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Did Feds' Use of Fake Cell Tower Constitute a Search?
hessian writes with this story in Wired: "Federal authorities used a fake Verizon cellphone tower to zero in on a suspect's wireless card, and say they were perfectly within their rights to do so, even without a warrant. But the feds don't seem to want that legal logic challenged in court by the alleged identity thief they nabbed using the spoofing device, known generically as a stingray. So the government is telling a court for the first time that spoofing a legitimate wireless tower in order to conduct surveillance could be considered a search under the Fourth Amendment in this particular case, and that its use was legal, thanks to a court order and warrant that investigators used to get similar location data from Verizon's own towers."
Why do we keep trying to defend criminals?
As they are intercepting communications, it is unquestionably a wiretap.
Whether the courts are still legitimate enough to declare that remains to be seen.
Nazi Germany only WISHES they had waited till the 21st Century....
Are man in the middle attacks legal?
I track my ex with a fake cell tower all the time, I don't see anything wrong with it!
and they said it was backed with a court order, no different than any other wiretap.
One issue could be that they were also getting traffic from thousands of other callers not involved in the case. But, I suppose they could argue that happens in a standard wiretap as well, but it's the phone company that does the winnowing out.
Did they, the Feds, get the legal right from a Federal court of law, and authorization from the FCC to set up a false communications tower in a part of the EM spectrum allocated to private industry?
Is the legal framework in place for the Government to set up spectrum, regardless of allocation, for whatever reason? Is that a right the Fed's reserve with the FCC? We've sold you this part of the spectrum, however we reserve the right to do whatever we want with it, whenever we want with it?
Surely the FCC, and wiretapping by the Justice Department, hasn't been left this grey.
I wrote a submission:
http://slashdot.org/~AlienIntelligence/submissions
About Siri being down. Wonder if it will get published to the front page.
I'm kinda "surprised" a submission hasn't made it to the front page yet,
considering the outages started on Wednesday.
Odd that.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Good... BUSTED!
Why do they spend so much time exploiting loopholes? Surely a Court would just grant them a court order to do this anyway. I mean, if they're dumb enough to believe this crap why wouldn't they be sympathetic to an actual legitimate court order?
Just tag everybody as terrorists and have the now immune phone companies do the tapping.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003106852728
The feds can't just go rifling through sealed letters without some kind of warrant. By the same token, their man in the middle attack is like having a fake postman pick letters up, read them, then seal them, then drop them off at the real post office. They can't do that without a warrant and likewise they shouldn't be able to do it to data.
The justices need to get real about enforcing some basic principles that were implicit in American legal code for centuries.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I can see the potential for a smartphone app that learns the cell tower IDs that you normally connect to and lets you know if something is out of the ordinary. Similar to the Certificate Patrol add-on for Firefox, but for cellular connections.
Wigle Wifi already collects the data and shows details on the towers visible to your phone, so that info *is* available.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It's obvious the government is lying about what it's doing so it can violate our privacy rights. The purpose of a judge is to be a reasonable human who can see that the government is lying, and stop the government. Judges who don't see through these lies are obviously either stupid, corrupt or both.
We need a Constitutional Amendment that simply says
Because over the years stupidity and corruption have allowed the Fourth Amendment to fail to protect our privacy, when that is the right it instructs the government to protect:
Even stupid and corrupt judges, to say nothing of stupid and corrupt congressmembers and police, will have a harder time using the government to damage our rights instead of protecting them.
--
make install -not war
Why do you hate America?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Why does anyone involved in anything illegal use a cellphone that's attached to their name? Go to Walmart buy a prepaid phone, buy a dozen, have someone else buy them, use your head.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The question is not tagging nor flagging; people need to wake up! Even Capitol Hill (FED CENTRAL) wireless communication transceivers were set up by an AMDOCS(Israeli) affiliated company. AMDOCS sounds wonderfooly AMerikan, but its actually largely subsidized by the israhell government. The questions of illegality of unwarranted wiretaps is illiterally comprehensible to the US Justice system, whether Verizon uses microsoft or not. AMDOCS not only claims to have contracted 80% of western telephony provider(including Verizon), but they have been forced to relocate to a tax haven. This is to deflect attention from their being an israhell front. A few years ago, it became evident that the amdocs facility was hard-wired (fibre-optic) to the Microsoft Live One centre in israel. Microsoft eventually relocated outside of israel also to prevent insinuation that the israelees had future exploitable back-front-trapdoors in Windows. If lawmaker and opinion-fakers on Capitol Hill are not even protected from israeli intrusion, then the likes of the dear herds of sheeple using pretty much anything using Microsoft or AMDOCS, Google android(Brin or Page is Israeli passport holder) then the waste of energy on dicussing legality of harvesting private information is a moot point. One must wonder, therefore, whether Obama realised this before taking the oath of office. Is no one above the law, or only the DC/ LA ADL crew? http://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-13/opinion/op-61_1_pipe-bomb/2
It isn't what we traditionally think of as a search, but it should, at the least, be considered a warrantless wiretap. Basically, anything that intercepts communication data is a wiretap. Be it listening in to their handheld radios or putting a recording device on their phone line or otherwise doing the fandango with data from their cell phone. All forms of wiretapping.
This would be just the same as them setting up an overpowering fake cordless phone base station and using it to listen in to their phone calls, and then arguing that it doesn't constitute wiretapping because they didn't have to go through the phone company to do it. No, sorry feds, you can't argue for spirit of the law in one case and then turn around and say that only the letter of the law matters in another case.
The whole point behind needing a warrant to wiretap is that people should be secure in their homes and have a reasonable expectation to privacy. You can't just go about using technical means to violate that spirit of the law, while your other arm turns around and arrests someone for 'inciting riots' because they posted in support of Occupy Wall Street.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
If the feds get a pass at this, then shouldn't Google get a pass over their prior wifi intercepting activities?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
good point about Americas information being managed by foreign agents, but did you ever stop to think about the trapdoor built by microsoft in the DIMONA ISRAELI NUKE FACILITY?!? Honestly, although there is merit in the above reply, how does that effect the average American who is completely oblivious, and is it really possible that such a small proportion of the population could have infiltrated and dominated the plitical and technological elite? If the israeli-affiliated were really a threat, they would have done something about the Chinese, not worry about the peaceful Iranian atomic energy program( makes good sense in light of Wall street and the City of London inflating commodities and crude).
This has to be against one or both of these departments regulations. I am an engineer for a company that designs large scale wireless networks. If the tower is over 200ft you have to get a license from the FCC (ASR number) and have an FAA study done first. Generally cell towers come in under this for a few different reasons, but not sure because I'm not seeing that in the article. I have also dealt specifically with Verizon in the past because I had a cell amplifier for AT&T set up that had gone bad and was causing interference in their network. I got a cease and desist letter from them to turn off the device. I called and talked to one of their engineers who was actually quite helpful, but I picked his brain on what their SOP was for people who refused to comply and he told me they file complaints with the FCC. Surely spoofing their network is against FCC reg's. If I were the defendant I would file a complaint with the FCC separately and present their response in court. I would be interested to see whether or not a court or the FCC would grant said defendant the standing in order to lodge a complaint. I could see them very well only accepting a complaint from Verizon as they own the network that was spoofed, and I doubt Verizon cares about one customer enough to piss the fed's off and file a complaint. Either way there are a ton of issues here.
The phone is a computer which is being accessed and tricked into doing things the owner does not authorize. You might call this a search, but it is not because it is made without announcement, ala sneak'n'peek. Wiping the logs is excellent evidence of the perps (Feds) guilt.
BLOOMBERG The question is not tagging nor flagging; people need to wake up! Even Capitol Hill (FED CENTRAL) wireless communication transceivers were set up by an AMDOCS(Israeli) affiliated company. AMDOCS sounds wonderfooly AMerikan, but its actually largely subsidized by the israhell government. [[Illegality of the ISRaeli PANOPTICON]] The questions of illegality of unwarranted wiretaps is illiterally comprehensible (literally incomprehensible?) to the US Justice system, whether Verizon uses microsoft or not. AMDOCS not only claims to have contracted 80% of western telephony provider(including Verizon), but they have been forced to relocate to a tax haven. This is to deflect attention from their being an israhell front. A few years ago, it became evident that the amdocs facility was hard-wired (fibre-optic) to the Microsoft Live One centre in israel. Microsoft eventually relocated outside of israel also to prevent insinuation that the israelees had future exploitable back-front-trapdoors in Windows. If lawmaker and opinion-fakers on Capitol Hill are not even protected from israeli intrusion, then the likes of the dear herds of sheeple using pretty much anything using Microsoft or AMDOCS, Google android(Brin or Page is Israeli passport holder) then the waste of energy on dicussing legality of harvesting private information is a moot point. One must wonder, therefore, whether Obama realised this before taking the oath of office. Is no one above the law, or only the DC/ LA ADL crew? http://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-13/opinion/op-61_1_pipe-bomb/2 Cant you see its the African terrorists? Its the Africans running the worlds panopticon!
FTA:
"As such, the government has maintained that the device is the equivalent of devices designed to
capture routing and header data on e-mail and other internet communications, and therefore does not
require a search warrant."
LOL so we should all have cell phone jammers, the equivalent of a door.
Folks we had a good run, it's over. Everything now however illegal is being justified
"National security". Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has had enough, being blocked
with that iron door to his lawsuit.
http://news.yahoo.com/ventura-miffed-court-says-hes-off-mexico-174718110.html
I watch the local TV broadcast and commercials of "see something, say something"
and think of the tales taught me about the Nazi's and how neighbors told on neighbors
till nobody trusted anyone. Godwin's law does not apply, this was taught me in school
and how Hitler came to power; through old reel to reel's of "You are there"'s
by Walter Cronkite.
Of course building a cell phone tower to capture a persons cell info is illegal.
That it's even questioned is a red flag.
..appropriate FCC authorization and permits to run a bogus cell tower?
-- Alastair
If a private citizen would be arrested for doing the same thing to a United States Senator, you need a warrant.
Easy, vote Ron Paul 2012 to protect our personal freedoms.
http://www.pathintelligence.com/ This 'phoney tower technology' has supposedly been approved for sale to commercial entities by US, UK & Australian privacy authorities for a couple of years. It can track individuals to around 2-3 meters accuracy. The way they get around privacy laws is by discarding data that could directly identify individuals (their phone number). They still however keep a record of the phones supposedly temporary identifier signal so they can track return visitation (this identifier only changes if you turn your phone off or leave the country). Oh and just in case they can't figure out who you are, the entities buying this technology have a database of all your financial transactions to cross reference. The Feds seem harmless by comparison.
FED-UP again! why do these comments get posted as hidden?
oh FuCkiTyFuKfUk you lot r insane (ISRahell PANOPTICON?????)
or was it the reference to the game not changing since the days of Reuters an Bernard Baruch (good patriots?)
or maybe it was the url http://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-13/opinion/op-61_1_pipe-bomb/2
BS- its all routed through a dozen agencies (except in the case that it Top Secret and up, in which case its only the DHS and the CIA), some of which are abroad, thereby passing through foreign-accessed channels (as well as backedup by CIA as its now intercepted as "foreign"). its all hard recorded.
furthermore, "this kinda shit glitches ev-e-ry-day"
Just tag everybody as terrorists and have the now immune phone companies do the tapping.
Reply to This
Re:Don't need no A$$ANGE/Bernanke warrant (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, @01:13PM (#37959484)
The question is not tagging nor flagging; people need to wake up! Even Capitol Hill (FED CENTRAL) wireless communication transceivers were set up by an AMDOCS(Israeli) affiliated company. AMDOCS sounds wonderfooly AMerikan, but its actually largely subsidized by the israhell government. The questions of illegality of unwarranted wiretaps is illiterally comprehensible to the US Justice system, whether Verizon uses microsoft or not. AMDOCS not only claims to have contracted 80% of western telephony provider(including Verizon), but they have been forced to relocate to a tax haven. This is to deflect attention from their being an israhell front. A few years ago, it became evident that the amdocs facility was hard-wired (fibre-optic) to the Microsoft Live One centre in israel. Microsoft eventually relocated outside of israel also to prevent insinuation that the israelees had future exploitable back-front-trapdoors in Windows. If lawmaker and opinion-fakers on Capitol Hill are not even protected from israeli intrusion, then the likes of the dear herds of sheeple using pretty much anything using Microsoft or AMDOCS, Google android(Brin or Page is Israeli passport holder) then the waste of energy on dicussing legality of harvesting private information is a moot point. One must wonder, therefore, whether Obama realised this before taking the oath of office. Is no one above the law, or only the DC/ LA ADL crew? http://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-13/opinion/op-61_1_pipe-bomb/2
Reply to This Parent
you must be MAD (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 05, @01:40PM (#37959676)
good point about Americas information being managed by foreign agents, but did you ever stop to think about the trapdoor built by microsoft in the DIMONA ISRAELI NUKE FACILITY?!? Honestly, although there is merit in the above reply, how does that effect the average American who is completely oblivious, and is it really possible that such a small proportion of the population could have infiltrated and dominated the plitical and technological elite? If the israeli-affiliated were really a threat, they would have done something about the Chinese, not worry about the peaceful Iranian atomic energy program( makes good sense in light of Wall street and the City of London inflating commodities and crude).
You make excellent points. Here's two things to consider:
(1) Why won't the "media" ever talk about campaign finance issues?
I'll answer a question with a question: who ultimately receives campaign funds?
That's right: the media. When you hear that Obama will spend $500 million on his campaign, where do you think he's spending it?
(2) Who does the establishment's hatchet jobs?
The media. When DHS, FBI, et al needed a scapegoat for the anthrax murders, all it took was a whisper in a few ears and Dr. Stephen Hatfill was delivered on a platter.
When the victim of that hatchet job fought back unexpectedly, Dr. Bruce Ivins was served up. He did what they expected and killed himself, wrapping the story up in a nice consumable package for the sheeple.
As an Austrian politician once said, "Killian is lying to you"
The "free press" isnt the solution, it's the problem
Ask Me About... The 80's!