case they commit a crime. The crime has to come before the surveillance.
The FBI has (at least) two jobs (relavant to this discussion). One is to investigate crime. The other is to do the domestic part of intelligence gathering for national security: finding and stopping spys, heading off sabotage, hunting down the local instalations of an international military network attacking US or its interests, etc.
The two functions have different thresholds on when investigation can start - and correspondingly different limits on what can be done with the result. This is appropriate, since the two have different goals - one to stop major organized military action, the other to punish and deter civilian crimes. You need to start investigations with lower thresholds of suspicion if you want to head off military attacks and the like. The higher standard for criminal intelligence gathering can remain intact because foiling a plot can be done without applying criminal scanctions to its members if the start of the investigation didn't happen to meet the higher threshold. (Nevertheless, consolidation of the two functions in one agency for efficiency leads to temptation and confusion.)
One of the ways the Clinton administration went wrong was to try to build too high a wall between the two. (Some say this was done deliberately to abort the investigation into alleged trading of MIRV tech to China for campaign contributions.) Another was to try to treat terrorism as crime - with its safegaurds and proof levels - rather than war (with the result that they chose to pass up several chances to get Bin Laden before he could set up 9/11.)
The Bush administration and the Patriot Act go too far in the other direction, eroding the distinction, circumventing the legal limits on criminal investigation by passing information from national security investigations to law enforcement, and so on. (They also seem to be using rules intended for battlefield emergencies to apply the equivalent of long-term/indefinite jail sentences to US citizens without due process.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
IMEI remains the same, even after you swap the SIM.
So, no matter what SIM you use, the phone itself is still sending out its unique ID number.
Maybe they track by that?
Some of the good guys that actually seem to get things accomplished.
Don't you hate those ORG's that gobble up 80%+ of the donated monies on salaries & administrative costs?
Treat EFF like a good friend that you borrowed some money from... big win for EFF, pay up.
I think you can even get a cool black hat or something out of the deal.
I run these analyses on mainframe, AIX, and Windows even ... hardly a supercomputer. I do have to wait a bit, but I'd rather be waiting(napping) vs working.
First off, I doubt they need proof that a prime has been committed. They probably need probable cause, which is what's required of search warrants anyway. It's a lower standard or proof. I think the author just didn't make the distinguish.
Second, this is just the FBI. The FBI aren't even going to be interested in you unless you've committed a federal crime or are in something involving interstate commerce. Everything else is going to be handled by state government, which has their own rules indpendent of this.
The sad thing is, this won't stop the FBI from doing it. They'll just request the information without a court order. Most people don't know their rights, and if an FBI agent comes up to them and tells them to provide information, they'll probably comply.
Not many even know about jury nullification, but some judges and prosecutors try to weed those who believe in nullification from juries. It's not uncommon for jurors to be told to judge the case on the facts and not the law. It's such a shame when Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and other Founding Fathers of the USA believed in it so much.
In 1789 TJ said "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." John Adams goes "It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court." And Jame Madison's quote is "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they... undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow".
FalconShould there be a Law?
legislatin' from the bench!
Why do they hate america so much?
Think of the children.
--
Seriously though, I am a true republican and I know that the government is freakin evil and will abuse any power that we give them. How come all of a sudden the government is the solution to all our problems, once some people who claimed to be republicans got into office. They sure do spend like democrats and abuse their authority and grow the government just like the democrats did.
I am for small government and fiscal responsiblity. As a former army officer I am all for reducing our troop levels down to less than 100,000, moving the other 450,000 into the national guard at the state level.
I am for states rights and reducing the ability of the federal government to intrude in our day to day lives.
I salute the judge who made this decision, I have no doubt that immense pressure was brought to bare on him through extra legal means to try to force the decision that would extend government power and abuses. I respect the little guy who stands upto the bullies.
"The demand for cell phones and computer chips is helping fuel a bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo."
FalconShould there be a Law?
I dont have any cellphone and I dont use any cellphone, because I dont own any cellphone.
It seems cellphones transmit signals every couple of minutes (I see no apparent reason for this besides tracking).
The reason it sends this, must be because either the BIOS/firmware (?) is programmed to send a signal every X minutes or that the operator is sending a request for your cellphone to transmit a signal.
Or am I wrong?
Are there any cellphones who dont answer back to these signals?
Is it possible to change/modify/hack/replace the BIOS/firmware of the cellphone to make it not answer to these signals?
Sorry for the late post, hopefully it gets seen by a few other late comers.
You should do a little reading about Laura Kriho. Her conviction was overturned, but I would say just going through that whole ordeal was punishment and provides real incentive for other jurors to be the good little rubber stamps that the government wants.
You don't specify who is going to be at your house to answer your cell phone. Leaving a 20 second voicemail when no one answers your cell phone which is sitting in your house isn't going to be a great alibi :). Not to mention if they are at home with someone else and will tell the police that they found their phone turned off when they woke up...
"if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; ".
Most nonconstitutional laws should have a limited lifespan. Especially the civil ones.
That way lawmakers will have to continuously and intentionally keep crappy laws alive.
The longer you want a law's lifespan, the more people you need to pass it.