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Battle Brews Over FBI's Warrantless GPS Tracking
fysdt writes "The FBI's use of GPS vehicle tracking devices is becoming a contentious privacy issue in the courts, with the Obama administration seeking Supreme Court approval for its use of the devices without a warrant, and a federal civil rights lawsuit targeting the Justice Department for tracking the movements of an Arab-American student. In the midst of this legal controversy, Threat Level decided to take a look at the inside of one of the devices, with the help of the teardown artists at iFixit."
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dmh5s/does_this_mean_the_fbi_is_after_us/
Damn Republicans passing laws and continuing abuses like this stripping away our rights. . .
you don't really need to bother. http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/05/04/1430233/Security-Specialist-Pwns-Police-Cruiser
Violation of privacy is something committed by a party of equal power to yourself. When government commits injustice, the correct term is oppression. We aren't talking about a nosey neighbor peeking out the window at you, or even a dedicated stalker. We are talking about the organization holding the special right to employ coercion against you as their means -- the most dangerous force that could possibly exist. Needless to say, the situation is completely, utterly different.
This is the answer if you get tagged with a device like this. at night in a obscured location, remove it and install it on someone else car. Preferably a car that is the same color and make.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I would be checking it right now.
No need to do that, just watch the video feed from the cop cars instead. Although I suspect in the USA, either could probably get you a jail term.
Oh no... it's the future.
Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, we are left...defending our rights from exactly the same threat we faced before. Glad that killing the guy accomplished so much.
Palm trees and 8
Since these days most people carry a GPS unit voluntarily anyway. If you want to watch someone's day-to-day movements, it'd probably be easier to track his cell phone movements than to duct tape a rather obvious unit to the underside of his car.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The linked article shows a woefully out of date tracking device. A much more current version of a gps tracker teardown is shown here:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone-4-Teardown/3130/1
Drill a hole into the casing, fill the damn thing with butyric acid and seal it again.
Should provide for some fun once those goons try to find out what's wrong with their toy.
Clearly the solution to finding one of these is to report it as a suspected car bomb. After all, if people can decide that a giant Lite-Brite is a bomb then surely a bunch of metal boxes magnetically attached to a car should merit the same level of attention and freak-out...
Screw that, I would head down the the nearest marina and attach it to someone's boat lol. Or another car.... maybe a truck trailer....
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
So would it be ok to place a GPS tracker on every police car you find, I bet not and while betting I bet that if you were caught trying to put such a thing on a police car you would get shot.
My advise on this is quite simple, if you find a little black box, an antenna and a battery pack on the underside of your car, call the local police and tell them you found exactly what you found under your car, a bundle with wires coming out of it (the battery pack) a black box attached to it (the GPS receiver) and an antenna and your afraid to touch it. Make certain your insurance is paid up.
Call the local news as well, its a bomb threat for certain but this is an economics game, they can't afford to follow everyone with agents so its cheaper to track everyone of interest and sort it out later, make this cost them as much as possible, PR spin isn't cheap, nor is replacing GPS devices that keep 'falling' off the car (rip the wires, leave parts of it on the car) at some point it becomes cheaper to either follow you with Agents, or stop following you.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
If I found one of these attached to my car I think I'd simply throw it in a box and mail it somewhere. Perhaps to an FBI office on the other side of the country. Let the FBI blindly trace the path it takes through the USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.
Either that or I'd let a dog run around the neighborhood with it.
This thing transmits on 433MHz! I have a license (issued by the Feds) to transmit on that frequency. hmmm...
(Yes, like the article this comment is very USA centric.)
Anyways, if the FBI had been monitoring Brad Cooper, they could have just pulled the records tracking where his car was, and show if he actually drove it to the site his wife's body was found or not. If he did it, there wouldn't have been an expensive trial, and if he were innocent, then he wouldn't have been indicted. Well, maybe. I suppose the Cary police department would just say that Brad "must have" hacked the FBI tracking device or used a GPS jammer...because he technically knew how to do such a thing....even if they never actually found the tools he used to do this.
They said that if I voted Republican, we'd get warrantless wiretapping. I voted Republican, and what do you know, we did!
It's hardly even a joke any more. Obama's just as bad as his opponents, except we also get Obamacare added on top.
Too bad for you when you run into a judge who has never heard about your "rule" and decides to throw you in jail for tampering/destroying government property, interfering with an investigation, or whatever else they feel will stick. See your rules don't matter. The only rules that matter are the ones enforced by the government (or the mob).
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Oh, wait a sec...........
Never mind.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
paid for by sharing location information with corporations and advertisers so there is no tax burden to the American people.
Yeah because those corporations just invent the money to pay for ads, right? It's not like the American people are paying for the ads when they buy products from those companies... /sarcasm
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of planting these devices without a warrant, someone should arrange to put tracking devices on the cars of all 9 justices. That would probably get the ruling reversed very quickly.
...had the same effect as shooting the little boy who had his thumb in the hole in the dam in the head. Stinks...we didn't even get a Beer Hall Putsch as warning. Unless that was Palin?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I'd probably build an EMP generator over the weekend with the kids. "Hey kids, you want to know why your dad's not allowed near the microwave or the toaster?"
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
First: who knows? Even if you're not cynical about government convicting or even prosecuting innocent people all the time, surely you admit they investigate innocent people all the time. They have to in order to do their job, rule out suspects, etc. This is why the we try to limit them taking extra more-invasive steps against people to only when they can show they have a good reason. If they only looked at people who are doing things that really warrant their attention, we would assume them to have godlike infallibility and wouldn't even bother with a justice system at all; just have them pass sentence on the bad guys.
But aside from that...
If it is legal for law enforcement to do this without a warrant, that suggests that legally the activity of putting a bug on someone else's care isn't special; i.e. it is not something that is considered to be a violation of privacy for which we sometimes permit government to do it as part of their rightful monopoly on force. In other words, if government can do this without invoking its special government-y powers, then anyone should be legally allowed to do it.
So your question becomes:
Might the neighborhood burglar like realtime updated reports on when you're home and when you're not? Might your insurance carrier want to know if your daily patterns are outside the median? Might your stalker want to know where you are? Might your ex-wife's private investigator want to know who you're visiting? Might ClearChannel want to know which billboards you drive by most often? And so on. Draw on your paranoia and imagination and I think you'll see that Big Brother is just one of many brothers to be concerned about.
If Just Anyone is not allowed to bug your car, then that suggests it is a special power reserved for government, and you're going to have a hard time arguing it's not a violation of privacy (if it's not, then why can't I bug your car?) or that it doesn't require any sort of balances or limits of power for which the 4th amendment was intended to provide protection.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This makes me pretty mad as well; any and all GPS tracking should require a warrant. Period. Sad thing is, with just about any cell phone, you can be tracked just by your position in relation to cell phone towers--not to mention all the devices that are GPS-enabled--without your knowledge.
Not sure how legal they are, but there are GPS-jamming devices that can be had for relatively cheap: http://goo.gl/4TUL6 . The problem with those is neither you nor the cars around you will be able to use GPS navigation either...
What makes you think that they would allow any evidence that exonerated anyone to come to light ? This device will only collect damning evidence.
Nullius in verba
How long until the FBI starts selling this info? Hell, it works for Google.
Don't worry. Universal vehicle GPS tracking is coming.
Have gnu, will travel.
Of course it is! The Patriot Act enabled Obama and the Dems. If it hadn't been for that they never would have thought of this on their own, right? I mean Obama and Co are all for hope and change and rule of law and privacy rights and... yeah all that stuff they told us they were for each year Bush was in office!
Uh huh...BTW where the hell have you been for the past 80 years or so? The FBI have always been jack booted thugs going back to their very formation! look up COINTELPRO and see how they have gone so far as to execute Americans on American soil for daring to speak views that weren't on the FBI's approved list of things Negroes were allowed to say at the time.
Anybody that expects the FBI to be anything BUT jack booted attack dogs really haven't been paying attention, just as anybody that thought Nobama would be any different than McSame obviously hadn't been following the money. We lost this country decades ago the only difference now is the greedy swine at the top have gotten so ballsy they don't even pretend to give a fuck about things like the constitution anymore.
But as others have said sooner or later we'll have our very own Egypt and things will get real ugly. I'm betting when China dumps their dollars and starts a worldwide dollar dump and the US dollar is worth about as much as a buck in Zimbabwe the excrement WILL hit the bladed cooling device. My guess is a lot of rich folks will be doing their impersonation of the fall of Saigon complete with helicopters taking off of roofs to escape the hordes. The real question will be what comes after which I kinda feel sorry for the rest of the planet then because as we saw in Europe a militant nation with massive unemployment and a shitload of weapons tends to get nasty to those around them. Hell we even have the pre-made groups to persecute, just replace Jews and Gypsy with Mexicans and H1-Bs.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Or disable them, other than jamming GPS or cell phone?
These will become more common in many countries...
The way to exploit being followed is to provide the enemy with the data you wish them to have. Take digital pics of its position on the vehicle so you can replace it, then use it as an alibi!
It can be moving when you are in-place, or in-place when you are moving. It can be moving elsewhere, states away if you like.
You can state you were at X location and KNOW that matches their data without revealing that you know this.
One doesn't "hide" by turning off parts of the system, one hides by making the system your bitch.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
OK, so it was a 2011 Bentley. But I was tired of it. So I took it down to the local car recycler and they put the whole car into the crusher. Sorry About that GPS box you folks stuck on it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, not only would they get you for mucking about with government property (that you couldn't have known was actually there) ... but, I suspect if you laid such a trap, you might find yourself running afoul of several other laws.
I suspect you might get yourself a couple of felony charges out of the deal.
Throw it away, stick it to another car ... sure, it's a foreign object attached to your car with nothing to indicate it has any official status. But, really, I think if you leave something with acid in it to be "discovered" by these guys you will have likely entered into territory you might live to regret.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Many are just pessimistic enough to believe this would happen.
You are assuming that the FBI would admit to having data that exonerated you and would be willing to turn it over. I find it more likely that they would deny it existed for as long as possible and then slap "State Secrets" on it so you can't have it anyway.
Destruction of government property.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The prosecution must reveal all evidence to the defence as in all the location logs for the tracker. It happens all the time. One of the best ways to get a charge dropped is to find evidence that the prosecution knew about but did not reveal. It does not have to be important evidence as hiding any evidence is grounds for dismissal. I realize it may be a difficult task but showing that some of the location logs are missing should be pretty easy. At worst all location logs would be thrown out.
Ooh ooh, is it something to do with his hilariously poor cookery skills?
which is totally what she said
Soooo... go with dogshit?
which is totally what she said
Why would they go to all the effort of slapping a custom-build gps device on a car when an iPhone will do the trick much more effectively? Plus, there's no risk of negative PR. It'll be a feature to be tracked by the FBI, so they can keep you safe at all times.
No, they would find some other charge to make against whoever did the planting and tracking. For example, they probably live behind electric gates and would charge the planter with criminal trespass. What they might charge the tracker with can be left to the imagination... not mine -- I can't think of anything, but potentially anything from "conspiracy" to "terrorism" is quite likely. (Government is immune to charges of terrorism, but if you act in any way against government, guess what you are?)
Well, that will let you make a statement without running the risk of inflicting bodily harm and having to pay the legal price for it.
Dogshit sounds like a nice "FU" without too much in possible ramifications.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
standard household 120v AC, hooked to each antenna for a few seconds should modify the unit to the desired operating status.
The neighbor's van solution *is* funnier, however, although placing it in the middle of a raw sewage processing facility, a rural outhouse or a porn theatre has some appeal.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/fbi-tracking-device/ Cool tidbit (well I think it's cool): I personally worked on all the ST820s when I was at Cobham. I'd have tested that unit!
If both Google and Apple can track exactly where you are every time you click or touch any of their devices or android tools... why can't the FBI?
Ooh ooh, is it something to do with his hilariously poor cookery skills?
To be fair, I thought toasting a pork chop would be a real time saver.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Scared of what will happen if you resist the governments attempts to track you? Does this sound healthy to you?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
But, really, I think if you leave something with acid in it to be "discovered" by these guys you will have likely entered into territory you might live to regret.
Although the name contains "acid", butyric acid isn't a dangerous corrosive acid. It just smells really bad.
just get the FBI to provide proof of ownership.. you know a receipt or something :).
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Oh get real! What would happen is "ooops, lost the logs, what a fucking shame" like how the prosecution deleted the victims phone in the above case and how the judge refused to allow an expert to testify that the guy's computer was hacked.
Lets be honest folks, if they want to fuck you they aren't gonna let a silly thing like evidence get in the way. Hell there is a guy on death row in Texas right now where the DNA shows he didn't do it so the prosecutor just said "Well he didn't rape her, he must have just came along and killed her". Why? Just because it was Tuesday?
Anyone who has paid attention to our courts can come up with plenty of cases that are so full of shit you don't see how the prosecutor doesn't break into a shit eating grin from the level of bullshit they try to pass over on the jury. I remember one from my home state where pretty much everyone knew a cop had taken this guy out, most likely because he had caught the cops doing a dope deal, so they simply got the medical examiner to say that he committed suicide. Yeah by beating the shit out of himself, shooting himself three or four times, and THEN throwing himself off a bridge just to make sure. Same as how the prosecutor refused to listen to the engineer that testified that the two teens he ran over on the track were covered in a police tarp at the time and instead got the medical examiner to rule that the kids must have been so stoned on pot they just happened to fall asleep on the track and not get woke up by that train bouncing the living hell out of the tracks, or the ear splitting whistle. Uh huh.
The only way you are gonna get a truly fair trial in this country is if you got the $$$ to hire you a land shark to fight for you, otherwise you're fucked. That is of course if you actually make it to trial, because they can easily decide you are 'resisting arrest" and hit you with that "less lethal" taser...ohh about a dozen times or so. I guess twitching can legally be considered a form of resisting?
Look up "the largest gang in America" on YouTube and tell me how many rights you actually have now, because from what I saw the only real 'right" you have is to get the living shit beat out of you if you look at a cop funny, followed by being charged for making his knuckles sore pounding your ass. And if the local yokels can get away with that much, just imagine how much more a fed can get away with, such as TFA or worse.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Are you part of a group that it doesn't like? Even if there's no evidence whatsoever that anyone in that group has ever committed a serious crime? Then they can and will follow you around for years with one of these.
To be fair, this is hardly new for the FBI. Remember COINTELPRO? You know, the FBI program after such dangerous and violent people as Martin Luther King and John Lennon. And there's some evidence that they continue to infiltrate and try to control numerous protest movements to ensure that their ideas are easily discredited.
I am officially gone from
For example, they probably live behind electric gates and would charge the planter with criminal trespass.
I'm sure they have to stop at red lights eventually. (Or the grocery store, or any old place.)
Heck, except for the magnets, it's probably fairly inexpensive to build mock trackers and just start spamming them around rich neighborhoods. Let the local cops explain that one away...
If the government can put a GPS tracker on a citizen car without a warrant, then a citizen should be able to put a GPS tracker on a government car. ;-)
http://nwbagpipes.com/
Dogshit sounds like a nice "FU" without too much in possible ramifications.
It sounds nice until you're accused of exposing Federal agents to a potential biohazard
I think a helicopter would be pretty awesome to attach it to, preferably a military or medevac.
But sadly, I wouldn't want to tamper with someone else's vehicle. I'd probably build a small raft and float it down the Rio Grande river.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Butyric acid is not particularly harmful, it's only particularly odoriferous.
Better yet, just hack something up to feed it arbitrary location information. Make it look like your car has taken off into low earth orbit or something more plausible if you want the ruse to go on longer.
Note that the OP said "butyric acid". It's basically harmless, but it stinks like vomit.
Um, it WAS in the USA. No jail either.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
My suggestion:
Call the local media first. Tell them you've found what looks like a pipe bomb on the underside of your car. Call the cops and tell 'em the same thing. Don't mention the media call.
Optimally, they both show up and the cops get to explain what the device is, and what it's for. I'd love to see the sound bites from that.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
hard drives have a very nice strong magnet in them, thus magnets too would be easy and cheap to acquire (just post on craigslist, offer to sledgehammer them when you pick them up for data security), as long as you know how to use basic hand tools.
Only I can judge you.
Ah yes! Blinking red LEDs from Radio Shack! I once used one of those to make "the internet" for one of my friends.
Though, they know where you live already.... bring it inside the house, and just leave it sitting in your living room.... or attach it to the chimney.
OOOh.... better yet... mail it around! Just toss it in an express mail box, and mail it somewhere fun... like... some tiny little town in Alaska.
Even better, get a mailing box, put it inside... beat up the box a bit, tape it all around the seams on the outside, and put a small dab or two of oil on it.... address it to a local FBI main office, and send it along. Say nothing else, do nothing else... use a fake return address, and inside a small note "I believe you dropped this"
Before doing this, do take out their sweet batteries and replace them with cheapo D-Cells.... I bet they use the damned thing again without checking.
Honestly, that would be my biggest score, the sweet batteries.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
How do I determine if I have one of these things on my car?
Any good surveillance methods have backups, I guess.
For what it's worth I don't think this is going to be stopped.
Even if the Supreme Court says any evidence gathered this way can't be used in court, police will still use these techniques to develop a "habit profile" on a suspect. Then fall back on more conventional techniques of tracking to disclose any useful discoveries. "I had a hunch your honor so I followed them and witnessed them ."
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thats so cute... you actually trust them.
The device malfunctioned.
The logs were lost.
The logs get tampered with.
Etc.
They cant loose a case, it doesn't matter if the wrong person gets put away as long as the win to loss ratio is high enough to make that run for governor.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
So, one tardy reply begets another. Did I really have to add "...if you're not a paid penetration tester like the guy in the article I linked"? Thought it was kind of obvious.
Oh no... it's the future.
On the bright side (there is one), at least if you ever are prosecuted you can show your whereabouts pretty easily.
Not at all true. The GPS is not for YOU, it's for your CAR. So they know your car wasn't/was in a certain place. Doesn't mean you were at the same location as your car.
This in addition to those below who said the FBI likely wouldn't let you use this data.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Scared of what will happen if you resist the governments attempts to track you? Does this sound healthy to you?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. - Thomas Jefferson
Healthy (and I presume you are talking about for our society/country)? No.
Wise, as an individual, heck yes.
Smart move for anyone who (like most people do) claim they wish to see our country continue to improve? No.
Tough balancing act between survival and progress.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Apparently those batteries put out 3.6V. I doubt the device would run off of standard 1.5V D-cells. However, I could probably wire up enough AA cells to get the proper voltage and shove them in there if I had to.
These custom built tracking devices cost a lot of money.
If you find one under your car, you should be ashamed of wasting tax payer money like that (and also for forcing a federal agent to get down there and make his suit pants dirty.)
Just get a new car with OnStar, and I guarantee you you won't find another tracking device in your car's bumper.
Cue the "if the FBI try to plant a bug on my vehicle on my private land, I fully intend to shoot the officers dead who try it" posts in 3...2...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it