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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."
As they are intercepting communications, it is unquestionably a wiretap.
Whether the courts are still legitimate enough to declare that remains to be seen.
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!
Suspected criminal...
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.
Yeah throw due process out the window. You realize that you could be turned into a criminal at any time with just the stroke of a pen from a politician, right?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
For the same reason we defend innocents. It's because you don't know who is a criminal and who is innocent, until after you have played the defense. If we knew who the criminals were prior to trials, we wouldn't have trials and courts, or even cops. Most of the Bill of Rights wouldn't exist, or if you take everything to its extreme conclusion, we wouldn't even have governments.
Ultimately, if you are against suspected criminals having trials, you are an anarchist. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I agree. I don't necessarily think this is about defending or prosecuting innocence or guilt, but rather the examining the means used to get them there.
This smacks of wire tapping. Surely there are other legal avenues they could have pursued to get from A to Z?
I really so no difference between this and a wire tap.
Minor detail, if he were an anarchist, the criminal would go free forever with no trial (no government, no prosecution). He is more of a totalitarianist (sp?), where the government has absolute control and, therefore, no trial with prosecution.
Just tag everybody as terrorists and have the now immune phone companies do the tapping.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
What a terrible submissions. Do you expect them to accept a text filled with accusations towards the editors and editorial bias?
Don't worry, I don't expect this to make it to the frontpage either
This is what's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy".
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Because criminals are entitled to a complete and proper defense?
When it comes to privacy, every inch we give results in another mile taken by the government. Consider how the Patriot act evolved from where it began back in 2001 to where it is today, the way the TSA began and the way it is being pushed out beyond it's original boundaries with people advocating and supporting random vehicle searches on Interstates, shipping, busing, backscatter X-ray being used for major sporting events which will eventually trickle down to every public building and who knows how far beyond that...
The Fourth Amendment exists because privacy is necessary for liberty and a free society.
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
Because criminals are entitled to a complete and proper defense?
Not really. It's because it takes a complete and proper defense to be (fairly) certain that the defendant is in fact a criminal.
United States v. Jones will be argued in the Supreme Court this week, on whether warrantless tracking of a drug dealer by putting a GPS tracker on his car requires a warrant on the fourth Amendment.
An idiot would think that we were arguing that case in the Supreme Court to defend drug dealers. Maybe the guy actually arguing it is--but the reason that we are considering it as a society, the reason we care about these things, is because of the risk of it being done to innocent people. The risk of government tracking everyone as part of its standard law enforcement duties. (I'm not saying NSA doesn't do that now, but law enforcement doesn't usually.) There should be some limit on the power of the people acting for the state--Something that at least requires a police officer to say "there is probable cause to search this person and here's why..."
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
How about an app that beeps and turns the display red if encryption, as feeble as it is, gets turned off.
We are trying to protect what our founding fathers created.
If you cant understand that rather simple concept that then you are an idiot.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
Wouldn't help you as much as you want. They use stingrays in exactly that sort of case. In the one at hand, they didn't know the identity of the individual at first either. They can still identify you by the device you're using. You'd have to burn a phone or aircard (as in the case at hand) after every single use once you use it to commit a crime. Otherwise, they could quite conceivably use these devices to track you down.
I'm all for privacy but keep in mind there are limits to how easily you can hide if you choose to use a device with a unique ID on a system which you do not control.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Because sometimes the criminals are the ones on our payroll.
If I set up a fake tower to sniff people's cell packets, I go directly to jail. That's practically indefensible.
If the government does it "to catch a criminal", they need to request permission via the proper channels, i.e. warrants. It is a special privilege that must be diligently controlled and protected from abuse. If we start giving law enforcement officials (and their subcontractors) carte-blanche to effectively commit criminal acts, without oversight nor disclosure, in the name of crime-fighting, then democracy is effectively abolished.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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?
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.
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.
It wouldn't work, because someone could just spoof the cell tower's ID, with a stronger (but closer) signal. In fact, I think that's what they do.
You are already a felon, and don't know it.
I can almost guarantee that you have committed at least one Federal felony, based on the thousands and thousands of laws that now exist.
Did you know that it is a felony in the United States to import a plant or animal if it is illegal to export it from WHATEVER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD it came from, even if that plant or animal is perfectly legal here?
Which essentially means that our government is letting other nations define our laws for us.