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After US v. Jones, FBI Turns Off 3,000 GPS Tracking Devices
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from the Wall Street Journal: "The Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a 'sea change' inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann. Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called 'Big Brother in the 21st Century' on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use. These devices were often stuck underneath cars to track the movements of the car owners. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that using a device to track a car owner without a search warrant violated the law. After the ruling, the FBI had a problem collecting the devices that it had turned off, Mr. Weissmann said. In some cases, he said, the FBI sought court orders to obtain permission to turn the devices on briefly – only in order to locate and retrieve them."
I highly doubt is only 3000.
Maybe the feds should be more careful before giving out their toys!
Tell the FBI to write a nice letter to the owners of the vehicles asking if they would kindly return the black box attached under the right rear fender.
I don't. They most likely have many more as you can still plant/use them with a warrant. The 3000 were just for ones without warrants.
What would happen if I happened to find such a device on my car and put a fine metallic mesh grounded to the chassis of the vehicle? They would have a serious problem, I guess...
Ezekiel 23:20
My first reaction to this was "Why wouldn't they just let them die off when their batteries run down?" In my experience, no GPS device small enough to be hidden in a car will run more than a few days without recharging the battery; most of them die in a matter of hours.
Then my second thought was "How are those gadgets powered?" Do they have a a humongous battery that will last weeks or months? Do they tap into the car's electrical system and not need a battery? If so, will the owner of the car find that the battery is run down when they don't drive it every day? What would be the legal import of the cops tapping into my car's battery and draining it? And, of course, when I took it into the shop and they found the electrical parasite, it would be removed, so this doesn't seem to be a very smart way to power a secret GPS gadget.
You could use a solar charger, but those are sorta hard to conceal.
Anyone know how these things are powered, and how long they can run without either draining the car's battery or dying because their own battery is dead?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
They are probably partially turned off, as in not returning location. They can probably still receive a cellular signal.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
On Craiglist! Ha!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
GPS tracking devices are radio controlled. The device still has power when it is "off" only the Global Positioning transmitter is off and it can be turned back on at any point by sending a command to the device. In layman's terms it is kind of like a cellular "phone" which is technically a radio. Even when your ringer is off you can still receive calls you just can't hear them in which case they go to voice mail (by default), or any other number/service you have decided to reprogram the device to send to.
Sir:
Please return the other GPS that is attached in the vicinity of the right wheel well. (You may have to get down on the ground to access it.) This happens to be the property of the Federal Government. We have enclosed a box with an address so that you may drop it off within the next ten days at the nearest mailbox at your convenience. No questions will be asked. Thank you in afvance for your cooperation.
This will prevent us from coming to retrieve the aforementioned property in person. In the middle of the night, no less.
Your friendly neighborhood federal agent
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/scotusjones.pdf
Wouldn't it be a laugh if they found out that a lot of them had already been removed and stuck to the undercarrage of some random over the road semi?
Geek Hillbilly
Ahh, no wonder the rattling sound from my wheel well suddenly disappeared.
Yup. One nuclear bomb and one kilo of anthrax spores are also small numbers.
Are you surprised that the number is high, or that the number is low?
Personally, what I'd love to know is whether the FBI was being lazy with those 3,000(if we can do it with or without a court order, why go to the judge?) or whether they had 3,000 active bugs for investigations so flimsy that they couldn't find a judge to sign...
The former wouldn't be good, but would be unsurprising and fairly banal. Doing paperwork when you don't have to is a fairly rare psychological disorder, after all. The latter, on the other hand, would be 'uncomfortably retro' behavior on the FBI's part, hearkening back to their historically loose adherence to petty matters of law and due process.
Or stick it to the car of the agent who planted it.
So the FBI should just post a bounty on the folks with these things. Those bounty hunters seems to be good at finding folks and their stuff.
Maybe the FBI should just call the tailed folks up, and ask them nicely to give the devices back? Although, that didn't work out too well with the CIA Iran drone.
How about a national "Search Your Own Car Day?" You might be surprised what you'd find under the back seat.
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In fact, reading the opinions, it would appear that all the justices (except maybe Sottomayor) would allow GPS devices installed without a warrant for short term tracking.
Of course, the Justice department usually prefers err on the safe side.
I was running my cell phone off their GPS' battery. /lie
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
the same way they turned them off - REMOTE.
you think they sent 3000 guys out to turn them off but forgot to collect them?
That you, RMS?
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Sell it on ebay , of course
My guess is the former is the main reason. Why go to the court for something you don't need to go to the court for? Indeed, if you genuinely believed that there was no need to get court approval for something, it'd be positively irresponsible to keep going to court about it- a big waste of expensive court time.
But then, there's no saying how many of the investigations are too flimsy to have stood up in court. That's exactly why we force law enforcement to get warrants for things- to weed out flimsy cases. Without that check in place, god knows how many shoddy cases were nodded through.
How about this for a new standard:
If an average citizen would be convicted of a crime (trespassing, harrassment, stalking, etc.) for doing it, the police need a warrant if they want to do it. I mean, for fuck's sake, they have special courts made specifically for the purposes of rubber-stamping warrants, now these fucking assholes feel like they should be able to spy on us without even having to go through the trouble of getting the bullshit warrant in the first place? What a Fucking Bunch of Idiots.
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Or, Mr. Weissmann, you and the FBI could have just picked up a copy of the Constitution. Even a cursory reading of the 4th Amendment would have told the FBI that affixing a GPS device to someone's vehicle without even the nicety of having paid a judge a visit was eventually going to get the lot of you in a legal pickle and likely mean the Supreme Court would toss it out.
I recommend the FBI get a copy of the Constitution. It's available at your local library, at many bookstores. Hell, there's got to be a hundred thousand websites out there that have the full text.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I recently set up an entire GPS platform for our fleet at work. Security was an issue so I purchased the platform and run it in house on a server I built. Currently have 200 assets, but the platform will handle 5000.
They are probably using a device similar to an Enfora modem. These are cellular only, and fairly basic, although they can be configured to reports certain parameters such as ignition on, motion detection, geofencing, etc.
At the other end of the scale you can have a dual band device like the i50B which is Iridium satellite and cellular. The satellite kicks in depending on threshold setting for cellular signal strength. Of course there are MANY similar devices that run on different satellite networks (Global sat etc).
Reporting can be from every 30 seconds to once per day.
The devices are hard wired and use very little juice. You would never notice them. Both the devices mentioned are slightly larger than a pack of smokes and need power and ground. For the best reception an antenna is required, but that is also very easy to hide. Installation would be less than 30 minutes.
Interestingly, jammers are becoming a real problem. You can purchase them online, they only block the GPS frequency, and plug in to your cigarette lighter. Think Taxi cab drivers and truckers.
Just because a device is listening for a power off signal when on does not mean its listening for a power on signal when off
And how many agents do they have? For that matter, do you really think we have THREE THOUSAND terrorists in our country? Or how about this, 3000 THAT WE KNOW ABOUT?
Neither do I. So who the hell are they tracking, and why? That's a lot of law enforcement abuse of powers there, probably 3000 cases of it. Want to guess how many decades that would take to go through court if you tried to prosecute all of them? (Yeah, we have a lot of courts around the country, but those cases would be clustered in just a few.)
3000 is a small percentage of the total populace, it however is not a small quantity of abuses of power.
How many of those were on ex-girlfriends vehicles?
How many were stuck on rusty pickups at the local truckstop in the hopes it would magically be a bandito of some kind?
(If you don't do the proper investigation and don't have probable cause, then anything you do is either fishing for clues or making wishes to the magic instant case fairy.)
I recommend the FBI get a copy of the Constitution. It's available at your local library
Hmm, isn't checking documents out of the library an action that leads to you ending up on a list of some sort? I agree; it's good to encourage our government agents to use library facilities.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
There are even places that promote such things that will send you a copy for free if you are to stupid to google it.
Yea,another good one.LOL!
Geek Hillbilly
“[O]ur law holds the property of every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbour’s close without his leave; if he does he is a trespasser, though he does no damage at all; if he will tread upon his neighbour’s ground, he must justify it by law.” Entick, supra, at 817.
Calls to mind the myriad stories we see here about some random hacker discovering vulnerabilities, reporting them, and then finding themselves on the wrong side of the law. Even if you do no damage, you're still breaking the law.
It just struck me. This means they don't know either where the owner of that vehicle works or lives, otherwise they'd have an address to go to for retrieval purposes.
WTH! Were they just sticking them on random cars in a McDonalds or something?
2999, I stuck mine to the bottom of a carnival ride trailer long time back.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The point is it should NEVER happen.
Actually the point is it should never happen WITHOUT a warrant.
And clearly they haven't got enough for a warrant. Seeing as how it takes so little to get a warrant that they have no reluctance to ask for one to retrieve 500 worth of property. Apparently a crime on par with petty theft is enough to get you tracked.
Since these were all illegal, why not force them to reveal to the tracked parties their tracking activities and ask for the devices back. They may face legal action, but so what? The supreme court didn't make new law, it just stated what was the law all along. Placing the trackers with out a warrant was always a crime.
Either that or The FBI could seek a warrant for their continued use. Surely after tracking these suspects for how ever many weeks it took for the case to find its way through the courts they must have evidence of something that rises to the level of petty theft.
Instead they get a second byte of the apple, by being allowed to peek in windows and perhaps trespass under the guise of retrieving government property. No bad deed goes unrewarded.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It may not be so much a question of the FBIs Literacy as the Supreme Courts (mis) interpretation and (skewed) analysis of the Constitution. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/browse.html has recent official propaganda from SCOTUS.
I think a lot of your questions on the subject will get answered there.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Its probably much simpler than you imagine.
They probably never did turn them off, they simply stopped recording the incoming location data. I seriously doubt they would build in a function to stop tracking in a tracking device.
These things don't have a gps transmitter. All they have is a cellular data radio that transmits long/lat info and an id number.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It would almost have to be the latter. Otherwise they would just go get the warrants now rather than turn them off. Or at most, they would get a warrant and turn them back on then rather than seeking permission to turn them on just long enough to retrieve them.
There may be plenty of the former as well not counted amongst the 3000.
Why not? They forgot that that they're a law enforcement agency rather than a band of vigilantes.
Clearly they have too much money if they have the time and manpower to track 3000 people.
The only time and manpower involved was placing it on the car in the first place.
From then its all done by computers.
Most of these cases are probably drug related, and the investigating agent simple wants an alert if the car goes near some other known distribution point or any unusual places. This takes s almost zero manpower, which I suspect is why it was done in the first place
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The 3000 were just for ones without warrants.
Hard to tell, the article is light on details. That's one possible interpretation. Here's another: there were actually much more than 3000 warrant-less trackers out there. After they lost the case, the FBI tried to get warrants for all the existing trackers. Most of those requests were granted, like they usually are, and the 3000 are the ones where they were denied.
I've collected a few hundred of these now-deactivated GPS tracking devices, and I'm coming here to Slashdot to ask: How can I repurpose them into something useful? Can I install some flavor of Linux on them? Perhaps turn them into nodes of a mobile mesh network? Mobile hotspots for on-the-road internet access? How about a location-specific personal music player, that based on where you're driving, will download appropriate music and feed it to your car stereo's built-in Bluetooth receiver?
Any and all ideas you might have will be appreciated!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
My guess is the former is the main reason. Why go to the court for something you don't need to go to the court for? Indeed, if you genuinely believed that there was no need to get court approval for something, it'd be positively irresponsible to keep going to court about it- a big waste of expensive court time.
But then, there's no saying how many of the investigations are too flimsy to have stood up in court. That's exactly why we force law enforcement to get warrants for things- to weed out flimsy cases. Without that check in place, god knows how many shoddy cases were nodded through.
if the 3000 cases weren't flimsy, they could easily get a warrant on them. that they'd need a "rollback" warrant on their own actions(to retrieve the devices..) directly implies that those 3000 cases wouldn't have gotten warrants for the surveillance.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
For that matter, do you really think we have THREE THOUSAND terrorists in our country?
Not to defend the warrant-less trackers but do you really think the FBI only monitors and investigates suspected terrorists? They also deal with any crime that happens on Federal lands, crimes that cross state lines such as kidnappings, murders, thefts, and much more. They aren't all there just to fuck with our freedoms, you know. Yes, some members of law enforcement are power hungry assholes. That's not all of them, however, and you do a dis-service to the good ones when you forget it or trivialize what they actually do.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
It is subject to the terms of Part 95 of the FCC rules. You don't need an individual operator or station license (as you do for amateur radio), but there ARE legal limitations on what you can do over a CB.
One of the limitations is exactly what types of signals can be emitted over the CB channels. You are limited to AM or SSB voice. Digital data packets (such as from an APRS system) are NOT permitted.
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The git who decided to do this should get them.
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Sent 3 of them on cross country trips already.Used Nitril gloves BTW
Geek Hillbilly
It's rare that I'll, you know, defend the government and all... but the FBI's purview extends way beyond terrorists. They handle organized crime in general, for one. I mean, the South American gangs like MS13 alone could account for a large portion of those GPS trackers. That doesn't even consider all of the other crime that they handle (bank robbery, wire fraud, etc.)
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
If a GPS is under a car how does it get line of sight to the satellites? Are these devices just security theatre to frighten people into conforming for fear of being tracked?
Korma: Good
I don't. They most likely have many more as you can still plant/use them with a warrant. The 3000 were just for ones without warrants.
the FBI sought court orders to obtain permission to turn the devices on briefly – only in order to locate and retrieve them.
Don't you need a warrant for that?
They just dont get it Quote"Mr. Weissmann said that the FBI is now working to develop new guidelines for the use of GPS devices"End Quote The guidlines have been and always be Get a stinkin Warrent.
Jack of all trades,master of none
CB operators are supposed to share the channels, packet systems are considered to be poor at sharing, at least adaptive sharing.
Although the primary reason for the prohibition is probably so you don't use for for things such as you are suggesting.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
After they lost the case, the FBI tried to get warrants for all the existing trackers. Most of those requests were granted, like they usually are, and the 3000 are the ones where they were denied.
I don't think that would help them. If you read the opinion of the Court carefully, you'll see that in the case decided, there was a warrant issued, but the tracking device was installed one day after the warrant expired and was installed in a different state than that for which the warrant was supposed to apply. I don't think retroactive warrants could be issued, and since the majority in the case found it was the trespassing act of installing the device which triggered the Fourth Amendment problem, I don't think the issuing of a warrant after the fact of installation would help the government.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Ask them, in oh so many words, when they think they will have completed their studies of crime and criminals, and will have solved the problem.
I am John Hurt.
I do not know if that would be a good idea here. Most the suspected bombs in my area are generally blown up as the way they diffuse them.
I guess they have a way of blowing explosives up where it destroys the device before it can detonate. I'm afraid of I was to call something like this in, they would blow my car up and the insurance wouldn't cover it.
Seriously, is that *really* what the Progressive tracking box does? I got the idea it's not so much a GPS location tracker as it is a box that "phones home" to Progressive occasionally, with general data about your driving style (EG. g-forces logged when you brake or accelerate, and log of your speed you're traveling at).
Although I used to have Progressive, I opted not to take one of those boxes, so I never saw one first-hand. But from what I read, it attaches to the OBDII diagnostic port, usually found under your dashboard near the steering column. That port would typically be one you'd tap into to record vehicle stats such as your current speed (something you'd be able to get without using that port at all if you were running an internal GPS).
I could be wrong, but I doubt Progressive even has the interest in spending the time it would take to analyze data about which roads each customer traveled on, and how often they exceeded posted speed limits on each of them? It'd be a lot easier for them to simply know when and for how long you exceed a preset MPH value like 70MPH, and when your braking is sudden enough to exceed some threshold of deceleration. Count how often those events happen per month and if it's more than a certain allowed number, flag the customer for increased rates. (If such events stay at or near 0 consistently, offer them a small discount, to encourage continued use of the device.)
The governments definition of "terrorist" is much more expansive than what most of us would use in common language; 3 million is probably a good working number.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I do not know if that would be a good idea here. Most the suspected bombs in my area are generally blown up as the way they diffuse them.
I guess they have a way of blowing explosives up where it destroys the device before it can detonate. I'm afraid of I was to call something like this in, they would blow my car up and the insurance wouldn't cover it.
That's done in cases where its a small bomb that can be transported to a demolition range in a special bomb trailer. They placed a known charge on the suspected bomb and detonate it blowing both, the size of the bomb is calculated from the resulting explosion minus the detonating charge. They are very unlikely to blow your car in the driveway, especially because an FBI GPS was stuck to it, I'm sure the bomb squad has been well briefed on the devices.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
There are a lot of caveats to the exclusionary rule. If the police act in good faith, evidence acquired through technically illegal means will, in fact, be allowed as admissible.
That was my thought. FBI: "Ok, you got us. We'll stop tracking you now." [closes screen with data from under-car gps tracker, open window with cell phone location data].
The problem with "police state is after my freedom" is similar to "rapes are on a massive rise, kill the rapists!".
In reality, vast majority of central police force in most western countries (such as FBI), including USA deal with fairly mundane policing tasks like dealing with major theft, drug rings, murderers and so on. Just like rapes have been on a massive decline for last 20 years or so across the western world.
But press will bang the gongs about every single case that makes sales well. That is "oh god, world is full of rapists", "oh god, police are after your rights, your wife, your life!" and the favorite of all, "oh god, pedophiles/terrorists".
Not because any of the above are a serious threat to our everyday life, but because these occurrences are actually so rare for most people, that they pack significant shock value. And shock value sells, unlike the far worse issues that actually do affect our everyday lives, like social injustice, corruption in legislative (rather then executive) branch on massive level when dealing with big corporations, widespread tax evasion by certain strata of society and so on. These are too mundane to sell, even though their impact is far greater then all of the "shock value" news put together for vast majority of people.
Why would the GPS have no warranties? Not even from the manufac--
Oh, wait...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
No, warrants aren't required to weed out flimsy cases. Warrants are required to protect people from official abuse.
Yes they'd need a warrant.
It would be the same as tracking them as the GPS-carrying vehicle could be in an unusual location, like the disused fish packing plant down by the docks, and that resulted in a drug bust and arrest. If they got the GPS location without a warrant then they could have the case thrown out on the lack of the warrant for the GPS.
So, in order to cover their ass, they get a temp warrant to enable the GPS to report its location so they can locate the vehicle and remote the tracker.
If you've been following Wired's blogs on the topic you'd know that the FBI has received cartoonishly anti-Islamic training and has gone full McCarthy on the US' Islamic population, down to infiltrating Islamic college groups and mosques. Most hilariously, one group of Muslims called the FBI on their own informant sent to infiltrate a mosque because they thought he could be a terrorist.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It seems you still need a warrant for that in the US. Officially, as far as we know, anyways.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The point that was being made, I believe, is that the FBI have repeatedly claimed that they need these sorts of constitutionally-tenuous expansions (like the provisions of the Patriot Act) to their powers to get "terrorists", but that is clearly a farce. Once they have the power, they will use it for any and all of their purposes.
That because what would be the first reaction of anybody finding one! "Where the hell can I stick that? Cab, Bus my neighbours car...
To quote Nancy Pelosi: "Are you serious?"
Really, if our elected officials that are supposed to write the law can so openly and callousely blow off the document, why should the officials who are supposed to enforce them give a damn?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
With all the press these little beauties got it's unlikely they're still attached to the original vehicle. Hence the trouble retrieving them.
More likely, the "People of Interest" looked under their car and found it long ago. I'd love to hear some of the FBI accounts of where they found their trackers when not still attached to the original vehicle. A neighbor or wife's car is the most obvious but I'd like to think some were more creative. Interstate Bus, Police Car, Live Stock Hauler, Shipping Container,... As fun as those sound, it's most likely they were destroyed or hawked. Go check out your local seedy pawn shop, you might be able to get one cheap.
No, actually you are incorrect. I work in a cellular and gps lab and all location devices are programmed with a "off switch" for the transmitter.
ALL location devices?
Your breadth of knowledge is astounding. I congratulate you sir.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.